Tag Archives: reading centers

Magnetic Letters

All the letter sounds have been introduced, and students have mastered many phonemic awareness skills like counting syllables and identifying the beginning, middle, and ending sounds. So today, students had the opportunity to use those skills in a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) spelling challenge. Each student was given a small cookie sheet and a card with a picture on it. Students used magnetic letters to spell each three letter word.

Having the three boxes made it clear to the students that the word was spelled with three letters, and it helped to remind them that each word needs a vowel. (Note the vowels are red and the consonants are blue.)

 

The students loved the activity and raced to complete as many picture cards as possible. (The most completed was 11, in case you were wondering!)

Reading Centers

The Kindergarten class did an AMAZING job participating in their first round of Reading Centers! Students were organized into groups according to the skills they are ready to be taught. I began this new adventure for the students by introducing the four activities.

The Independent Work Station included a play dough activity today. Students enjoyed some very new, very fresh play dough that my son and I made last night.

 

The activity was for students to make the number on their workmat out of play dough and then represent that number using a tens frame.

Next, students learned the sequence of strokes necessary to print the capital and lower case m. They practiced printing on white boards, in the air, on neighbors backs, and finally in their handwriting books.

The third center was the listening center, where students listened to an alphabet book on cd. For more information about the value a listening center adds to our classroom, click on this previous blog post:

Today is the Day for Reading Centers!

Students listen to the book, Alphabet Rescue.

The final reading center was the center that meets with me. This center is tailored to teach students the specific skill on which they are working. Some students are learning letter sounds, some students are blending sounds together, and some students are building fluency. The activities today ranged from identifying pictures of objects that begin with the /m/ sound to decoding small books.

I was so thrilled with how well our reading rotations went today. All students were engaged in and enjoyed each activity. Students are already asking what tomorrow’s centers will be! Way to go, Kindergarteners!

 

Sensory Tub Revisited!

Last month, I shared the ocean sensory tub idea I introduced to the kindergartners. It was SUCH a success that I decided to make the sensory tub a permanent fixture in the kindergarten classroom. AND I decided to purchase a sensory TABLE instead of a sensory tub!

It is GIGANTIC!

The first thing we had to do was fill it up! Since we are still in the middle of our ocean unit, I decided to add more water beads to the new table. This became a math lesson on capacity and measurement.

We measured the amount of beads.

Added the necessary water per teaspoon…

and then spent some time looking at the beads and turning them into different items in our brains….

When we opened the table a few hours later, the beads had grown and created this …..ironically…a fish!

Sensory table activities will no longer just be a part of Choice Time, as students will have the opportunity to use the sensory table during reading and math centers as well. Here is an example of an activity:

Students are fishing for ocean animals that have high frequency words on them for the students to read aloud!

I am excited about this recent addition to our classroom and already know what it will be filled with during the Fairy Tale Unit!