Phonics Activity Cards

My son is in first grade this year and we have been working on learning to read words with blends, digraphs, and all of the long vowel spellings. I wanted to make an activity that would be a fun way for him to practice the spellings. These cards can be used in a few different ways. Here are some pictures of how my son and I used them. I cut out the cards and laminated them.

Then I used a 1 inch square punch to make a hole underneath the picture and word. Find 1 inch square punch here. Each word is missing a short vowel, long vowel, blend, or digraph. You can place the card on a piece of paper or white board and write the missing sounds in the hole. Below are a few examples of the different kinds of cards.

The pack has short vowel, blends, digraphs, silent E, and long vowel team cards for students to practice with. You could place the full page in a sheet protector and have students write the missing sounds in the box with a dry erase marker. You could also cut the cards out, laminate them but not punch out the square and have students write the missing sound with a dry erase marker.

Valentine Crayons

This year my friend and I decided to make Valentine's for our kids to take to school. We decided to make heart shaped crayons. We had some trouble finding the molds for the smaller crayons and finally settled on a bigger mold from Wal-Mart. We loved the way that the crayons came out! They are really smooth and shiny!

We used blue, gray, black, and white crayons for the boy valentines. We were going for Star Wars like colors since all the boys are into that right now. We used pink, purple, and white crayons for the girl valentines. I made a card for the background, which you can get in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for free. There is a card with the blue colors, pink colors, and rainbow colors.

How to Make Heart Shaped Crayons

Step 1 - Peel the crayons you are going to use

Step 2 - Break the crayons into small pieces

Step 3 - Place them into your silicon heart shaped mold

Step 4 - Bake for 15-20 minutes on 250 degrees until the crayons are melted

Step 5 - Let crayons cool, pop them out, and stick them to your cards

Phonemic Awareness - Phoneme Discrimination

After being a kindergarten teacher, you come to realize the importance of Phonemic Awareness in a child's education. What is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic Awareness is not phonics. Phonemic Awareness is the ability to listen for, identify, and manipulate the individual phonemes in words.

Children need to be able to identify the sounds in words that are spoken not words that they see on a page. For example, if I were to ask a child what the initial sound in the word cat is, they would be able to tell me that it is /c/. They need to be able to do this with initial, medial, and final sounds. Once they have mastered this skill, they would move on to manipulating the sounds in words. For example, I would say the word is cat, change /c/ to /b/, what is the new word? Again they need to be able to do this with initial, medial, and final sounds. 

This first Phonemic Awareness pack that I have created has an activity that can be used everyday to help students master this first skill of Phonemic Awareness which is Phoneme Discrimination. There are word lists provided for initial, medial, and final sounds in words. Every day you choose a new sound to focus on. You tell the students that they will be listening for a specific sound as you read off a list of words. When they hear the specific sound they will give some type of signal such as touching their head to let you know that they heard it. This activity can be done in a whole group or small group setting and can be done very quickly. It is great for the beginning of the year and is very beneficial to helping students with their phonemic awareness instruction. See the word lists below. I printed the lists out on different colored paper for initial, short vowel medial, long vowel medial, and final sounds. Then I punched holes in the lists and added a ring to make them easy to use.

I also included worksheets in this pack for students to practice the skill independently. See an example of one of the worksheets below. There are assessment pages that you can use with students as well for a pre-assessment, post assessment, and reassess if they were struggling after first instruction.

There are also a few pictures cards in the pack to provide additional support to students who initially may struggle with the concept. You could use the picture cards as seen below to have students find the two pictures that have the same initial sound or they could try to find the one that does not have the same initial sound.

These are some of the picture cards included.

Children need to master these phonemic awareness skills before they can become successful readers! :)

Back to School Sale

Teachers Pay Teachers is having another back to school sale for one day only! Be sure to check it out tomorrow. My store is also on sale for an additional 20%! Happy Shopping! :)

Back to School Sentence Builder Worksheets

I just posted some Back to School Sentence Builder Worksheets. They are FREE for a limited time! :)  This pack contains 12 sentence builder worksheets with sight words and a Back to School theme. These worksheets help students form a sentence and teach them to always put a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end. These worksheets encourage students to start reading simple sight word sentences and give them the confidence that they will learn how to read! :) Don't forget to leave feedback and like my store for more flash freebies!

Back to School Freebie

I am feeling a little strange today as many of my friends and former coworkers are back to school today and I am NOT! Starting my first school year as a stay at home mom and not a teacher...crazy! I am definitely missing some of that back to school excitement today where everything is new and you have those dreams and ideas of all the stuff that you are going to do differently this year! :) Wishing everyone a wonderful first day of school! Here is a little Back to School freebie.....a gift tag that you could attach to a new teacher gift, fellow teacher gift, or new student gift!

February Worksheets

February is here already! I can hardly believe it! All of the kids are making so much progress but I will have to admit that it is our transitional kindergarteners that are impressing me the most. They have all started to blend words, write simple sentences, and are doing the same math as the kinders! So amazing….I am excited to see all that they accomplish in kindergarten! :)

Everyone is getting ready for the Winter Olympics to start and I am ready to share some new worksheets that I have made for the month of February! The worksheets meet the 1st grade common core standards but would be a nice challenge for advanced kindergarten students. Be sure to check them out in my TPT store! :)

Love the cute clipart from Melonheadz!

What student doesn't need more story problem practice? ;)

Teachers Pay Teachers Cyber Sale

Tomorrow starts a two day cyber sale on Teachers Pay Teachers! I am also throwing a 20% sale on top of the Teachers Pay Teachers sale so be sure to check out my store!

Click on the Happy Holidays image below to go straight there!

All About Animal - Science and Informative Writing Unit

We just finished up our All About Animals Unit with the kindergarteners. The kids had so much fun learning about the animals. You can get all the worksheets and pictures you see in my All About Animals pack on TPT! We started each animal group with an information poster!

I am not the best artist so I use pictures when making posters! If you feel the same way you can get these pictures in my All About Animals pack so you can make your own poster!

The worksheet version of the web.

Color, cut, & paste worksheets to go with each animal group.

I took the animal group worksheets and cut them apart to go in our science notebooks.

Here is an example of the informative web. When I do informative writing I always start with a web either like this or a big whole group web on the board.

Then I turn the web into sentences following the topic, details, and conclusion model. This is how I introduce informative writing in the beginning of the year. Before I even expect the kids to write informatively I model it whole group many, many times!

Then I mix up the sentences and have the students help me put them back in order.

There are worksheets in the pack so the students can put the sentences in order as well. These are really good for 1st grade students.

Now that the sentences are back in order, I show the kids how to turn the sentences into a paragraph. I start by putting the topic sentence in first and indenting it. Then I start to add the details sentences.

The kids will see that I do not have enough room on the line for a complete sentence. This is great for teaching kids that you sometimes have to finish a sentence on the next line especially when writing paragraphs.

I cut the sentences to make them fit properly in the pocket chart in paragraph form.

Then I transfer the pocket chart paragraph to paper so they can see how it looks written out.

Click on my pack or the worksheet to check it out on Teachers Pay Teachers. :)

Numbers 1 - 10 FREEBIE!

Looking for practice with the numbers 1 - 10 for the start of the school year! This pack has number writing practice, songs to go with each number, counting, and number identification. Hope you enjoy! Don't forget to provide feedback and become a follower to get notified of other freebies! :)

Click on the image above or worksheet below to download the FREEBIE!