Friday, March 30, 2012

You're CrAzY for our games huh??!!


So we have had an overwhelming response to our "I'm Buggy For Addition" that we have added "I'm Buggy For Subtraction". We love it, you love it, the kids love it... Win, Win, Win!!!  We are CrAzY about fun learning- here it is! (It's also available on TN.)

TpT Store


Monday, March 26, 2012

CrAzY for Sight Words

We are CrAzY for sight words in Kindergarten. This post is about our class' top 8 things to do with sight words:
"The CrAzY 8"

                                           
1.   Sight Word Rings-.  Each time we introduce a new word I give them a card. The color of the card matches our word wall card.  The kids go CrAzY when I pass out the new word because they know we are about to play the game.  Here is how it works:  I pick a card and give them clues to my card. My clues get harder as the year goes on. For the picture above, at the beginning of the year, I would say "My word is on blue, has 4 letters and begins with an h." I would give them a little time to find the word then ask "What is my word?" For the same word, but later in the year, I would say "My word is on blue, it has 2 vowels and 2 consonants." I change it up every time we play.  They kids keep the rings in their desk and play with a friend during down times. They love to quiz their friends!

2.   CrAzY Sight Word Chants-  This idea came from Growing Kinders.  It is fun activities to do with each word.  Some things we do is spell the word in Opera voice, or spell while flying like a bird, or spelling while disco dancing. There are so many ideas it takes us a couple of weeks to get through them all!  Here is the link directly to her post.  Sight Word Chants at Growing Kinders. This post has lots of great ideas but scroll down quite a bit for the Chants. It is CrAzY easy to get this started in your class because Growing Kinders has it ready to print. All you have to do is print, glue/tape to tongue depressors and go CrAzY! The only thing I did differently than the post is I drew a star at one end of each stick so I could keep track of which ones we have done.

3.  Sight Word Song Of The Week- Each week when we introduce a new sight word we learn the Heidi Song that teaches that song.  We also do a word wall hunt with those same songs and they have to find the word on the word wall, point to it with a pointer (Mardel has CrAzY fun jumbo finger pointers that would be SO fun for this!) and then pass the pointer to a friend for the next song.

4.  Hangman- Talk about CrAzY competitive at 5 & 6 years old!!  These little people LOVE to beat their teacher, and they do it SO well!  Hangman with our sight words is huge hit!

5.  Flashlight Friday-  lights go out, flashlight goes on, and we shine it on a word on the word wall.  The kids read the word (either whole group or called upon)  Then the 2nd round we go faster whole group.  And if you are in a CrAzY mood by Friday you can play round 3 SPEED CHALLENGE- fast as your little light can go from word to word.  

6.  Power Point Shout Out-  A slideshow we created in powerpoint that plays 1 word per slide, when it shows up on the screen the kids shout it out.  Each slide is the same color as the word on our word wall.

7.  Memory-  Pocket Chart and sight words on either index cards or typed up.  The cards are turned around backwards and the students play memory matching sight words.

8.  BANG- All the sight words are printed up on cards (several copies of each word) and several BANG cards are printed up also.  All the cards go into a bucket, basket, hat- whatever your liking.... and the kids  get to pull one card out and read the sight word.  BUT if they pull a card with the word BANG they all shout BANG.  

AND JUST BECAUSE WE ARE CrAzY COOL CHICKS FROM TEXAS ~ HERE IS A SET OF CARDS TO TAKE BACK TO YOUR CLASSROOM!!  THEY WILL WORK GREAT WITH BANG OR MEMORY! HAVE FUN!   (Link is working again)

If you have great sight word games you want to share then link up with Lesson Plan Diva. She is having a linky party!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Oink! Baa! Moo! Our farm units are waiting for you!

Grab 'yer boots and get in gear our CrAzY farm unit is here!  It is loaded with everything you need for Farm literacy and math.  EVERYTHING!  We even have worksheets to review past concepts we have already taught to keep the learning going!  Don't it make y'all want to kick up 'yer cowboy boots?!!  Well ride on over to TpT and grab yourself the units.  Your kids are gonna squeal with delight 'cause it's loaded with CrAzY fun!



Just because we are so CrAzY about you visiting us, we are offering you this freebie! It is just a small taste of what you can find in our literacy and math packets!

Farm Freebie Click Here

Monday, March 19, 2012

Just In Time For Spring!

Check out these great Spring activities that are CrAzy fun for our kids.  We are CrAzY excited about it and know you will love it!  There is a spring sight word game and a spring writing packet.  Head on over to out Tpt store to pick them up for your classroom!! Click the picture to take you there!!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

CrAzY Good Behavior!

Do you love CrAzY good behavior? We do! When we catch our kids being CrAzY good don't you just want to scoop them up and take them home with you  reward them like CrAzY??!!!  Here is a SUPER cute idea and a free download of the label too!  The teacher that posted these said her kids think they are like gold and love to take them to lunch and drink their milk out of them. These are CrAzY cute! 
*CrAzY teacher tip- CrAzY straws by the pack at the dollar store!

Here is the free download of these labels:
                                             

Friday, March 16, 2012

I'm Buggy For Addition

Can we get a "Woop Woop!!" Teaching Addition to Kindergartners.... and them loving it so much they beg you to be in THAT station???..... Thats right..... can we get a "Woop Woop!!!" This is a GREAT, concrete, bringin' it home Addition Math Station!! 1st teach them whole group by passing out a card to everyone.... and calling each person up to snap cube it together (top number is one color use that color snap cubes, bottom number is another color use that many snap cubes) then collect cards and pass them out again where they do it alone at their desk. Then you put it into a station and have them follow the "I Can" chart, and they are held accountable by a friend or their workstation partner. Again.... can we get a "Woop Woop!!" CrAzY how this will bring it on home for them!!! And don't forget to grab our button at the top right of our blog- you would be CrAzY NOT to!

I'm Buggy for Addition

Thursday, March 15, 2012

This Is CrAZy!!

Why would we EVER think that we could keep up with sending everyone our Calendar Journal individually?  Wellllllll...... what ever we were thinking it was CrAzY.... mental... insane..... we can't keep up!!  SOOOOO here it is!  ENJOY!!  Just pass our name around and we will keep the free stuff coming!  We know.... we're CrAzY!!!!  And a CrAzY hint on how to teach even and odd for this page..... "does it have a partner or not?"  Our kids love to figure it out and are SO good at it!  CrAzY how smart they are!! Click here and teach away with it! 

Calendar Journal
 Thanks to Eberhart's Explorers for the inspiration.


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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Our 1st Linky Party!

Jeannie over at Kindergarten Lifestyles is putting together a linky party for kinders- 2nd grade and putting lots of blogs together in one place! Click on the picture below to head on over there. Sign your blog up and/or search some of the blogs there to find some fresh, new ideas!

Spring Break Blog Stalking

Blog Stalking: To blog stalk is to religiously check a blog for any new content, usually multiple times per day.
Use:
“I have a new blog stalker.”
“Paul blog stalked me this weekend.”
“My blog’s not that great, but people blog stalk me anyway.”
Blog Stalk us like CrAzY over spring break, follow us, comment leaving your email address and we will send you our Calendar Journal that we use everyday for free! CrAzY we know!!  Thats right----- we are THAT CrAzY about getting this into your hands.  Just wait for all the other fun stuff to come!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Calendar Journal

Here is one of our favorite math ideas. It reinforces all the major topics. It allows us to modify the review based on student needs. For example, my kids are struggling with hexagon so that has been our Shape of the Day often. Also, our students are required to describe a shape. After drawing a shape, I always ask a few students to tell me about that shape. It has been so awesome! For Addition Problem of the Day we have changed it up daily too. Some of the different ideas we have are counting syllables, vowels, consonants, tell story problems, counting letters in words, etc. There are so many variations. We have thought about changing it to a Subtraction Problem for April after the concept is taught.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we have!

One last thought, the first month we made a monthly packet and stapled together for each student. The 2nd month we punched holes and placed in folders. It allowed the students to find the next page much easier!

Thanks to Eberhart's Explorers for the inspiration!
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Here We Go!

We created this blog a while back but then ran out of time to figure out how it all works. We are major blog stalkers. We also love, love, love to create new stuff for our classrooms. We would love to link up with fellow teachers and hopefully one day our blog will be followed by our favorite bloggers.

We hope this Spring Break we can get some things moving and get this going,

Thanks for stopping by. Please come see us again.