Felt Heart CVC Word Families

This might be my favorite February activity by far.  My obsession with felt led me to this activity! :)  Each week we practice a different word family, and this was a great center activity for the kids to practice blending and writing their word family of the week.  


I cut out small felt hearts and puffy painted lower case letters on them.

I made a "Word Family Mat" where the children could place the felt heart onto to create new words. (to download click the picture)

Then I made a worksheet for the words to be recorded on.

The children picked out a felt heart, and placed it onto the word mat.  

I could hear them blend the word to read it, and then they would write the word on their paper.

They even started getting really creative and added blends to make longer words!

I don't know who had more fun with this activity, me or the kids!

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Solid, Liquid, and Gas

We are doing a month long unit on water as a solid, liquid, and gas.  This week we are exploring and learning about water as a liquid.  The first thing that I wanted to teach the kids is that water takes the shape of whatever container it is in.

Jessica, at Under the Alphabet Tree (check out her blog HERE), had a wonderful demonstration about water as a liquid.  I did the exact lesson that she showed on her blog...and the kids LOVED it!!!

I started by having six different containers with the same amount of water in them.  They were all different sizes so it appeared that they contained different amounts.  I added food coloring to make them more exciting to look at. 

 I had one empty container with a line on it to measure the different amounts of water.  The kids graphed what container they thought had the MOST water.

I was surprised that all of the students thought that the green cup had the most water in it.  They were so excited each time I poured another cup in and we found out that they all reached the same line.

At the end of the day, I let them take turns exploring and playing with water.  I was asking them which items they thought would sink or float to prepare them for tomorrow's lesson.  :)  

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Felt Hearts: Counting and Matching

My new obsession = felt.  I LOVE crafting with felt!!!  I thought of a fun way to reinforce counting 10-20.  The objective is to count the little puffy paint dots (who doesn't love touching those???) and match it with the number.  

To make:

Cut out felt hearts.

Cut down the middle to make into puzzle pieces.

 Puffy paint the number.

Puffy paint the dots.

 The students find the matches!

The students loved this activity!  I set them at the back table for the students who finish their work early.

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My blog

I think i am going to start using chalkboards in my classroom, as signs when I display things...

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Pulling Sticks for Volunteers

This by far, has been the best method of pulling sticks for volunteers in the classroom.  In order to ensure that everyone is participating and that I am not calling on the same children over and over, I use these sticks to make sure that everyone gets an equal turn. 


Here is how it works.  Each child has a popsicle stick with their name on it.  The ends of the popsicle stick are painted red on one side and blue on the other.

To start out, all of the sticks are pointed up with the blue end showing.

Blue means that those student have not had a turn yet.  I pull out one of the blue sticks and read the name.  Then I flip it over to the red side when I put it back in the container (dollar section at Target this summer).

It is easy to spot the blue sticks that have not had a turn yet.  Once all of the sticks are red, then I flip them all over to the blue side.

I explain to them once I flip them all over to blue to start again, anyone's stick could get pulled, even if they just went.  This works like a charm. :)

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Snowmen

I really wanted to do a new snowman craft this year, and I have seen this craft all over pinterest, so I decided to give it a try.  It was such a success, it was so simple, and the kids loved it!  We started by writing a sentence about snow.  As a class, we brainstormed characteristics of snow.  My favorite was that it is "edible."  After our sentence was complete, we glued on the white snowman, carrot nose, and scarf.  Then the students drew the coal smile and stick arms.  I found some glittery, foam, snowflake stickers for them to add into the sky.  Here is the project!

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Counting Hearts

My kids need extra practice printing the numbers so I made this fun February counting worksheet.  Click on the picture to download!

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Marshmallow Heart Adjectives

I love thinking of different ways of how to help the children understand "describing words."  I found some yummy, pink, heart marshmallows and I thought they would be the perfect item to explore and describe.  We even talked about our five senses that we could use to observe the marshmallow.  I started by making a "bubble map" made out of hearts to describe the marshmallow.  I passed out one marshmallow to each child and we shared what we noticed about them.

Here is the yummy marshmallow that I found at Target.

Class Bubble Map

Once we made our bubble map as a class, I gave each child their own copy to to fill in independently.  They were allowed to use the class model to spell the words.

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