Reading

Winter Animals and “The Mitten”

Children love to hear and act out “The Mitten” by Jan Brett. I love creating new things each year for my lessons and finding new ideas too! Below is a great puppet show based on one of my favorite stories, “The Mitten,” by Jan Brett. Check it out by clicking on this video!

This would also be fun to do at home with your own children. My plan is to show the above video to my students, so that they will be inspired and see that they can also help produce a video!

Here is a sweet little song about “The Mitten” that I found on YouTube. It is also a play that other Kindergarten students performed. I am amazed at how the internet can be so inspirational for new teaching methods. I can totally see my students participating in such a fun activity!

http://youtu.be/oUHW4GbJG30

I also love the name plates that these first grade students are wearing. It is a great way to bring in text and visuals.
http://youtu.be/7JFwZir8M8M

This is a Math Station Game called Off/ On Bears-you drop a given amount of bears and count how many land on and how many land off the mitten. This covers “decomposing” numbers and “ways to make__.” It is also a fun way to introduce addition.

Gingerbread “No Cook” Play-dough fun!

My good friend Bethany (and a great teacher!) inspired me to make my own play-dough infused with the wonderful smell of gingerbread! My own children loved playing with it and using cookie cutters to make thier own pretend cookies. I made three batches of the recipe below (for less than $10!) and placed a little gingerbread man into a little plastic container. I made one container for each of my students. This will my Christmas present to them! Along with a cookie cutter and the play-dough, I will wrapping it in a little plastic bag and tie with curly ribbon. I love being able to make something for my own children and my classroom kids at the same time!

This is a great way to incorporate team work, recipe reading and following, and responsibility for cleaning up. Reading and following a recipe is a great way to teach sequencing and the skills of “first, next, last,” which is always a skill needed for any reading lesson. So, not only is making play-dough fun, it is also educational!

GINGER BREAD PLAYDOUGH Recipe
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup salt
1 tbsp. of each: cinnamon, allspice & ginger (this is a nice dark brown)
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 cup water

Mix with a wooden spoon until well mixed. When it is too hard to mix, take out of the bowl and knead on the counter. For an extra special touch, add multicolor glitter. It makes it sparkle nicely! This is a “no-cook” recipe!

Here are some great ideas of how to wrap up and “gift” the play-dough:

littlebunnyfeet.blogspot.com

homeschoolblogger.com

meandmarielearning.blogspot.com

shabbychiccrafts.blogspot.com

First, we made sure that we had all the ingredients.

This is why you “need” to knead the dough. It looks pretty gross during mixing.

Here it is! Isn’t it nice! And it smells so good!

Here are the kids using cookie cutters to make their own things.

These are the cute and cheap containers I found at Wal-Mart. Instead of rolling the dough into a ball, I cut out the shape of a gingerbread man.

Now they are stacked and ready for labels. Click below to print the label which contains the recipe and directions. You can also edit and change it in Microsoft Word and add in your own name.

Gingerbread play-dough labels

The Gingerbread Man

Cover of Gingerbread Baby

I love Gingerbread cookies! I love to make them, eat them and read about them in with my students and own children. Today we read “Stop that Pickle” which was a twist on the traditional tale. The Gingerbread Baby is one of my favorites because it has a happy ending. Story comprehension is an important skill in school. By putting stories in order of events, by sequencing the characters, it helps kids to retell the story. This also helps with summarizing a story too. Here is a fun way to sequence the Gingerbread story. First I print out the large cards and glue to construction paper and laminate them. I pass them out to some of the students. Whoever doesn’t have a card gets a turn to help put the characters in order. Then, after reading many versions of the story, I have the students cut out the mini-picture cards and glue in the correct order onto a sentence strip. I let them draw the ending.

The Gingerbread MAN Story Sequence large cards

The Gingerbread MAN Story Sequence-mini student cards

Guided Reading Made Easy

The purpose of Guided Reading is to teach and re-teach Reading to a small group of students, based on their current level of learning. It also is an opportunity to teach new skills a little bit above thier learning level, in order to challenge them and teach new reading skills. For Kindergarten, some of the skills that can be taught are: beginning sounds of words, sight word discovery, letter discovery, noticing capital letters and end marks along with spaces between words, finding words with long or short vowels, counting words in sentences, identifying characters and setting, recalling what happened in each part of the story, retelling the story, contractions, silent e, word chunks, and many more.

Guided Reading takes much preparation. Gathering the materials and books before the lesson ensures that no time is wasted. Here is a simple lesson plan and all the materials needed for a guided reading group. The lesson attached to the link below can be used to teach letters and sounds along with sight word discovery. I plan to use this lesson for my students who do not yet know all of thier letters and sounds and know some sight words. This lesson will help them to gain confidence in reading as they touch and read the sentence.

Kindergarten Guided Reading with -am words -is-and-like

Guided Reading the Four Blocks Way: Frog and Toad Quick Notes (writingeverydayworks.wordpress.com)
Guided Reading as an Intervention for Dyslexia. NOT! (theeclecticreadingteacher.com)
Reading Groups (healycrew.wordpress.com)

Humpty Dumpty Rhyme Video’s

Research shows that when children learn how to rhyme, then they will be better readers. Also, some dyslexic children have difficulty with rhyming. Practicing rhymes and making them fun will encourage the brain to remember rhymes. Repetition is the key, so if a child cannot “find or notice” a rhyme right away, than the adult should try something new. Animations, just like t.v., computer interaction and movies, is one way to grab the brain’s attention. Here is a YouTube video of a cute little Humpty Dumpty. Enjoy!

Goldilocks and the Three Bears-video’s

I love reading all the many versions of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” It is fun to listen for similarities and differences between all the versions. There is even one featuring Santa Claus! Here are some of the many 3 Bears stories:

Watch the story live, here! This one is “Santa and the Three Bears”

Here is a Golilocks “Fractured Fairy Tale” version. It’s old, but cute!

This is a puppet show re-enactment of the story. I bet children in school or at home could do this too. Acting out stories is a great way to ensure comprehension.

“There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed A…” watch the video here!

There are so many version of this book. I am sure there are more, but these are some of my favorite versions. It is fun to talk with the kids about the similarities and differences between each story. I found all of these images at Google images. There are even more here than I thought there would be! How exciting!

The first video is one of the original readings. I love this video because it reads aloud the story and shows the words at the same time-and it is animated! Enjoy!

Here is the book to music!

Here is a cute little old lady reading “There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Leaf”

“The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle-watch the video now!

I had no idea that YouTube had so many of my favorite children’s books, but in video form. Last week, Mrs. Garner, an amazing teacher that I work with, sent me a link for a story on YouTube. Now I am going crazy finding new links for stories. Children today still love to hear stories, but when you put the story to music and add animations, it makes it even better!

Eric Carle is the author and illustrator of many amazing books. You have probably read or listened to at least one of his stories.

Here is a video of Eric Carle reading his newest book. Enjoy!

Eric talks about his book, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” here. Find out how his book was different when he first started writing it. He edited it and changed it to make it what it is today.

Here is an animated reading of the book, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”