Middle Sounds Mayhem

We've been working on sounds for months now. And I mean sounds in words---beginning, middle and ending sounds. We've been working on making words, word family activities and other CVC word practice.

Middle sounds are well....sometimes not fun. Kiddos get those i's and e's all mixed up and it can be a little confusing.

We have a lot of fun with making words though and "tapping" out those sounds in CVC words.

One activity we do is make words with huge letter cards. I give each student a letter necklace and they build the word based on what I say. For example: if you have the letters to make -at go to the front. Change -at to mat, change mat to rat, etc.

We have a blast doing this. It gets them up and moving and is so much more interactive than the regular pocket chart making words that we do weekly. 

We have also been working on just hearing the middle sounds in words. Practicing those i's and e's and u's and o's......they have the /a/ sound down pat! :)

 We worked on a flip flap book to practice those pesky middle sounds. I created this little guy to help my students in my small groups. I really focused on my two middle groups that get the concept but just need that extra reinforcement. My lowest group hasn't quite tackled this yet...and may not for a while yet. 

They loved this and it was a great way for me to see who gets it, who struggles with a particular middle sound, and a great review as well. I think the best part was when the students realized it's a flip flap book! :)

You can grab it from my new Middle Sounds Mayhem pack. It's included in the 20% off sale until Monday!!

Whatever the Weather

What a whirlwind this week. It's been a tough one personally and I'm glad it's Friday.

We learned a lot about weather this week. First we began with a list of weather words. The kiddos had to tell me everything they knew and they knew quite a bit.

 

We then read the book Rain  and discussed how we get rain. And of course we did the shaving cream and food coloring experiment. 

 

We watched some fun weather videos. 




We also watched Sid the Science kid on pbskids.org about wind. And a video on rain.

To wrap up our weather unit today, we made a flip book about what we would need in different types of weather.

You can grab it by clicking on the picture. 

I'm also linking up with Primary Possibilities. It's time for a Spring Cleaning!! Everything in my TPT store is 20% until Monday, March 31st!

                              

If I Was a Dinosaur....

As promised from yesterday's post, I'm back with pictures from my kiddos dinosaur writing. We wrote a lot about dinosaurs the last two weeks but one of our favorite writings was when they talked about what they would do if they were a dinosaur.

I made a huge chart (no picture sorry) that said If I was a dinosaur.....and had boxes that said live, eat, look, etc.

I modeled first by saying..if I was a dinosaur I would be green, have spikes, 4 legs. I would live near the water and eat fish. 

Then I modeled how to follow what we wrote and create my picture. After, I modeled how to write each sentence.

The kiddos did great!! 

 If I was a dinosaur, I will live in the woods. I will be green.

 If I was a dinosaur, I would eat fish and I would eat another dinosaur. I go to the woods. I would be red. 

 If I was a dinosaur, I would be purple. I would have nine legs. (Whoa!)

 If I was a dinosaur, I would be yellow. I would have four legs. I would have four teeth. I would have sharp teeth. (She finished on the back---check out those teeth!)

 How cute!!!

 (This kid can spell and read anything you give him---so everything is spelled correctly. No inventive spelling here!)  He would live by the playground and be heavy!

I created a little sheet for you. Click on the picture to grab it!

 

 

More than Five for Sunday

Today is the first day I've picked up the computer since last Wednesday. Way behind....here's a look back at the fun we had last week!

A month or two ago, our principal told us we had $300 to spend in our classroom, so pick out what you want. We got our stuff in this week, so we had lots of fun playing and learning how to use our new items!

I never have more than 6 kiddos in small groups--so we got 6 of these magic boards. Love them!! 

We go also are still working on writing our numbers, so these dry erase numbers 0-20 are perfect practice!

 

Rhyming is always tricky so this magnetic rhyming activity is great review and extra practice. (I also got this in beginning sounds as well!)

 

This week we also wrote on our tables to practice number writing. The small group that did this was in total shock that I let them write on the table. But they had fun---that's what matters.

 

 

One of my kiddos was practicing his nonsense/real word sort using the basketball madness freebie. He had fun with this.

 Source

I do my best to differentiate morning work (again--I try my best! LOL) but this little one was practicing her beginning sounds as a review. She of course wanted to rush and not color neatly but we're still working on that.

 

 Source

Building shapes is always hard for some---so I bought some new play dough and we had a quick review before lunch. 

 

And we finished up dinosaurs this week---just remembered I forgot to take pictures of their writing!! We wrote about If I was a dinosaur.....(what would I look like, eat, where would I live, etc.) Great writing! I'll take pictures on Monday and post.

We did our cookie fossil activity!

 

It was a long, busy, but very fun week. Now off to do lesson planning (ugh--least favorite part!). 

Oh my dear friend Irene from Learning With Mrs. Leeby has reached 900 followers!! Go check out her awesome giveaway!

St. Patrick's Day Fun & A Winner!!!

Yesterday I was trying to prep a snack for the kiddos today. I wanted it to be simple, *cheap*, and fun! 

I found these on Pinterest. 
Seriously....how cute. Here's the source.

 

So I tried it. LOL. Not as pretty as in the picture but fun and good!

 Getting started!!

 Don't worry--all that leftover dough was cooked too!

Yummy!


I took them to work and my TA bought green juice. So this afternoon, we took a walk to see if we could find Pat (the leprechaun) and came back to this....

It was fun. They loved it...especially the chairs knocked over and the items left for them.


Did you enter the giveaway?? Here's the winner!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway