Ferociously Good Fun with Tyrannosaurus Rex and Friends

I'd like to think I'm an innovative teacher, constantly learning new things and sharing them with the children I get to see, but recently I realized something dreadful.  I had sunk into a dinosaur rut!

Perhaps you've been there too - I have so many favorite dinosaur books that I stopped paying attention to new ones.  Between Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp, all the wonderful dinosaur books by Bernard Most, Bones, Bones, Bones, and Ten Terrible Dinosaurs, who had time for more?

Thank goodness I spent a little time recently rediscovering the dinosaur books available!  Now I have some new favorites to share, just in time for my dinosaur theme. 

Dancing with the Dinosaurs by Jane Clarke - so cute!  Who would have expected all the dinosaurs to have moves like these?  The ending shouldn't have taken me by surprise, but it did - and when I read it to my kiddos they squealed with joy.  I won't spoil it for you - go read it!

Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman.  I know, I'm really behind, the underpants series has been around for a while.  I have no excuse.  I do wish dinosaurs and cavemen weren't depicted together, but the way the children enjoy this one more than makes up for it.

Dinosaur vs. the Library (and all kinds of other things) by Bob Shea.  If this doesn't get your junior paleontologists excited, I don't know what will.  Simple pictures, lots of roaring, and an adorable dinosaur that every 3 or 4 year old will imagine being.  Prepare yourself for lots of roaring!

Chalk by Bill Thomson. OH MY GOODNESS!  This is a phenomenal book, as is Fossil, also by Bill Thomson.  The illustrations show extreme perspectives in a super realistic way, and tell the whole story in this wordless book.  You'll want to use this with pre-readers, but even adults will enjoy this gem.  I recently paired it with The Book With No Pictures to teach reading skills to kindergarten and first grade students.

I started by showing the children The Book With No Pictures, and enough of them had seen it before to know that it's a very funny book - of course they wanted me to read it to them!  Of course I obliged!  (Is there anything better than reading to kids?!)  One of the magical things about this book is the use of font size, color and type to show you how to read it.  Even children who aren't comfortable readers yet can analyze the way the text looks.  Big font = big voice.  Different colors?  Must mean different voices!  Text about a robot monkey is written in a very robot like font - so we read it with robot voices.  I love how expressive the children can be as we reread parts of the book with the font choices in mind!

Late in the book it uses the word "preposterous".  I like to reread that page, and then ask the children what they think that word means.  Have they ever heard it before?  No (at least so far no-one has), yet they all tell me more or less correctly what it means.  This opens up a discussion of context clues, and how good readers can figure out what words mean!

After reading The Book With No Pictures, we read a book with no words: Chalk.  This is important to me because at this age so many children realize the importance of print that they don't necessarily want to read the pictures - but it is such a useful part of decoding text for them!  As a reading teacher I've often told students to look at the pictures for clues, but I don't model doing that often enough, and I think many children begin to think of it as "how a baby reads", or not "real" reading.  By taking away all words, readers get to focus on the pictures and on how they tell a story, creating meaning and telling the narrative.  What great skills!

 It makes sense to follow up our reading lessons with some reading practice, so we work on dinosaur sight word mystery pictures.  Click on the picture and check out this pre-primer one.

My preschool and early kindergarten students also enjoy working on dinosaur words with this word building activity.  With 14 pages of dinosaur words to build, this is a fun, hands on center for letter learners - I slip the pages into sheet protectors (easier than laminating!) and put out our 1" letter tiles.  Ta-da! Instant literacy station!

If you read my blog very often, you know I like to include a free resource in my posts - and here's a free counting, sequencing, and addition activity.  Click the picture to go to my TeachersPayTeachers store and download it - and if you like it, please take a moment to leave feedback so I know to keep offering freebies!

There are a lot of other dinosaur learning activities in my TeachersPayTeachers store - I hope you'll stop by and check it out when you're prepping your dinosaur unit.  Until then, thanks for stopping by!

Paula

14 of the best ways to get your students to practice spelling

This week a friend mentioned how painful it is to do spelling homework with her daughter.  She's tried a lot of things: writing the words, putting the words in sentences, flashcards, but nothing seems to help, and it's torture for both of them.  Sound familiar?  Well, I'm here to tell you that spelling practice does not have to be painful!  You can also use these fun ideas to practice sight words, math facts, or anything that needs to be memorized. 

1.  Write those words!  "Yeah, done that, hate it," you say?  I bet you weren't writing them in a layer of sprinkles on a cookie sheet!  How about writing them in chocolate sauce or honey on a plate?  (If When you spell each word correctly, you get to lick your finger.)  How about a layer or salt or flour on a tray?  Or using tic tac candies to make each word?  Once you start thinking about it, you'll come up with a lot of fun ways to practice!

2.  Text them.  Tell me your elementary age kiddos don't want to use their phones - or yours!  Have them sit with you while you're cooking dinner/ grading papers/ reading a book, and let them type and text those sight words to you or a family member.  Limited text plan?  Try emailing them!

3.  Learn the sign language alphabet and have your child finger spell their spelling words.  Here's a cute video to help you learn!

4.  Use magnetic letters to make the words on your refrigerator, a cookie sheet, the side of a filing cabinet... so many options!

5.  Write the words in shaving cream.  My kiddos LOVED writing and drawing in shaving cream, so we always did this to clean the tables in our classroom.  Simply spray a blob of foam on the table, then let the children smooth it out on the table top, then write in the it.  A quick hand swipe erases and resets the foam for the next word.  When you're done, your table top will be clean, the room will smell great, and that tricky spelling practice will be done!  (Your child may get some on her clothes, but it's basically soap, so it washes out beautifully.)

6.  Let your child write the spelling word with special writing tools.  Try markers, crayons, colored pens, that special pen on daddy's desk, scented markers... whatever it takes to make it fun.  Can your child write each word in all the rainbow colors?  (Yeah, you just got him to write each word 7 times!)  You can grab this rainbow writing page in my TeachersPayTeachers store, or just write them on regular paper.

7.  Is your child super active, or does he want to live in the backyard after school?  You hate to squash that healthy energy with homework, but it has to get done.  If you have a trampoline, try having your child write each word in big letters on  index cards, and hang them around the trampoline.  She can then jump and spell each word.  No trampoline?  Use sidewalk chalk to write the letters on the pavement, and jump from letter to letter to spell the words.

8.  Invest in a set of letter stamps and a pretty stamp pad, and have your child stamp out the letters.  For many children the lure of playing with rubber stamps will motivate them.  Can't afford rubber stamps?  How about alphabet cookies or pasta?  Or even a set of letters cut from junk mail or magazines?

9.  Grab an old game of Twister out of your cupboard, or at a garage sale, and write the letters on the colorful spots.  There are 24 spots on the game board, so put x, y and z together on the last spot, and then jump from spot to spot to spell the words.  Can't get a Twister game board?  Try making one on poster board!

10.  Play spelling tic tac toe, bingo, or dots, or whatever games your child enjoys, using a spelling word to mark your space.  Your child will read and write the words over and over in each game, enjoy some fun time playing with you, and you'll both agree spelling practice has never been so much fun!

11.  Write letters on toy blocks and build your words.

12.   Paint the words, or make the letters from play dough and spell them out - this feels a lot more like play, and a lot less like work!

13.  Use bath crayons and write in the tub.  If your child loves a long soak in the tub, washable bath tub crayons are the thing for you!  You can also write on the tub in shaving cream, just like I suggested in item #5 - and now your child is practicing spelling words and CLEANING THE TUB!

14.  Write on pretty paper.  Try colorful post-it notes, or fancy letter writing paper, or use regular paper and pop the finished list into an envelope and send it to your favorite family member. 

Brainstorm with your child for even more fun ways to practice spelling, and together you'll conquer those spelling test blues!

St. Patrick's day word building freebie

True confession time.  I really like clip art!  I may (or may not) need to be in a 12 step program for my addiction... I mean, I use it for creating teaching resources, so it can't be all bad, can it?

Last week I was playing around with some St. Patrick's day art - see the adorable rainbow and pot of gold? - and decided to make a fun word building activity.  Many of my students really enjoyed manipulating small things, like these 1" letter tiles. (They are great for word building activities!)  I combined the cute graphics with the letter tiles and - tada!

 

I ended up making 4 pages of words, and a follow up page to write the words on.  So simple, so fun, and also, so very happy to share it with you!  If you'd like a copy, head on over to my TeachersPayTeachers store, and download it for free!

FREE Christmas Sentence Picture Match

If you've visited my blog recently, then you probably already know that I am making a transition from preschool teacher to full time curriculum development.  It's a huge change, in so many ways!  I have so enjoyed working with children for the last 21 years, but I'm also enjoying working at my own pace without kiddos right now.  

This is one of my latest creations, and I'm making it a freebie, to say thank you to all the teachers out there.

You'll need to go to my Teachers Pay Teachers store to download it, and of course directions are included.  There are 12 Christmas themed sentences and pictures for you to laminate and cut apart, directions, a poster of Christmas vocabulary, and a cut and paste page for students to do as a follow up.  The sentences are heavy on Dolch nouns, preprimer and primer words, so this is perfect for emergent readers.

 

 If you enjoy this, would you please leave feedback on Teachers Pay Teachers?  After you download the file, scroll down to the rating scale and let me know what you think.  I hope you and your students enjoy!

May whatever holidays you celebrate be filled with love, light and family!
Paula

Farm centers and other fun

Last week I asked the children what activities they most enjoy doing at school.  Field trips, cooking, reading and sensory play were all favorite activities - as was nap time!  I guess by the time we've done all those other things, we're all pretty worn out, and ready to rest and recharge.

I was surprised that the kiddos didn't seem to have strong feelings about what to learn about next.  Sure, dinosaurs, vehicles, and dancing came up as themes, but the children were just as enthusiastic about everything else I suggested too.  Lucky for me, one of my families has a small farm, and we're planning to visit soon to see the animals - and there's a fantastic and fun theme for us.

I put out lots of farm puzzles for my friends to work on, as well as some farm themed listening centers, and of course, a bunch of fun farm songs on youtube.com for our singing and dancing time in the morning.  We worked on the farm part of abcmouse.com with the ipads, which the children are all very eager to use.  We've made our avatars, learned how to push the x button to close pop up windows, found the home button and the back button.  I'm so glad I added a second ipad for our class to use!

 

I created a sensory bin with farm animal sorting and counting.  The children love digging in the beans, it feels so good to run our fingers through them.  I hid plastic animals in the bin, and made a sheet for the children to match animals to as they found them.

We worked on making farm words with letter tiles and magnetic letters too.  Each of the pages I put out at this center had a farm themed picture and matching word, and space for letter tiles to make the words.  Looking through all the letter tiles was a challenge for some friends, so midweek I changed this center to just three words, with only the letters we needed available.  Much better!

One of my wonderful neighbors cleaned out her craft supplies recently, and donated some scissors that make fancy cuts and even 2 hole punches.  Oh my!  We LOVED them - thank you Ms. Dixie!  We cut paper scraps over and over again this week - working on strengthening hand muscles, cutting skills, and hand eye coordination having fun.  The resulting confetti treasure went home in recycled envelopes, and the children are already asking to do this again.

Outside this week we had a Fisher Price Barnyard Boogie dance mat.  There are four different games on it, from hearing animals sounds to remembering a sequence of animals.  It's a loud game - I wouldn't enjoy it inside - but it was perfect for outside!

So was having a table full of bubbles!  My bubble solution is just one part regular Palmolive dish soap diluted with about seven parts water - and makes fantastic bubbles.

We had a cool science discovery moment in the bubbles when a pair of kiddos discovered that they could hold bubbles in their hands - if their hands were wet.  A lot of bubble blowing, chasing, and catching followed!

We're also playing hopscotch in the backyard this week.  Okay, we don't all play it the same way.  Some of my friends can switch between hopping and jumping as they go, some friends can skip over a number... we eliminated the rock throwing part of the game for safety.  But hey, we're counting, practicing reading numerals, and moving our bodies while we have fun! 

We had to enjoy the lovely balmy weather with a picnic lunch one day.  When I looked for paper plates, I discovered I didn't have any plain ones left - but I did have left over Christmas plates, enough for the kids.  Teachers had to have Halloween plates, and when I looked for a bowl to put our apple slices in, I found a Valentine heart bowl.... so I decided this was a mixed up holidays picnic, and brought out a bunny (Easter) and a squirrel (fall/Thanksgiving) to round it out.  If I had realized ahead of time, we would have added some hats and costumes, and been even crazier!

This week we also enjoyed farm themed toys with our play dough...

 ... played a Scrambled Eggs game (and ate real scrambled eggs for lunch)...

 ... used farm themed paint stamps...

 ...read a farm rhyme and riddle on the pocket chart...

 ...played with farm animal  toys and manipulatives...

 ...and measured farm animals with non-standard units.  I found this activity ready made here.

 It's only fitting that we ended the week with a surprise visit from some Canada Geese swimming in the creek with the ducks.  Duck, duck, goose!

We'll continue our farm fun for two more weeks - I can't wait to show you all the fun learning activities we have in store!