Word Sorts

I decided to start doing some spelling lessons with my kindergartener this week. I wasn't doing it before because he is such a good reader that I assumed he would be able to spell very well too. But then I got some great advice from another homeschool mom who said her child was the same, but as he got older he was an awful speller because they never worked on it. So I decided to start doing some!

I did a little research and decided that I wanted to use the word sort method, where basically each week he has a group of words that can be sorted into similar spelling patterns. We did very simple words this week (-ap, -am, and -at word families) to get our feet wet. I think it went really well! I'm still looking for other fun activities we can do with the words (suggestions welcome) but here's what we did this week:

Monday - Give him the paper with the words on it. He cut them out and sorted them into groups. I didn't tell him how to sort, I just let him figure it out. Then he read all the words. We put the words in a baggie to keep.

Tuesday - He sorted the words again. Then he traced and wrote each word.

Wednesday - He traced each word 3 times with different colors (we call it Rainbow Words) then cut them out and glued them in groups on a tri-folded piece of construction paper.

Thursday - Test! I read the words aloud as he wrote them down.

 

Week 1: Success!

Valentine's Day Forever Freebies

This weekend I'm involved in a Facebook Free-for-all, where you can get some great free resources for a limited time! (See previous post)

But I also wanted to get together a collection of Valentine's Day forever freebies that will be available all the time! Link up your favorite V-Day forever freebies below and be sure to browse around at all the other great resources!!

Here are two of mine:

Free Valentine's Day Heart Owl Hundreds Chart Mystery Picture

 

 

My Valentine Count & Color Book

 

 

January Facebook Free-for-all!

This weekend (Jan 25-27) I'm joining up with some amazing teachers to offer you some great free resources (many will be Valentine's Day themed)! Mostly elementary, but a few for middle and high school as well! We're doing a Facebook Free-for-all, so you can find all the links to the free products from our Facebook pages! The list of everyone participating is here. When you go to someone's page, look for the small tab that looks like the picture below.

Get ready for some great stuff!

Hope to see you there! <3<3<3<3<3<3

Synonym Memory Match

Sometimes I don't exactly get all the lesson plans detailed out like I should.  :-/

I used to be a very organized and plan ahead kind of person, and I still love to have things organized, but lately I find myself kind of making up lessons as we go along! Today we were learning about synonyms, so I did some introduction and practice on the white board (along with discussing the difference between a synonym and cinnamon!) Then I had the idea to play a game to practice! So we got out a piece of construction paper and I cut it into squares, then wrote some synonyms on them. We turned them upside down and played memory match! He kept wanting to find opposites....but eventually he got it. Games are so much more fun than worksheets!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Activities

I'm excited to teach about MLK Jr. this year to my kids! We're going to do lots of activities on Monday to learn about him. There's no sense in "taking a day off" for the holiday because my husband will still be working and I'll be at home all day with the kids anyway!

I created a mystery picture graph of MLK Jr. - find it here!

 

This activity is a little hard for my little ones, so I went searching for other fun activities we could do! We're going to read, Happy Birthday Martin Luther King by Jean Marzollo.

 

 

Then do these fun activities I found - a poster activity all about MLK Jr. It's a free download from Curriculum Castle!

 

 

 

And then we'll make something like this craft I found on Pinterest! 

I'd love to hear of fun things you do in your classroom to teach about/celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.!

January Winner!

Congratulations to Jennifer Boney-Reynolds - the winner of the $25 Gift Certificate to TpT! Thanks everyone for entering, and don't forget to be on the lookout for the next giveaway in February!

Have a great Tuesday!!

-Lauren

A Big Year of GIVEAWAYS!

This year I will be doing a giveaway each month! I asked my facebook followers what type of gift card they would like to see and some of the most popular answers were TpT, Target, Walmart, and Dollar Tree. I'm going to start out the year with a $25 TpT gift certificate giveaway!

 

 

There are several options to enter, try one or try them all! Good luck!

 I'll announce the winner here on Tuesday Jan 14 and will email him/her the gift certificate!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

January Currently

Happy New Year!!

We got back into the swing of things today with homeschool! Even though it's hard for the kids to get going sometimes, I always enjoy the routine that comes with school. I'm in the process of figuring out where to go next with my 3 yr. old. She has learned all the letters and their sounds and can write most of them. So, I think I'll do a little more with numbers and maybe start some word families and sight words. My son, who is now 6, picked up reading so easily that I feel like she is the first one I'm actually "teaching" how to read. We'll see how it goes! I know she's only 3, so I'm not going to push at all, just let her learn at her own pace.

I'm linking up again with Oh Boy 4th Grade for January's Currently! So here's what I'm currently doing...