Knock Knock! Inspiration Calling! :)

"I love it when a plan comes together."

Okay, I admit it - I was watching A-Team with my husband the other night. :) However, wanted to share with you my latest inspiration/"pinspiration inspired" activities I'm doing with my kids! The best part...most of it is FREE since I'm sure you have these things lying around your classroom or home! ;)

As always, we continue on our journey of silent e/long vowel sounds for word study. I was soooo pleased this week when my groups GOT silent e! I had already made this paint card inspired activity, using a gold sharpie for the "e" (the paint cards are from Lowe's...I love the ones with the holes already in them!):


We said the short vowel word first (even if it wasn't a real word), then placed the gold "e" in the hole and voila! The kids knew by adding the "e" it made it loooong! :) (And they still enjoy being loud and using all our breath to say long o, and using short breath to say short o!). I am excited that my lower ones are getting this concept and I'm seeing it cross over into their reading. Woo hoo! :)

The next center is math, using popsicle sticks (the wider ones) and again, paint cards. Love those paint cards! My friend says they're going to start charging me soon :) (I make sure to "spread the wealth" and take them from different stores each time). We are beginning comparing numbers as well as inequalities. They'll use the card and match the sticks so that the math sentence is true:


The last is what we did for Science today. Total Pinterest-inspired! My kids did AWESOME on our have/need/give chart...coming up with some "gives" that I hadn't thought of! I think it really helped set our unit off to a great start! :)


I have to say a great big THANK YOU to my friend, Valerie over at Enriching Kinders for introducing me to Pinterest (if you haven't checked out her blog, you should!). I feel like I have become a much better teacher because of it! I get so inspired by what others post, as well as giving me inspiration for my kiddos! (I mean paint cards...who knew?). Hope everyone has a great week! :)

The AHA Moment!

Do you ever find your best ideas come to you spontaneously? I've always said flexibility is important in a good teacher, but I also think listening to those crazy ideas as you sit with a group that's just not getting it is also important!

I've had a lot of crazy thoughts over the years, and while some work well, others just get me those strange looks that say, "our teacher has LOST it!".

This was one of those great AHA moments! I posted my frustration about some of my reading students just not getting long vowels. I was looking for a different approach, new ideas, etc. This morning when I got to school, I googled long vowel activities. (Yep, "google" is a verb!). I found some great activities and started a new board on Pinterest. You'll have to check out the link. I don't know why, but I always seem to be attracted to ESOL sites...they always have the best activities! I found some great monster cards, went to Florida's reading site and found some centers....but of course, all that requires time, printing, lamination, cutting out....and of course, did I mention TIME time to put it all together?

So, today in group, since my frantic cutting at every possible free moment of the day hadn't been working....that "AHA" moment struck! We took a deep breath and said long "a" as long as we had breath. Then, we tried to do the same thing for short "a" and....it came out ("like a burp" as one of my kids put it) and we couldn't make it last! The kids of course burst into giggles. We talked about how with short vowels, we can't use a lot of breath! OMG! Light bulbs were busting out all over! One child in my second group then theorized..."I guess that's why they call them short vowels, for short breaths, and long vowels, for long breaths!"

WOO HOO!

Not that it totally sunk in, but after they insisted we test out all the vowels, we hit the ground running....and ran into the brick wall with silent e. I do, however, have some other great ideas we're going to work on tomorrow about words with silent e, including sticky notes (I did "rip" and "ripe" today - each letter on a separate note, and we're going to do some word hunts tomorrow and "make" silent e words) as well as those great monster cards I mentioned!

Thanks once again for all the great suggestions! I'll keep posting the ideas that work, whether they're my own or someone else's. Meanwhile, check out Lanternfish, the ESOL site I got the monster cards from. It's AWESOME! :)