Although Sonlight doesn’t include sight word work in its kindergarten curriculum, kindergarten is a GREAT time for your kids to start learning sight words.
Our sight word series is FUN! We have a craft, or other hands-on work for each word we cover. We also use a “cumulative” approach–your kids will not struggle reading the words associated with each sight word. We use simple words that they can sound out; and teach high frequency nouns that they will learn simply from “seeing” the word with a picture.
Are you ready to dive in?! Your students will be so proud of all they will be able to read! You can begin here:
We are kicking off our school year today with a FLASH FREEBIE for you! If you are teaching Pre-Schoolers or Kindergarteners, you are going to LOVE these fun, self-exploration crafts.
We will be using the “This is Me” and “My Name Begins With” on the first two pages of our Kindergarten LA notebooks. Our Kindergarten Math notebook will begin with “My Birthday is On”, “My Hand” and “Is My Foot a Foot.”
If you want to use the pages in your Interactive Notebooks, like we are doing, just scale them to 85% , trim the excess white space and glue ’em in :).
It will be free for the next 6 hours and then half-off the rest of the day!
The growing bundle is here! It includes all of the letters completed (A to X) and an editable cover page for your interactive notebooks. Letters Y and Z will be added in September.
If you haven’t downloaded your free sample {Letter M}, you can get it here. There is also a tutorial that will help you put it all together.
You are going to love the strong phonics foundation that MY FIRST A to Z INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOK helps you provide your students. Your students will not only enjoy building each page and making it “theirs” by adding color and their creativity, but they will also love going back and reviewing their completed pages and therefore reinforcing what they have learned.
Interactive notebooks help you cut the clutter in your classroom. When your students practice and reflect on phonics and the alphabet in one location, it allows them to be organized. You won’t lose or misplace their work, and they will benefit from the chance to reflect (and interact with) all they learn.
This bundle will be listed at half-off through Wednesday!
Actually, we ended up with 3 notebooks filled with A to Z work! They are going to be such a GREAT starting point for kindergarten. I know you will love using them with your students!
For each letter your students will practice:
Correct letter formation (uppercase and lowercase writing)
Letter recognition
Sorting lowercase and uppercase
Beginning sounds (including long and short sounds for each vowel as well as hard and soft sounds for C and G).
Using high frequency vocabulary that begins with the target letter
ABC order up to the target letter
Word building with lowercase and uppercase letter matching
Order and sequence
Visual discrimination (identifying items that begin with the correct sound; are found in a particular place; are a particular size or shape; or simply do not belong).
Using stickers to accomplish simple beginning target letter sound tasks
Here is how we put our notebook together. We’ll use the printables for Letter M (download a free copy of these printables here).
Every pack is formatted similarly to Letter M. Certain pages work best on plain paper, and others on colored. I have noted our preferences on each sheet, but you are welcome to use colored paper, or not.
CAPITAL M: After printing this section, pages 2-3, 5-8 (including the Letter M Headers and TOC) cut out each part:
SHEET 1: If you plan on using only the Letter M pack, the capital letter Alphabet Poster will be the first page in your notebook. Trim the edges to fit, and glue the outside edge of this sheet to your notebook.
If you plan on completing all 26 weeks, glue both blank Alphabet Posters (from the Letter A pack) inside the back cover of the first notebook and refer back to it each week you add a new letter.
SHEET 2: (pages 6-7 in the pack)To introduce Letter M we will use a Correct Letter Formation flap and a Letter Recognition frame. Here it is ready to use:
SHEETS 3 and 4: (pages 7-8 in the pack) There are two options for this sheet. We like to practice building the letter, with colored shapes similar to the Handwriting Without Tears wood pieces. Then practice finding the capital again, before we work on correctly writing it. So, our pages look like this:
This set-up includes the Letter M sheet from Step by Step Correct Letter Formation and letter building tiles and the “I can build it” frame (soon to be published). You can also set SHEET 3 up without the extras like this:
The combined set-up above, for students who do not need the extra practice of correctly forming the letter, includes pieces from our SHEET 5:
The Capital M section is complete. Lowercase M is a mirror of this section. We’ll use the figure from the TOC and pages 4, 5, and 8-10:
SHEETS 6-10: Here is the notebook ready to use (with the letter building activities included):
The alternative SHEET 8, using only the components from My First Interactive Notebook-Letter M looks like this:
Now for some FUN! On the next sheet your students will compare the capital and lowercase letters by sorting and spinning/stamping them.
SHEET 11: Follow the directions on page 12 to cut out the letter sorting pieces. The Letter Sorting page will be different for each letter (to reinforce the beginning sound each letter makes–for M we chose “mail” and “mailbox”). But, you will always glue the pieces to make a sorting pocket. For this sheet, be sure to cut the top of the mailboxes on the line indicated and glue the top, around the sides, the kidlette, and bottom of the mailbox to your notebook. Do not glue the middle of the mailbox–this is your sorting pocket.
You will also need the “I can” statements for this sheet (page 11) and the spinner (page 13) and stamp frame (page 14). [These are located on different pages so you can alternate colors throughout the your notebook without double-printing individual pages.]
Here is SHEET 11 ready to use:
SHEET 12: Now we’ll work on the SOUND of M. Cut the petal book and header from page 13 and the remaining pieces from page 14 (plus the I CAN statements associated with these tasks from page 11). Your students should color the beginning sound pictures before cutting and pasting them. The petal book is easy to assemble. Simply fold inward along the dotted lines, until it looks like a square (or square-ish :). Glue the back of the petal book into your notebook.
Your page will look like this:
SHEET 13: (see above) This is our ABC Order sheet (pages 15-17, plus the I CAN statement from page 11 and the letter houses from page 8). Use color, or white paper, for the ABC Orders–I like to vary it from letter to letter.
Just like the Letter Sorting, the ABC Order will be specific to the letter you are working on. For Letter M we chose “map.” Additionally, the ABC Order will only include letters that precede the target letter–so this week we are reviewing A-M. Your students will only need to put the last 3 letters in order each week. If you’d like these sheets with all the letters A-M for your students to sort, you can find them here (coming soon!).
SHEETS 14-23: (pages 18-27) This section requires very little prep on your part. Most sheets will require you to simply trim the excess white space around the activity frame. The Find and Build sheet (page 19) and Order/Sequence sheet (page 20) are the only ones that will require you to cut out other pieces. It is also up to you what order you have your students complete this section. Here is how we set ours up:
These last two sheets we will use stickers to complete the activities.
Enter the giveaway on Teacher’s Notebook and win a FREE copy of Kindergarten Jedi Centers! Three winners will be chosen on Monday, 1 May. Hope you are one of them!
We had some fun this week celebrating sping and looking forward to Easter. My kids love it when we celebrate with a photo booth (Krista’s props make them especially fun) and I love it when we work on their writing skills :). So, I put together some fun spring writing activities that you can use as crafts, as a display, or in a photo booth like we did.
1. Our Easter is Filled With—Why is Easter special? How do you celebrate it? Your students will write and draw about their Easter traditions using this brainstorming writing prompt. They will put each idea on a separate egg and then place it into their Easter basket.
2. In the Spring (Five Senses)—Using their five senses and descriptive words, your students will write about spring. Their responses can then be used to write a spring cinquain. Four colors of flowers are included.
3. Spring Cinquain—Your students will use the descriptive phrases and action words they came up with for “In the Spring” to write a Cinquain (a short, unrhymed 5 line poem of 22 syllables). Cinquain poster and instructions are included.
4. Rain is a Blessing—Your students will ponder HOW (what if it did not rain), WHY, and to WHOM rain is a blessing in this photo booth writing craft. This also a fun writing craft to use after discussing the water cycle.
Grab this set of PHOTO BOOTH WRITING PROMPTS for half-off today only!
We have been working on correct letter and number formation this year and our clipart now ready to be incorporated into your classroom! It applies the instructional methods developed by Handwriting without Tears. Your students will always “begin at the smiley face.” I’ve added directional arrows and numbers to help your little learners navigate each letter (and number). There is also a visual “Stop”.
And on their matching NUMBERS 0-20 PLAY DOUGH MATS. This set includes play dough mats with correct number formation, ten frame, tally marks and number word for 0-10; and correct number formation, twenty frame, take away from 20, and number word for numbers 11-20.
Finally, I’ve updated our ALPHABET PLAY DOUGH MATS. They are filled with independent, hands-on learning! And are perfect to use with your Letter of the Week program. Your students will not only be working on their fine motor skills, they will also learn the correct letter formation of both uppercase and lowercase letters and their sounds. They will count (1-12) objects that begin with the target sound and exercise their creativity on every page.
I’ve added simple, visual directions to help your students use these sheets independently.
Now, for the best news!!! They are ALL 50% off today and tomorrow! Hope you all enjoy these new, and newly revised products. Happy Teaching!
PS. Student Number Sense Cards are in the works! Similar to our Star Wars set; perfect for everyday use!
New today! A hands-on, math and literacy pack that will teach your students about Leap Year and the Number Four. This is a differentiated pack of Print-n-Go worksheets for Kindergarteners and First Graders.
It includes a survey of math sheets similar to those in a variety of PreparilliPress products. And great literacy activities from sight word practice to rhyming.
My favorite part of this pack is My Happy Leap Day Birthday interactive reader. It will help your students understand what it would be like to have a birthday on leap day.
We are going to have fun celebrating LEAP DAY on Monday! Hope you do, too.
Winter Pattern Play is such a FUN learning tool! You are going to LOVE it! It is not your average pattern-teaching resource. Instead, it combines pattern identification and skills your students should be mastering (identification of phonemes–beginning and ending letter sounds & blends; one-to-one correspondence; 2-D shapes; colors and skip counting).
Your students will begin learning various patterns (AB, AAB, AABB, ABB, ABC) using the tiles and print-n-teach worksheets.
Then, you’ll combine your students’ pattern identification skills with a phonemic review.
They will listen for beginning and ending letter sounds and blends–like “ch”, “cl”, “ft”, “pr”, “rd”, “sc”, “sl”, “sn”, “st”, “sw”, “th”, and “tr”.
Winter Pattern Play includes a section all about this season’s holidays–complete with pattern and phoneme identification.
Finally, you’ll develop your students patterning skills with 2-dimensional shape identification and drawing; color patterning; one-to-one correspondence using dice and basic skip counting (by evens/2s, odds, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 10s).
Our sight word series is FUN! We have a craft, or other hands-on work for each word we cover. We also use a “cumulative” approach–your kids will not struggle reading the words associated with each sight word. We use simple words that they can sound out; and teach high frequency nouns that they will learn simply from “seeing” the word with a picture.
Actually, we ended up with 3 notebooks filled with A to Z work! They are going to be such a GREAT starting point for kindergarten. I know you will love using them with your students!
These last two sheets we will use stickers to complete the activities.
