Thursday, July 30, 2015

My favorite ABC song!




So although this blog has been super math oriented lately, I am a literacy girl at heart! I am starting to look at all of my alphabet materials to get them ready for the new school year. One of my absolute favorite things to use is the original Alphabet Letter Sound song by Barbara Milne! You can find it on Youtube. I play this video at the end of the day during snack a lot in September. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3S3OX6HQm4

We also learn to sing and sign this song. I like to teach my kids how to fingerspell. The best part is when they learn all the letters and I teach them to spell their names! Then it becomes a classroom management trick. Whenever we are stuck waiting in the hallway, I will fingerspell the name of someone I catch waiting very patiently! This never fails to keep them quiet and completely happy! They love being able to read fingerspelling, and I think it is a pretty awesome skill! But I digress...

My Kindergarten team has used this song for years now. We have our kids sing it every morning. The only thing we do different from the video is saying the sound only twice and the letter name last. We have a chart that has the pictures from this song on it.  The kids use it as a reference for reading and writing. I have my kids keep a copy of the chart in their book boxes and writing folders. They use and rely on it so much, that I decided I wanted my classroom alphabet line to match the pictures in the song. Then everyone will be able to see it, and hopefully it will be more useful than my current abc line is now.

I have spent many an hour working on this little gem while Daniel naps! I think I have finally got it exactly how I want it! The adorable graphics, mostly by JW Illustrations, make my heart sing! This cute little cookie is my favorite one! And oh yeah, did I mention it sparkles?!? What?!? Everyone needs a little sparkle somewhere in their classroom! I will post pictures when I get mine hung up! If you would like your own, it can be found in my TPT store!


Sparkle Alphabet Linehttps://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sparkle-Alphabet-Line-1995460



Thursday, July 16, 2015

Finger Counting

So I haven't been much of a blogger these days! My own cute little munchkin keeps me pretty busy. I am headed back to school in the fall after a year off with him. I have super mixed feelings about it! I love teaching, but oh how wonderful it has been to stay home and watch my own little one grow and learn!! 

 While this cute kid naps, I have been starting to work on some stuff for school! This little finger counting mat can be used when you need a more kinesthetic approach to counting! It will help with 1:1 correspondence too. 

I printed out a whole class set of these and had baggies ready to go with ten chips inside. Then as students sat on the carpet, we arranged all our chips into the bottom circles. I made a larger board for myself and hung it on a magnet board. I put magnets on my chips so I could model for my students how to push up a chip to the top of each finger as I counted. 

This was something fun for the beginning of the year and it was easy to place into a center once the kids got the hang of it!


If you would like to try this activity with your own class, it can be found in my TPT store for $1.00!! Don't you love that TPT got rid of the three dollar minimum? Yay! Sometimes you just need a cheap, cute idea! 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Finger-Counting-Mat-1962289