Try one of these three, easy activities for teaching 3D shapes in your Kindergarten or first grade classroom!  1. Mystery Bag A fun way to kick off a geometry unit on 3D shapes is using a "Mystery Shape Pack" or mystery bag. An oversized laundry sack or yard trash bag will easily hold and conceal many objects. Find items around your house or classroom for each of the solid figures you are teaching. You can also have students bring in items from home to add to the mystery bag. After you have gathered a sufficient number of items, gather your class on the carpet, do a big reveal of each it ..read more

My youngest son is in Kindergarten this year, and he's working hard to learn his sight words. Today I'm sharing the flashcards I created to practice with him at home. He had learned about 20-25 Dolch sight words in preschool, but his Kinder teacher uses the Fry sight word list. We work on the sight words in sets of 10, so I printed each set of 10 on different colored cardstock. It helps us keep them organized and work through the list of 100 high frequency words. I like to use multiple binder rings so we can separate the sets. At the beginning of the school year, we started with just ten w ..read more

Do you have reluctant writers in your classroom? Do you need to spice up your writing center? Do your students groan when you mention journal writing? If so, check out this super fun and easy writing idea.  I found these amazing animal stickers on Amazon. It's a pack of 100 sticker sheets for less than $10.  Each student gets a sticker sheet. Allow them a few minutes to get creative with their animal. I love these stickers because they easily peel and restick. Let students create their animal on a sheet of construction paper or in their journal. Next, they will use adjectives and ..read more

Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright is one of my favorite read aloud stories for winter. Sneezy is such a lovable and silly character. I've created a fun set of printable activities to accompany the book. You will find a variety of reading, writing, grammar, and math worksheets that can be used to review important concepts after reading Sneezy's story. These printables are designed for first graders, but the majority can be used with students in Kindergarten and second grade as well.  Some of the skills and concepts included are retelling, story elements, parts of speech ..read more

Once students have mastered letter names/sounds, they need lots of practice working with CVC words.  Students need opportunities to build, read, and write CVC words. I've created a set of 20 task cards to help with just that! This is a mixed set of CVC words in which students will identify beginning, middle, and ending sounds. Click on the picture below to see them in my TpT store. You can use any alphabet manipulatives that you have in your classroom to make this hands-on and fun. A few examples of manipulatives you could use are letter erasers, letter tiles or cubes, magnetic letters ..read more

Connect 4 is one of my favorite board games. It's fun for all ages, and with just a little bit of effort, you can turn the classic game into a math game to build number sense and give students extra practice with basic addition facts. How to Play: Decide on a sum that you will add to. We started with 10 and then worked on 12 and 15 in subsequent rounds. The basic idea is still to get four of your tokens in a row. However, the sum of the tokens must equal your target number. (Ex: If you choose 10 as your target sum, you could add 3 + 2 + 4 + 1 to get ten.) There is a lot of strategy, problem s ..read more

Today, I'm sharing some of our favorite Christmas storybooks. These are perfect for classroom read alouds or bedtime stories by the fire. I hope you will discover a new book to add to your home or classroom library.  Turkey Claus: This is the perfect first Christmas book to read after Thanksgiving. It bridges the two holidays perfectly, and if you've read Silvano's other Turkey books, you know this will be a favorite with the kiddos. Last time I checked, Amazon had the hardcover for $7.99!  'Twas the Night Before Christmas: This updated classic is a must have! You will want to read this b ..read more