Ocean Literacy Centers

So, I had every intention of blogging and sharing about our ocean literacy centers (as well as many other themed literacy centers at the end of the year), but it just never happened! I finally finished finalizing the literacy center pack to post tonight and I thought why not just blog about it too?! Maybe it will be useful for somebody, right?! Well if that somebody is you, here you go! :) 

A few of the centers included in the pack are not shown here because, well, I didn’t create them in time to use at the time, but I wanted to make sure I included 5 ready to use centers in the product. I would totally use them all next time around!

We always love the write the room center so it’s definitely a regular in my classroom. I added a little more to it where the kids have to find the cards, write the word, count the syllables, and then turn the paper over to draw and label a picture and write a sentence using the words they found. This keeps them completely engaged and busy the entire center time. 

Every kid enjoys a fun board game, right? This next center fits all those competitive little souls and can be played multiple times throughout center time. Of course it's really just luck of the spin and they don't even realize they are working on sight words when they play. When the player spins a word, they get to move to the next space with that word in it. 

The next center is rainbow writing sight words. See a pattern here? We were really needing to work on sight words at the end of the year, so it did happen to be a big bulk of our literacy centers. 

There are two more centers included in the pack which include a fun sight word bump game and a matching memory game working on reading words with ee and ea vowel teams. One of the other centers we did in this rotation was a game I learned from Cara Carroll from The First Grade Parade when I listened to her sessions in Wichita. My kids LOVED this and you could do so many variations of it to switch it up to fit another theme. It's called Hop to It! I laminated and cut out lily pads and wrote sight words on them. I only did five words at a time and wrote them on lily pads twice. The first time we played, I had the kids hop to the word after I said it aloud. They went up against their partner. Eventually I had a student reading the word and they would just switch out with whoever won the round. You can see a video of this on my Instagram. The next time we played it, I had them use my froggy flyswatters. So fitting, huh?! ;) This time they had to swat at the word after it was said as you see here. It was fun, but I did have to remind them every once in a while to make sure they were reading the words and not just swatting without putting any thought into it. 

Well, there you have it!! If nothing else, maybe you found an idea to pin and come back to later because this is probably not what you are thinking about as we are all getting ready to head back to school! ;) 

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Christmas Literacy Centers!

Here is our last set of literacy centers for the year. We decided to make them Christmas themed! J Basically every time we plan our literacy centers, we think about the skills we want to focus on and then we decide how we want the kids to practice. I know I haven’t shared every set of centers we’ve done, but sometimes we look up and get ideas from others and other times we create our own. It all depends on the time we have to put into it I guess or if we find what we want. This time, we created all of the centers to fit our kids and the skills we wanted to highlight.

The first three centers I created and you can get them here. My talented teaching partner created the last two, but I don’t think she has them posted in her store yet. If there is a lot of interest, I’m sure I could talk her into posting them! J

I got this magnet idea from the I Teach K conference this summer while attending one of the amazing Deanna Jump sessions. You can see a video of this in action either on my Instagram or Facebook page to get a better idea. This one is called Santa's Swipe & Write because the students put a counter down for each sound in the word, swipe it with the magnetic wand as they say the word, and then they write each sound. Great practice and engaging! You don't have to use the magnetic counters and wand, but it sure makes it fun! You could have them use any type of manipulative to sound out the word. 

The next one is the North Pole Write the Room. I can't say how much our kids LOVE write the room centers and how well they do with them!! We always try to make this one of our centers. For literacy centers, we try to use about 12 words and then have an activity for them to do on the back of the page when they finish. Typically it's drawing a picture using the words they found around the room and labeling them. 

One of the skills we have begun working on is ending sounds, so this next center was great practice! We do so much focusing on the beginning sound for so long it seems that sometimes transitioning to the ending sound can be tricky. They got the hang of it though even if it just required a few reminders. 

For the last two, we worked on sight words and making sentences. This is the Reindeer Food Roll & Write. They rolled the dice, wrote/spelled the corresponding word on the paper, and then wrote the word in the reindeer food. Great practice when done right! J

 

 This is Santa's Scramble where the students had to cut out the words in the sentence, unscramble them to build the sentence, and then write it. This included sight words we have learned along with Christmas picture words.

 

When we come back from break, we plan to do some review with beginning sounds, rhyming, and stretching out words. This will probably be the last literacy center post from me for a while because the hubby and I are just 2 weeks away from our baby boy's due date! I won't be returning to school until probably mid-February. Wish us luck with our first little babe! We are so excited...and maybe a wee bit nervous!!! J

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Literacy Centers: Beginning Sounds, Rhyming, CVC Words, & MORE!

Here for another round of literacy centers! We are working on beginning sounds, CVC words, and rhyming lately. The kids are getting lots of great practice and it's so exciting to see the improvement from the beginning of these centers to now. 

First is our Three in a Row game. This game can be played individually or with a partner. I printed out the partner version, but we ended up playing it individually this time around. That's why you see the two squares at the bottom because it comes with blue letters and pink letters for the two players. We decided to use some magnetic letters this time around and play individually. The students draw a magnetic letter and if there is a picture that begins with that sound, they get to cover it. Once they get three in a row, they win and play with a new game card. It's great practice for those beginning sounds.

Another beginning sound center we are working on is Say it, Clip it! They choose five cards at a time and clip the beginning sound of each, check it with a teacher or friend, and then choose five more. They are getting really good at their beginning sounds!! Say it, Clip it and Three in a Row are also found in my Beginning Sounds Literacy Centers BUNDLE.

 Next up is our write the room that goes with our unit theme right now - nutrition! We have done a couple other write the room activities with Halloween words and fall words too. 

After the kids found and wrote all the food words, they got to make their own healthy lunch tray full of the foods they found around the room and label them. This is a center that NEVER gets old with my kids and I never have to worry about them staying on task and engaged in the activity. LOVE IT!!

 I LOVE the practice my kids are getting from this next one. We talk so much about stretching and writing words and this has been a tremendous help for my students and making sure they stretch and hear every sound in the words. We have done mixed vowel CVC words and we've also focused on a specific vowel such as /u/ and /e/ because our students need more work with those. These are made by my teaching partner, Jennifer Brown, and you can get them here.

 The last one is to practice rhyming with my Rhyme Time cut/paste worksheet. Rhyming has been tricky for a lot of our kids and this has been very helpful practice for them. We've done a few different versions of these as well, but having all the options in front of them has been helpful for them to hear the rhymes and really check their work. The extra cutting, gluing, and coloring practice has been nice too! ;) 

Next week we plan to bring in some Thanksgiving centers for our kinders. Only a week and a half left before Thanksgiving break! CRAZY!!! Have a good one!

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Literacy Centers - Letter Sounds

It’s been a few weeks since we were doing these letter sound literacy centers, but I finally got them posted in my store and ready to share with all of you! The kids were so excited about these centers! The first day I introduced them, we didn’t have time to actually go do them and the kiddos were so bummed!! You’ve gotta love their enthusiasm! J

Without further ado, here they are!

At our green table, the students enjoyed Spot it, Dot it with the letter sounds we were learning. They love using the BINGO daubers and it was a great way to practice letter identification and letter sounds. They had to say the sound the letter makes as they dot it with their BINGO dauber.

This Spin & Write the Sound center was at our yellow table. We used two different spinners during our two week period so that we focused on different sounds the second time around. There is a corresponding recording sheet for each spinner. My kids really enjoy the spinner games that I’ve introduced this year. There must be something about flicking that paper clip! J After they spin, they identify the beginning sound of the picture it lands on. Then they have to find the corresponding letter that makes the sound to write it.

The students at the purple table worked on I Spy worksheets for the letter sounds we have introduced and learned. There is a focus sound for each sheet and the students have to find all the pictures that begin with the sound as well as any letters that match the sound. Once they spy them, they color them.

Those first three centers can be found in my Beginning Sounds Literacy Center BUNDLE pack or individually in my TpT store.

We kept the next center at the blue table the same only with different letters that we were learning. The students trace, write, stamp, color, and find the letter. They are encouraged to say the sound as they do each. This is from my A-Z Letter Practice in D’Nealian, but it is also in traditional print here.

The last center was at the red table where the students made letters on geoboards. After they made the letter, we encouraged them to say the sound the letter made three times. The letter cards were found from here.

My teaching partner and I both have three Block B students from Kansas State University in our classrooms right now. They are studying to become teachers and only have two semesters left after this one before they graduate, so this is just one step to becoming a teacher. They teach a few lessons and make literacy games, so they created our next set of literacy centers. We are almost finished with those and will be putting together another new set of centers for our students. With our first quarter under wraps, we have more data to really get started with our MTSS groups. I've been pulling here and there, but my goal for this next quarter is to really hit it hard and pull my low students more consistently during our literacy centers time. Hopefully I'll be sharing that sixth center on all my future literacy center posts. J 

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Literacy Centers - Fine Motor Skills

The past two weeks, our literacy center focus was fine motor skills. My teaching partner and I put together five centers that we felt would help our kids with fine motor skills and here I am to share those with you!

Yellow center: We practiced our cutting, coloring, and gluing skills with this bear in the woods activity. I believe my teaching partner got this out of a Carson Dellosa book that she has. The second week, we did a fish in the fish bowl activity since the students visit each center twice.

 

Purple center: Wet, Dry, Try! On our chalk boards, we practiced the letters we have learned by using a small, wet sponge to form the letter (using correct writing grip). Then they take a small, dry paper towel to trace the letter using the correct writing grip, and finally they take a small piece of chalk to write the letter. I encourage them to say the sound of the letter after they write it each way.

 

 

Blue center: Letter practice! With these sheets, the students trace, write, stamp, color, and find the letter they are working on. We encourage them to say the sound as they do each of these. The handwriting we use at our school is D’Nealian. I have these letter practice sheets in my TpT store for D’Nealian and regular print.

Red center: Letter monsters. The students made letters we have learned with play dough. Then using the googly eyes, they pushed them into the play dough letter to make their monster and say the sound the letter makes. After each letter, they have to use their little fingers to dig out the eyes and start forming a new letter.

 

Green center: Sequin letters. Each student had their own container full of rice and sequins mixed together. They had to use their tweezers to pick out only the sequins and form the letters we have learned. Doing this again, I would make sure the students have letter outlines in front of them so they can form the letters a little easier. The purpose was fine motor skills though, so they did get a lot of good practice with that! 

 

 

This week our focus is on sound identification and beginning sounds. I'm working on putting together a pack full of activities we can use for beginning sounds so that we can send it in to get printed and prepared for the next few rounds of literacy centers. Be back soon to share those with you!

Have a great week!

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