Freebie Friday!

I'm starting a Freebie Friday to feature some great freebies that you might enjoy! I might not get to it every week, but I will try. Here are some great finds for Earth Day coming up on Tuesday!

There are a lot of great ideas in this "Earth Day Mini-Unit" by Rachelle Smith

 

A couple of great math games in this download by  Games 4 Learning

 

Cute ABC order activity by: More than Math by Mo

And this one is mine - cute Earth Day writing paper!

 

Comes in 2 versions, this one is for older kids, and the other version for younger kids has less lines and space to draw a picture. Prompts could be "Why I love the earth..." or "I can help the earth by..."

 

I hope you find something useful for Earth Day! Enjoy the freebies!

Wordless Wednesday - Tangrams

How do you use tangrams?? I use them to keep my 2 year old busy while the other kids and I do school. =)

Easter Egg Mosaic

I love this simple craft done with just white paper, construction paper, scissors and glue! We started with some strips of construction paper - I chose to use Eastery colors (green, blue, pink, purple, and  yellow).

 

Then we cut the strips into triangles.

 

 

I found a simple egg outline online and printed it out (you could also just draw it). Then we used glue to stick the triangles all over! That's it! This one was done by my 3 year old.

 

 

My 6 year old and I worked on this one together, so we made more of a pattern. 

 

I love how pretty these are, and they are great for a wide range of ages! 

 

 

April Giveaway Winner!!

Congratulations to Peggy Grobmyer, the winner of the $25 TpT Gift Card! It has been emailed to you! Thanks to everyone who entered, and don't forget you have another chance next month!

April Giveaway!

It's that time again! Each month this year I'm having a giveaway to thank you guys for being faithful followers! This month's winner will receive a $25 TpT gift certificate that can be used at any store on the site!

The winner will be announced on Tuesday, April 15! Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My First Writing Journal

This month I started a "My First Writing Journal" with my son who is in kindergarten. Writing was something I always dreaded in school, so I'd love to help him learn to enjoy writing from a young age. 

We started by letting him pick out his own journal at the store, he chose one with a Camaro on it. Each day I give him a small rectangle of paper with a prompt, which is the beginning of a sentence. He glues the prompt in his notebook, writes the date, copies the prompt and finishes the sentence however he wants! Right now I am just having him do that one sentence. As he feels more comfortable, we'll increase a little more.

I also have told him that I'm not worried about punctuation or spelling, because I just want him to practice getting his ideas on the paper. This has caused a little strife because he keeps asking me how to spell EVERYTHING! I have just been saying to say the word aloud, listen to the sounds, and spell it the best he can. We are still working on his response when I say this :-)

I know we all have our opinions about inventive spelling, and honestly I'm not a strong proponent for or against. Like most things in life I feel it's about balance. If I correct every single thing he does, he will be so uptight while trying to write that it won't be fun and he will be more worried about getting it "right" than getting his thoughts on paper. But there's also a place for learning correct spellings and punctuation along the way. (We do word sort activities every week, so he is learning and practicing common spelling rules too!)

So my tips for a child's first writing journal would be:
1. Get a fun notebook.
2. Use short prompts that they can copy.
3. Pictures with the prompts can also help at first, to give them somewhere to start from.
4. Don't correct spelling and punctuation, but make their ideas the focus of journal writing.


"When children use inventive spelling, they are in fact exercising their growing knowledge of phonemes, the letters of the alphabet, and their confidence in the alphabetic principle. A child's 'iz' for the conventional 'is' can be celebrated as quite a breakthrough!
It is the kind of error that shows you that the child is thinking independently and quite analytically about the sounds of words and the logic of spelling."

Burns, Griffin, and Snow (1999)

Wordless Wednesday - At the Zoo

 

 

 

What's your kids' favorite thing to see at the zoo? Mine were fascinated with ... this caterpillar!

Easter M&M's Fun!

What kid doesn't love playing with their food?? This week we had a lot of fun doing some activities with the Easter M&M candy, also called Bunny Mix. I got a bag of the fun size packs so we could open them as we needed.

First I put several packs together in a jar for our estimation activity.

 

Don't you just love those colors!?!

They guessed how many total they thought were in the jar, and which color had the most and least.

Next, we took them all out to sort and count them. Then we were able to finish up our estimation worksheet.

 

 

 

 

We also had fun graphing, measuring, and making patterns with our M&M's! Somewhere in there the kids couldn't take it anymore, so they each got to open a fresh pack and eat some. 

 



 

 

 

The last thing we did was make paint with our M&M's! We sorted them by colors into bowls, covered them with water, waited a few minutes, and had our very own M&M paint! 

 



 

 

The colors are not very bright, they are more like watercolors, but the kids loved watching the color melt off the candy, change the water and leave the chocolate part!

 





 

 I put all these activities together in a pack for sale on TpT! Click here if you'd like to try them out!

  

 

 

 

Colors!

 

After working with my preschooler on word families for many weeks, I decided it was time to mix it up a little, so I decided to put together a little something for her to learn and practice color words! It's a fun set of worksheets that let her trace, color, make, find, and draw 10 different color words! I also made a few extra review pages to use when we finished the individual colors! She loves cutting, gluing, and coloring, so these were perfect!

 

 

 

Kids love anything to do with colors, and these worksheets are great practice for learning to recognize color words! If you'd like to get this pack for your students, just click here to get to my TpT store!  

April Currently

I'm not a fan of April Fool's Day. I don't like practical jokes at all, so a whole day dedicated to them is just awful! I think it comes from me getting embarrassed so easily, and I get embarrassed for other people easily too! But I am glad it's April nevertheless! I'm joining up with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade for this month's Currently!

 

Listening - my little 2 year old has had a fever the past few days and all she wants to do is sit in my lap! Sweet....but a little hard to do with 3 other ones to take care of!

Loving - my husband was gone for almost 2 weeks on a scouting trip to the Middle East (we are trying to figure out where we are headed next) and it sure is nice to have him back!

Thinking - I've registered and picked my sessions for the TpT conference and I am so excited to meet everyone and hear the speakers!!

Wanting - The past 3 weeks we have been passing our sicky germs around and around and I'm ready for them to go away!

Needing - I finally have dental insurance for the first time in forever so I guess it's time to schedule an appointment!

Hours and last day - Well all the momma's know that my day is much longer than just 9-2, but those are the hours that we get school done in! My day is actually from around 6am to 8pm with the kids! As far as the last day....probably around the beginning of June, but we usually do stuff through the summer anyway. I like to have more of a relaxed schedule and go year round, so we end up doing about 4 days a week during the school year, but continue to work a few days a week during the summer! Then I don't feel bad if we need to take some time off during the year!