Spring Ducks

Last week we read one of my favorite stories - Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey. The kids loved it too, as most of them gave it a 5 on our rating scale of 1-5! Our week consisted of all sorts of ducky things, including this word family center game I'm offering to you for free!

Print, laminate and cut out the cards. Place them in a bag or can and provide students with response sheet. They take turns drawing a card out of the bag and blending the sound with the ending "ack." If it makes a word, they record it on a duck. If not, they put the card back. The kiddos keep going until all their ducks have words. Here it is: 

Quack

We also made some cute ducky art --

The mama duck is made from a handprint, and the little ducklings are thumbprints. The kids then used a finger to paint a head and for mama duck and some decided to make heads for the ducklings too. After drying, they added the scene using crayons. 

These little ducklings were made from mini paper plates cut in half. You could have the kiddos paint or color the plates yellow first... mine covered them with yellow tissue paper. After that, they covered them with yellow cotton balls. I used regular cotton balls and shook them with yellow powder paint. Then I had the kids cut out a head, beak and feet from paper. I gave them a pattern for the head, but some like to do their own! I made Mr. and Mrs. Mallard. These ducks are inspired by a cute mallard I pinned: 

Source: 1.bp.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Another great pinterest find from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten 

Source: mrsriccaskindergarten.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

After reading Eric Carle's 10 Little Rubber Ducks, the kiddos practiced ordinal numbers using the activities described by Mrs. Ricca. Go see her post and download the free page for creating the class book. Here's a couple examples of pages from our class book: 

Hope you found something you think is quack-tastic! 
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Free Easter Unit!

I have just completed my Easter Math and Literacy Unit and I'm so excited to use it! 

It includes: addition and subtractiongraphingmeasuring teen numbersa dice-roll board gamesight wordssh/ch/wh wordsshort vowel soundswriting prompts
I hope you all can find something you want to use too! Remember, the best thanks you can give is to follow me, pin it or leave some love if you download!

Easter Unit

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Valentine freebie for your help!

I recently learned that I am moving from Kinder to 1st next year! I am so excited, but I have a lot of things to take care of for the transition. I was hoping for some help from my bloggy friends.

1. I can't exactly keep a blog name that implies I teach kinder when I move to first. I have been thinking about new names, and wiiiissh I could use Here We Grow - which is the name of my TN shop. HOWEVER, someone took this blog name back in 2005 and hasn't done anything with it. I thought I could just contact them and politely ask for them to relinquish the name, but there is no way to contact them via the blogspot page.

Any ideas on how to find this person? If not, any cute name ideas that match the the flower-theme I have going?

2. Please leave a comment with links to your favorite blogs for 1st grade! I'm ready to get inspired!

3. Anyone have experience with switching blog names? Is it better to create a new blog altogether and upload this one to it... or to switch the URL of this one? I don't want to lose my beloved followers in the process!

Thank you allll sooo much for your help. Here is a freebie in advance as a thank you for your advice!

If you haven't already, go out and buy yourself some cute little heart boxes from dollar section or store. These are from the 99 Cents store.

Fill the boxes with letter tiles that spell sight words or CVC words that your want your kiddos to practice. Have them open a box one at a time, unscramble the letters to spell the word and record the answer on the response sheet. If you get these exact boxes, you can use the sheet I'm using. If not, I included a blank sheet for you to program how you'd like. You could easily just write numbers on the boxes with a sharpie and write the numbers on the sheet to match.

Click here for the blank template!

Click here for the template I'm using

Sorry, someone told me once, but I cannot locate the email explaining how I link an image! I'll figure that out again one of these days. I hope you enjoy!

I'm Getting Married!

I've been MIA from blog world because I have been up to my elbows in wedding plans the past couple of weeks! You see, having been with my dear fiance, Greg, for 5 years, I am ready to seal the deal. Sooo, after he proposed on January 2nd, I have been full speed. The wedding will be May 5, at the fabulous Moon River Ranch.

Enough about me, here are a couple of winter-friendly ideas for you.

Everything Christmas is on sale right now - including Christmas cards that are simply winter-themed. I made CVC puzzles using some cards. I just wrote the words with a sharpie, laminated, and cut with fun scissors.

We actually did these before Christmas, but I think they make nice winter tree scenes. The children colored various sized trees in any way they desired using oil pastels and cut them out. They painted a sky using liquid water color on a sheet of water color paper. Then they arranged and glued on the trees. Last, they used a pencil eraser and white paint to add snow. Cute, huh?!

More Centers!

You know your centers are a success when centers time is so quiet! The children have been so engaged this week and are working together very nicely. Here are a couple of the things we are doing:

For this center, I took two large foam dice and covered each side with a sticky label. On the red, I put the two vowels we have been practicing, and the blue die has the consonants we have working on. I LOVE using dice because the precious ones love them! So, they roll a consonant, roll a vowel, and then choose a letter from the box on their page to make a word! Here is the page (available at my Teacher's Notebook shop)

Go get this recording sheet!

Another center we are doing is the tried and true playdough word tracing for our sight word centers. I ask mine to roll out the dough into "snakes" to use as lines when forming the words, as opposed to just smashing the dough down in any old way. This helps them see how the letter is formed. 

I'll keep 'em coming! 

Centers, Centers, Centers!

Centers time can be so much fun! Thank you, blogging teachers, for sharing such great centers ideas. I wanted to give back a little bit by sharing a couple of my favorite recent centers and adding a freebie! Here we grow....

Here's the freebie! It is a sight word graphing page. I have seen this idea other places... I know Moffat Girls has a very cute version, but I needed to make my own to meet the needs of my little learners! The children were so excited to see which word would "win!"

Download the graph by going to my shop on Teacher's notebook.

I printed these pattern block numbers from makinglearningfun.com and they were a hit! They were such a great way to begin our journey into number formation. For a follow up, visit my shop for the still free numbers formation book!

Meeting the TEKS:

Sight Word Center

110.11. English Language Arts and Reading

• K.3.D identify and read at least 25 high-frequency words from a commonly used list

Math Center

111.12 Mathematics

• K.1.C use numbers to describe how many objects are in a set (through 20) using verbal and symbolic descriptions

Labeling and All About Me

Last week our theme was All About Me - which lent itself perfectly to our writing concept, labeling.

Students created q-tip skeletons and labeled four major bones using a white colored pencil. 

They also colored, cut out and glued 4 major organs onto a body and labeled the organs. The right side of the lung is not glued down, so you can lift up and reveal the heart! Each organ has a kid-friendly description of its function. 

In centers, students practiced labeling (and, of course, inventive spelling) independently with laminated illustrations and wet erase markers. This was the favorite center last week. The kids loved writing on the pages with the markers and loved using the spray bottle of water for cleaning them off even more! I also loved how they were so fearless in using inventive spelling in this setting compared to writing with pencil and paper at the tables. 

Meeting the TEKS:

110.11 English Language Arts and Reading

• K.15 Students write expository and procedural or work-related texts to communicate ideas and information to specific audiences for specific purposes.
• K.18.A Use phonological knowledge to match sounds to letters