Beginning Blends: A quick and fun review

These past few weeks we have been reviewing our beginning blends to maintain our reading base from last year. We have been using our Sing Spell Read and Write curriculum as well as some other fine resources. I used the flash cards as stations to get my son thinking and remembering those blends.The first card of the flashcard set from Kizclub works very well for writing. I laminated my cards so I can reuse them and pass them down to the little pork chop who is still learning his alphabet! Allowing your little ones several methods for taking in this knowledge will give them the wings they need  to soar in reading and in learning all together. I have dug around the Internet and found some really great sources to share  with you and it is my hope that you will share what works great for you guys in the comment section below.

• Carl's Corner- This site has it all. If you want to one stop shop for reading stuff you can do that here. All of the content has been compiled by a wonderful teacher and poet. On the Blends Boulevard you have everything you need to teach blends from worksheets to dominoes and an assessment. Makes you wonder why I even plan to list anything else, huh! 
• Confessions of a Homeschooler- Is there anything Erica can't do? I am not sure, but she has a few great printables for blends. One being the blends latter that will allow you to help your child learn the blends quickly going from letter to letter, blending the first two sounds and the other is a set of worksheets. I wouldn't use these as a stand alone for teaching but definitely for enrichment to another set of instruction. 
• Free Phonics Worksheets- The creators of Rock N' Learn have put together a set of worksheets that could easily be used to teach not only beginning blends but vowel clusters and more. In a sequence that would get kids reading fast and know why the letters sound the way they do without a lot of senseless memorizing. 
• Kiz Club - They have a few activities that would work great in conjunction with a blending program from flashcards to matching activities. It's worth a look. 
• This and That - A great blog with lots of ideas for home grown activities that could work as a stand alone method for learning. There are folder games and crafting a plenty on this wonderful site!
• Quirky Momma - They might call them selves quirky but I call them clever with their wonderful use of low cost materials to jump start fun learning like their use of multi color paint chips for teaching word families and blends. 

A Pair of Socks: A story time connection

Stop! Don't throw out all those cute tiny socks that have been out grown by your little cuties. I saved a few of mine and we are using them for our story time connection with the book A Pair of Socks by Stuart J. Murphy. The story is fairly short in length but is long on ideas for learning connections from learning to count by two's to color matching and more.
         After our book, we looked for rhyming words and highlighted them.

Then I took a small bin and put the little socks in there for the kids to match up.

 They loved matching the colors and patterns and then clipping them together with clothespins. I then opened up the opportunity for them to color their own pair of socks.

 For those that like dictation and copywork, I found this wonderful poem:

"Two" by Cynthia Cappetta

Two hands, two feet, two eyes, two knees— You have a pair of each of these.

Mittens, socks, gloves, and shoes, These things also come in twos.

Children born in pairs have a special name. Some twins look different, and some look the same. 

Extensions and links:

*I found some really great extensions from Weekly Reader(do you remember them from when you were young? I do, and they've gone digital)-"What is a Pair" is a great edition of that reader where I found the above poem and other great activities.

*Mathstart also had great ideas for hands on learning geared for kids three and up. 

*Laugh, Paint, Create had a great blog post about making a sock collage. It's a great idea that can foster scissor and glueing skills.  

Vowel Reveiw

We are reviewing our short vowel sounds this week and had a great time having both kids doing a sorting game with the magnets. I just printed out these super cute owls from a great blog called First Grade Owls  and laminated them. Then put them up on the magnet board and gave the kids the basket of magnets and let them start sorting. It sort of grew from there, and they decided to start making word family words. I guess I was just there to start their engines! This was something so simple and can be transformed into what ever phonics directions you want.

D.E.A.R.s Program

"What the heck is D.E.AR.s ?", my husband asked me the other day...and I responded that it stands for drop everything and read. This year we are going to have this as a part of our little school. It is an opportunity for the kids to do just as it says, drop everything and read. All the books will be available as well as a selection of books from the Texas Library Association. They have a great selection of books that are leveled for children from the very young all the way up to adult. This year we will be reading the 2x2's and the Bluebonnets. I know other homeschoolers might be interested in voting for the bluebonnet books and should contact their local library. Homeschoolers can vote there and if you are as lucky as we are, they might even have a kid version of book club where they can discuss books and talk about what they liked and didn't like about them. If you don't live in the lone star state at all, you can still read the books and maybe even start your own book club! Either way, I think taking 20 minutes to just read can enrich anyone young or old.

Hang man....ok not really.

In my pursuit to find new ways to learn to read and spell new words I remembered an old standby from when I was in grade school. I played hang man and was very good at it. I always figured Jacob was too young for this game, but I revamped it and now it is just right.

1. I pulled out our word sticks that I made  a while back, a basket of letter magnets, and a dry erase marker eraser set. 

    2. You pull a word and then make lines for all the letters in the word and put all the magnets on the board. As they guess letters to build the words, you build the stick man following the traditional rules. I didn't make the man "hang" because I am not ready to explain to my young ones why anyone person would want to make a person do that. 

Anyway, Jacob loved the game and it was a great way to do spelling and word memory with out pain. 

Centers!

We started off the day today with centers. Its always fun to mix things up and not start the day as a worksheet factory.

1. Reading fun with racing cars:  I went to the activity section of Making Learning Fun and loved the large assortment of stuff available. I would even call it a printables "wonderland". I found this race car activity that was very exciting and engaging to do. I tossed all the cards in a basket and then put out markers and the booklet that comes with it. It took no instruction for my child to figure out what to do. He read the cards and matched the correct car. Afterwords, he then colored the booklet with no problem. This is a great center for independent learning.

2. Counting Fish: I came up with this when Benji started to try to count past ten on his own. I found this is great for fine motor skills and counting and more. I just drew a simple fish bowl with marker on some cardstock and then gave him a sheet of small fish stickers and let him count as he placed them in the bowl.

3. Fish Addition (adding two): This is a super simple center. I just used laminated fish. I wrote the math sentence on one fish and the answer on the other fish and set them in piles. I gave unifix cubes as counters to help make the sentence. Just let the child do the addition and match the fish.

4. Chicka Chicka Sight Words: This activity also came from Making Learning Fun.
  I tossed the word cards into the basket along with some letter tiles.

I then had my child match up the tiles with the word on the cards provided.

Don't have letter tiles? No problem, just let your child use a dry erase marker on laminated cards. Or you can make these letters and just cut them into square tiles rather than circles.

Want to focus on vowels? You can have your child do a vowel sort before making their words
I found this card at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Looking for more? just check out the links from todays posts, they are loaded with tons of fun and easy educational ideas.

Animal Classification: Enrichment and Extensions

We have been working very steadily on our animal classification and adding to our bulletin board(which is really the bi-fold doors to the closet)

Up to now we have learned

• the difference between living and non living things
• kingdoms of living things
• vertibrates and invertabrates and how to tell the difference. 
• we have also subdivided the animal kingdom into mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish

At this point we are having fun adding extensions to our learning with lots of fun activities.

We played with puzzles to learn all about the different animals

We played folder games. The top folder games I made from Primary Partners and the bottom one came from File Folder Fun.

These were the selections pulled for silent/independent reading.

We sang Kindermusic songs about the creatures in our backyard

We played with animals and their habitats

We sorted mini animals into their different groups

We did our math using a barrel of monkeys(besides who says you have to count beans!)

We played fish games. (These came from Nana!)

We read the book Froggy gets Dressed. (The boys love these books, they are simple and sweet and fun)

We used the materials from Kizclub to add to our reading experience.

These activities were so fun and my kids really enjoyed them. It was also a nice way to step away from worksheets for the day.

I like to look for rainbows.....

This year for Sunday school/primary, one of the songs the kids are learning to sing is called "When I Am Baptized". The song is as follows:

I like to look for rainbows when ever there is rain

and ponder on the beauty of an earth made clean again.

CHORUS:

I want my life to be as clean as Earth right after rain

I want to be the best I can,

and live with God again.

I know when I am baptized my wrongs are washed away,

and I can be forgiven and improve myself each day.

CHORUS

I love the sentiment of the rainbow and how just like it was God's promise to Noah, it can be a promise unto us that if we can be clean and good "like earth right after rain" that we can live with God again. 



With this song in my heart I decided to make this the theme of today's learning.

I got a wonderful flip chart from sugardoodle. I used the one by Jolly Jen, but both of them work and both are filled with beautiful pictures to help your child learn the song.

We will sing along with this wonderful version I found on youtube:


We will read two books about rainbows:

We will hunt for letter Rr's *

We will sort upper and lower case Rr's*

We will line up the rainbows largest to smallest, smallest to largest and learn 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.*

We will learn how to spell the word rainbow*

We will color the number 24 Car from Nascar which is traditionally in a rainbow theme.

We will do-a-dot the letter R*

We will also graph rainbows*

We will also have centers set up so they can find how many different ways they can make rainbows using different materials.

• little vehicle counters
• buttons
• bottle caps
• play food like ice cream and the felt fruits and veggies
• beads
• legos
• linking cubes

We will also have this lesson on preparing to be baptized. I don't do a lot of "theme" lesson days, but this one left an impression on me that we should do this lesson at this time.

*All of these activities can be found at confessions of a homeschooler

What's in the book bin this month?

March Book Bin: This month I chose books about spring time, bugs and animals and other creatures. I kept some standbys that my kids love like Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, The Gummy Counting Book and the lovable story Who will be my friend.

What are your kids reading this month?

The Ugly Duckling- A literature Lesson

For literature we read the story of The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Anderson. This story is very dear to me and am so glad my children loved it too. I love how my kids understood that everyone needs love and that everyone is special.


We read the story together(I found some really neat printable visual aids here)
After the story we did a story map, drawing pictures of what happened at the beginning, middle and end.

We learned about grammer. I chopped up some sentences and then had the children put the words into the right order with the sentence starting with a capital letter and ending with a period.

We made a "literature word wall". We picked words from the story and put them on to a folder. And then practiced writing them. We will continue to add new words with each story we read.

Other activities we did:

• play duck, duck goose
• sing the song "six little ducks"
• we talked about feelings and about how it isn't ok to tease others.