Learn2Read

I'm so excited to announce my new series of activity packs that are designed to teach your child and/or students to learn to read.  They are called Learn2Read and Read2Learn.  The theory behind this is that first, a child learns to read.  When they have learned to read, they then will be able to read to learn. Learn2Read is designed to teach necessary phonics and word building skills to help your child and/or students learn to read and feel successful while doing it!  Read2Learn will be designed to increase reading comprehension as well as reading for knowledge on particular subjects. 

One of the activity packs in my Learn2Read series are these Phonics Puzzles.  Once your students are able to identify the letters and are beginning to recognize the sounds that each letter makes, these puzzles will be a great tool for helping them feel confident while learning to read.  Puzzles are a fun way to help children learn to read because puzzles are also a form of play.  The pictures on the puzzles help beginning readers and/or strugglers to identify what the word might be. 

 

 

I hope you'll find these puzzles to be a valuable resource in helping your students learn how to read and feel successful while doing it!  You can click any of the pictures to be able to buy the puzzles.

Fun On the Farm!

Time for some fun on the farm!  Here's a peek at our farm fun and my new Farm Learning Pack!

 

Here's our cute Chicken Lifecycles!  We discussed that a chicken starts out as an egg in a nest.  The nest we made from paper shreds from the Dollar Store!  If you click the picture you can get a freebie to help you make this cute craftivity! 

 

We also talked about the crops on a farm...such as corn.  Then the students got to paint with corn on the cob!  I had yellow and brown paint on plates and let the children use both to paint on a yellow piece of construction paper.  It was messy, but tons of fun! 

When the construction paper dried, we cut them to look like corn on the cob and attached them to green "stalks" of construction paper.  We decorated our classroom with them!  I must say that it looked adorable!

 

We also made sheep our of paper plates.  The students got to use cotton balls to make the puffy sheep's wool.  We used black construction paper for the head and legs and added google eyes.  Didn't they come out cute!

 

 The kiddos had tons of fun with the Little People farm too!  

 

 

I wish I would have taken more pics of the fun things that we did!  But hopefully these ideas spark some interest in you to do a farm unit in your classroom!

 

Here's my new farm learning pack that I used to teach my kiddos.  There's word wall cards, a super fun abc identification game, graphing activities, emergent readers, counting, puzzles, phonics, labeling, graphic organizers, syllables, size sorting, and SO much more!  You can click the pic to go to my TpT store to get it!  It's packed with 153 pages of learning fun!

 

To help you with your planning, I've added products that I used for my unit.  They're available through Amazon (affiliate):

 

Bionic Teacher!

What happens when hundreds of wonderful TpT sellers decide that a fellow teacher is in need?

A MASSIVE fundraiser happens! That's what!

 

We call it Teachers Helping Teachers, and it came about after TpT teacher-authors heard the story of Diana Salmon, a New York teacher who lost a leg in a tragic hit and run accident.

Diana is an inspiration to all who know her, sending a message of strength and resilience by returning to the classroom just months after the accident.

Unfortunately, the extensive injuries Diana sustained require an expensive bionic knee for her to be at her dynamic best. This is where Teachers Helping Teachers comes in.

Diana's fundraising store, Bionic Teacher, is now the home of TEN limited edition resource bundles promising HUGE savings to all who purchase one. There is a bundle for everyone, and they all contain the most amazing products from top sellers! Best yet, 100% of the profits go to Diana's fund!

Visit Bionic Teacher, download the freebie for Diana's Story, and take a look at the bundles. You will be happy you did!

 

I put together 2 bundles for K-2 to help Diana, with resources from 18+ top contributors!

 

 

There's also 3-5 bundles, a clipart bundle, and Secondary bundles (separated by subject).

Check them out and support a great cause...the Bionic Teacher!

 

Bunny Bags!

Need a cute craft for the kiddos to collect their eggs?  We made bunny bags in our class.  They're great for collecting Spring Eggs! 

How cute are they!  Here's what you'll need:
-White Paper Bags
-White Construction Paper
-Google Eyes
-Colorful Pom Poms
-Glue
-Colored Pencils

Click here to get the bunny Ears Pattern. {freebie!}

For your convenience, I've added the supplies that I used via Amazon (affiliate):

Dramatic Play Pet Vet's Office

The Pet Vet Office that I made for my kiddos has been hands-down one of their ALL.TIME.FAVORITE Dramatic Play centers.  They just couldn't get enough!  I took tons of pictures, so here's a little peek into our Veterinarian's Office...

Here's the set up on the bulletin board.  :)

How cute is Dr. Jessie!  I used a Doc McStuffins lab coat as the vet's coat.  Each day a different  student took turns wearing it.  They got to wear their name tags everyday though.

Here's the forms for the pet owner to fill out about why the pet is visiting the vet.

This is the waiting room...complete with magazines on the table!

Can't forget treats for the pets!

Here's the vet's station.  Inside the drawers are doctor tools, vet exam forms, a leash and collar.

Here's where we hung our open/closed sign.

Last, but not least, the diagrams of different parts of animals for reference. 

For your convenience, I've added links to the product in my TpT store on each of the pictures, and below are links to Amazon (affiliate) to the items I used in my center.  :)

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss' Birthday!  To celebrate, our school always does a parade for Pre-K through 1st grade and the rest of the school watches us parade through the halls.  It's so much fun!  In my classroom, I probably own almost every Dr. Seuss book ever written, so we read a TON of his books and do fun activities to go along with.  I hope you can use some of these ideas with your kiddos!

How cute is this fish bowl!!!  I stamped their hands with paint and used just their fingers for the "2 fish".  I actually punched holes in it and let them wear it as a necklace during the parade.  It was super cute!

Here was our treat!  It was green eggs...no ham!  LOL!  I just used vanilla pudding with green food coloring for the "egg white" and a Nilla Wafer for the "yolk".  Yum!

How cute are our thing hats!  Each hat has a different "Thing #".  They got to choose which number they wanted to be.  I painted both hands at the same time:  One red and one white w/ blue fingers and had them stamp their hands down on the yellow paper.  When they dried we glued on their wiggle eyes and Thing Numbers.  We used glitter glue for the mouths.  Then we attached them to a sentence strip and added funky blue "hair" out of about 1 inch thick construction paper.

I hope you can use some of these ideas to have fun with your students!  I LOVE Dr. Seuss Day!