I Have, Who Has Inferencing

 Here is another "I have, Who has" game to help your students practice making basic inferences.  Just like the rhyming game I posted here, this game creates a circle or loop, so the last question is answered by the first answer set on the table.  The students are encouraged to work together to determine the correct answers.  Directions are included! 

Click on the picture to download.

Thank you!

I Have, Who Has Rhyming

Hi all!  Here are two "I have, Who has" rhyming games that loop.  Since I work with small groups of children, I wanted a quick activity where they could practice blending their sounds and also reinforce their rhyming skills at the same time.  There are two games identified by the color of their borders, one yellow and the other pink, with eight cards each.  Each game creates a loop, so the last question is answered by the first answer set on the table.  The students are encouraged to work together to determine the correct answers.  Directions are included! 

Click on the picture to download.



Have you ever heard of LoopWriter?  It is a program you can buy/download that can create looping games just like these.  They also have a FREE "I have, Who has" rhyming game with pictures.  You can access that here.

Please let me know if you cannot access the file.  I have been having some difficulty with Google Docs lately. 

Thank you!

Reading and Writing Sight Words

End of the year assessment time is upon us.  So while I complete my assessments with one student from the small groups of kindergarten students I pull, the other students will be practicing the 50 sight words they need to know by the end of the year,. 

I fell in love with the "Popcorn Word Hunt" I saw a couple months ago on Mrs. Morrow's Kindergarten blog.  So just as she did, I filled a little bottle with popcorn kernels and filled them with the sight words printed on the little pieces of popcorn. 

If you click on the picture to the left, you can access the little pieces of popcorn for the bottle and the pages the students will write on. I will print the first two pages front-to-back.  The students will write the first 12 words they see and then read the words to a friend.  (Each piece of popcorn has two lines because my district uses Handwriting Without Tears.) 

Another activity the students will do is very similar, (but not quite as cute).  I created sight word cards with the HWT lines on each word.  I then printed and laminated them and will have the students select six cards.  They will practice writing each word three times and then choose one word to include in a sentence with an illustration.
You can click on the links below for the files:
Sight Word Cards with HWT Lines
Sight Word Writing

Thanks!

Elements of a Complete Sentence-Update

I just wanted to let you know that I updated my "Elements of a Complete Sentence" activity.  When playing with my students, I noticed that there were a few confusing cards (which I got rid of) and not enough phrases that did not contain a "what".

Here is the updated version.  The last page is new.

Thank you!!

~ Mrs. Mc  

Road Race-sight words, letters, sounds, etc...

A few years back I attended a wonderful conference where the presenter discussed the fact that an average learner needs about 35 exposures to a word for it to become automatic.  A struggling learner may need more than 50 exposures before a word is recognized, and may take as many as 150 exposures to master it automatically!!! 

Road Race (Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts, 2000) is one of the great resources she provided as a way to increase students' exposure to sight words.  Have you played this before?  The game board was quite bland, so I went ahead and jazzed it up a bit by adding some clip art.

I love this game and so do the kids!  The kids really like driving the little car around the game board.  (You can find little cars in the party favor section at Target.)  I especially love how the child goes through and reads the pile of words over and over again, therefore increasing their exposure to the words.  I also use this game for letter and letter-sound identification.  I haven't done so myself, but I am sure you could even use it for number identification or math facts!
~ Mrs. Mc

Elements of a Complete Sentence

Some of my 3^rd graders are having a difficult time determining what makes a sentence complete.  Here is a game I created to help them practice this.  After reading the phrase, they will be asked to think about whether or not they can answer “Who is in the sentence?" and “What is it doing?"  If they can answer both, then it is a complete sentence!

Click on either picture for the printables.

Sarah over at Sarah’s First Grade Snippets has a similar version to practice this!

~ Mrs. Mc

Sight Words-Barrel of Monkeys-BANANAS!!

The day after I saw Mrs. Jump’s Barrel of Monkeys math activity, I walked into one of the first grade classrooms I work in and what did I see?  A huge empty pretzel container!  The teacher didn’t have a use in mind for it, but she just “couldn’t throw it away” (I think I have that problem too), so she generously let me have it and I created my own Barrel of Monkeys for a sight word game I will call, “Bananas!” 

I went to our local Parent-Teacher Store and bought pre-cut monkeys and wrote sight words on their bellies.  I added bananas to some of the monkeys without words and then laminated them all. 
I made the small red Barrel of Monkeys for my little one to practice identifying upper and lower case letters.  (I found the red container in my recycling bin that same day, placed there by Mr. Mc!  What was he thinking?!  He doesn’t have the habit of “saving” things like I do!)

This game will be played just like the game, “Bang!” Or “Oops!”  The children will take turns picking a monkey out of the barrel and reading the words.  If they pick a monkey with a banana, they will need to say, “Bananas!” and put their monkeys back in the barrel.  The goal is to have as many monkeys as you can at the end of the game.  Anna over at Crazy for First Grade created her own version called, “Tweet!” and is giving it away for free because she is almost up to 100 followers!   

~  Mrs. Mc

CVC Blending

Happy Spring! 

Although it doesn’t feel much like Spring here in the Northeast!!  Snow is in the forecast for tomorrow night again…YUCK!!!

I wanted to share an activity I will be using with my K students to help them blend simple CVC words.  I am calling it, “Bloom Blending” because I found this bucket/vase/thingamajig at my grandmother’s house this weekend that says, “bloom!” right on it.  I added the word ‘blending” and decorated it with some ribbon and flowers I had leftover from some other craft projects.  (A simple pot could just as easily be transformed.)

The download includes 48 flowers, each with a simple VC or a CVC word on it.  The flowers with the white centers are easier to blend because the initial sounds are continuous.  The flowers with the yellow centers are more challenging because they mostly begin with stop consonants. 

Here is a sample of one of the pages.

You can download the entire document here.

Hope you enjoy!

~ Mrs. Mc

Tic-Tac-Toe

Who likes to play Tic-Tac-Toe?  I love to!  And I also love using this game as an instructional tool for students to practice forming their letters and to write the high frequency words!!  It is not only quick and easy, but the children LOVE it!!

I like to laminate the boards I use.  I have each student or team use a different colored Vis-à-Vis marker to write their letters/words.  Three letters/words of the same color in a row is the winner!  When rinsed under water, the Vis-a-Vis marker comes right off, then I can use it again and again!



Click here for a copy of the board I use.