Eating the Alphabet and Zack's Alligator (and activities to go with them!)

I have been MIA for a while because I am on SUMMER BREAK! I have been for a few weeks now and I cannot seem to drag myself away from the pool!

But now it's back to business! I am looking for a new teaching position for next year and am starting to send out resumes, resumes, resumes! Anywho, I will be doing a lot of tutoring over the summer, and I wanted to share some of the activities I will be doing with my kiddos! I am working with kids PreK-4th grade so it will be pretty widespread!

For my little to-be kindergartner, I planned a little mini-unit with Lois Ehlert's Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z.

I got the idea from these cute little fruit erasers that I found in Target's Dollar Spot Section! I swear I could spend hundreds of dollars there (and many times I'm close!). I decided that it would be fun to introduce the little guy to graphing in a really hands-on way.

I gave him a handful of the fruit and we sorted them by type of fruit. After we sorted them, we placed each type of fruit on the graph above. We discussed what we had the most/least of, and how we used the numbers on the side of the graph to decide that. Then, we removed our fruit from the graph and actually colored it.

Next, we used our graph as a reference to answer some questions about our data. Since my PreK friends generally need help with using scissors and glue, this next page is a cut and paste activity. The edge of the page is a picture of each fruit that we used in our graph, that my kiddo had to cut out in the little square. Once he decided his answer, he had to glue the fruit on the square next to the question.

You can grab a copy of this little graphing activity here!

I also know that for this little guy to be really ready for kindergarten, we need to work on his letter recognition and letter sounds!

So we did a little newspaper scavenger hunt for fruits and vegetables! I glued this paper to a big 12 x 18 piece of construction paper.

We searched the local grocery store ads for fruits and vegetables, decided their initial sounds, and glued them in the correct letter space. He loved it! You can get a copy of this little activity here.

After working with my little preschool buddy, I am also tutoring one of past students (it's weird to say that I have those now!) who is going to be a second grader!

For her, I made a little mini-unit for Zack's Alligator by Shirley Mozelle! This will be available on my TPT store sometime this week :)

After reading the story together, we completed an integrated science, writing, and math experiment. Once again I hit up Target's Dollar Spot and got a few of those little growing animals! However, when I showed it to her, I didn't tell her what was going to happen to it! I just told her to measure it each day and see what happened! She's so excited!

Here is an example of one of the response pages we did together. The most exciting activity in this TPT pack is a measurement, estimation, and graphing activity using a grow animal. This is a paper your students would fill out before they "water" their animal (As Zack would say!).

Hopefully I will have this pack finished by the end of this week! I hope everyone is enjoying summer vacation as much as I am :)

Happy Wednesday!

Sarah

Long E, Measurement, and More!

Hello all!

I hope everyone is getting excited for their spring breaks! Mine is a whopping Friday-Monday, but it is time off none the less :)

Last week, we had a good/bad week. Academically, we had an awesome week! They are really absorbing the information quickly and are still able to explain and apply it. So exciting! But on the bad side, my kiddos have been really struggling with bullying lately. I've had the"If you don't do _____, you can't be my friend," "I don't like you anymore," and just the general bossing other kids around. It's breaking my heart because its making some of my kiddos so sad! I had a big talk with them and we are doing a lot of anti-bullying activities this week, but I don't know what more I can do. Does anyone else have this problem? I can't believe first graders are acting like this! Any advice?

We have been learning about long vowel sounds! We have already gone over all of the bossy e patterns (a_e, i_e, 0_e, and u_e). If you need any fun games to review these spelling patterns, check out my Long Vowel Read the Roomy Fluency passages. My kids loved them! Instead of just searching for the word, the students have to read the sentence, and find  the word within it.

Another resource I have found super helpful, is the BBC Long Vowel Sound website. I have used/plan to use all of the poems in the poem pack! They are so interactive and great for my students that have trouble regonizing our word patterns right away.

This week, I started introducing measurement. We have been DYING to use our rulers, so I decided I wouldn't torture them any longer! I created a rocket measuring activity that is FREE for you to use! The best way I could think of to introduce this was to model measurement, work in pairs, and then complete an independent activity. First, I introdued the ruler and the terms "ruler" and "inch." We talked about how we use the ruler to measure length, width and height.

I modeled how to measure the first rocket and had each child show me where I would place the ruler to measure it. (All the measurements are from the tip of the rocket to the bottom of the fire.)

After we discussed this for a little bit, we played "Around the World." The rest of the rockets were placed on their desks and they rotated around with their answer sheet and measured each one. This made it SUPER easy to see who got it and who didn't.

By the time they finished the activity and stared the indepedent worksheet portion, they were pros!

We used the measurement activities from Crazy for First Grade and they are awesome! We used the Measure It activity twice, with nonstandard measurement and with the ruler. It was really cute for the kids to see the difference! And they LOVED the Measure A Friend activity. How could they not like using their friends to learn math?

On Friday, since we alwals have Fun Fridays, we did this cute FREE gummy worm activity I found on TPT. We practiced measuring in both inches and centimeters, so this was a great way to end the week!

I really want to do a class play this year that stems from a read-aloud. I have 15 students and I want them all to be involved somehow. Does anyone hav any plans? I thought of maybe doing The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, but I can't decide. Ideas or suggestions would be great!

Have a great week! It's a four day week for me!
Sarah