Sight Word Activities & Freebies - Monday Made It 7/6/15

It's Monday and my first day of summer school, and because of that I was a busy bee this weekend making some centers for my kiddos, so I thought I would link up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made It linky.

Since I started summer school today I had to prepare some centers over the weekend.

I know my kiddos need work on their sight words and I needed a way to assess their current knowledge, but I didn't want to use flash cards. So I created a powerpoint for each of the Dolch sight words that automatically transitions after 3 seconds, since they should be able to name the word within 3 seconds. If you think you could use this you can get the file here from Google Drive.

Once I've assessed what words they know and what they need work with, I made a few activities or resources to help with that.

I made these sight word flip cards for each of the Dolch word sets (3rd grade isn't shown here, I know I won't need them this summer, so I just have to finish them before the school year starts). My kiddos can use them to read into Whisper Phones, write, or do another activity with. They are all color coded, so it's easy for me to tell a kiddo to grab the yellow words. You can grab yours here.

I also made Dolch Sight Word sticks to go with Reagan from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits sight word stick center. You can read her post about them here. You can buy your copy of the center from her Tpt shop here. So to go with these I made the Dolch words so they would fit on popsicle sticks.

I sized the words to fit onto the popsicle stick. Cut them to fit, then used packing tape to secure them onto the popsicle sticks.

I put each set into a Crystal Light container & labeled the outside with what list it was. They are also color coordinated. You can grab your pre-sized Dolch lists here to fit on popsicle sticks of your own here.

The last thing I made for my kiddos to practice their sight words were shakers, since I had these old parmesan cheese containers laying around, so I cleaned them and got ready to put them to use.

I typed up the different Dolch lists and printed them on card stock. You can get your lists here and all you have to do is print them. 

Cutting them up was probably the most difficult part because it was time consuming and made my wrist hurt.

Here are some of the things I picked up to fill the containers with. I got salt, rice, small shell pasta, beads, pom-pons, and confetti. I got all of this stuff from the dollar store, except for the rice, but that was under a dollar from Wal-Mart.

I started by putting some of the words at the bottom of the container.

Then I added a layer of filler, in this photo it was pasta shells.

Then I added another layer of words.

Here's the finished product. Make sure to leave some room at the top so the kiddos can "shake it up!!!"

I finished them off by putting clear packing tap on the lid so the kiddos could open them. I also labeled them ( color coded), so we can easily identify which list is in which container.

I also made a shaker for addition and subtraction facts. Addition facts to sums of 20 and subtraction facts starting at 20. If you would like your copy you can grab them here. 

Here are all the shakers finished.

I hope you can use these freebies to help you make some of these activities. Enjoy!!!

Elf on the Shelf Linky: Week 2

I'm linking up to show off what my elf has been up to this week.

My class elf was pretty calm this week. You can check out what he did the previous week here I posted about it in my Five for Friday post.

Here's what he's been up to this week:

Monday was a lazy day hanging out in the classroom fuzzy basket. He was quite comfy!!!

Tuesday was a snow day, so he had the day off.

Wednesday he was watching A White Christmas on Youtube until he fell over, then during lunch he turned around and just sat on the computer for the rest of the afternoon.

Thursday he was just chillin on the projector and enjoyed watching Pigeon: Impossible with my 4th graders while we worked on making inferences.

Friday he jumped into the pull up, they thought this was absolutely hysterically. On Thursday, while doing out Mystery Mail activity, from Clutter Free Classroom (so much fun, my kiddos loved it, make sure to check it out) one of my kiddos mentioned how funny it would be if Max was in the pull up the next day. So of course that's where he ended up!!!

This week, since it's the last week, he will be up to some more shenanigans!!! Check back next weekend to see what he did.

And here's a freebie for you!!!

This week we are reading How Santa Lost His Job, I wanted to read How Santa Got His Job too, but I can't find the book anywhere. None of libraries or book stores around me seem to have it right now. :( So we are just going to go with How Santa Lost His Job. But here is a freebie for you. An Elf application that I plan on doing with my kiddos.

I can't wait to see what your elf has been up to.

Five for Fraturday & a freebie

Ok I'm a little late, but I had no energy last night to post this. It was one of those afternoons, where the internet went down in the middle of plans, one copy machine was down, the other one was out of white paper & we only had colored left. Plus it was rainy & cold, so I went home, & tried to relax.

So here I am today (Saturday) linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday, instead of doing those plans that I need to finish. Haha!!!

1.) We had family pictures taken this week, so we could send Christmas cards out. Here's picture I took on my phone of one of the proofs online.

2.) The Elf on the Shelf joined my classroom this week. I have a group of 3rd graders and a group of 4th graders so they each named him & they are keeping an elf journal while he is visiting with us. They have to write about where the elf is sitting each day and what he did, if he was up to any antics, then write about how it made them feel & why, and make a prediction on what they think he is going to do the next day. Here are some pics of what he did each day.

3.) Does anyone else's desk look like this when they are trying to do their plans?

8 tabs open as I try to search for different resources and activities

Piles and papers everywhere as I consult curriculum & take notes of things I need & as I print

Planning is so frustrating and overwhelming. I hate having to do it at home, but some weeks I have no choice & since I refuse to print at home, then I'm rushing around like a crazy woman Monday morning printing & copying.

4.) As you know I teach 3rd & 4th grade Resource room, so my guys reading levels are below grade level & some of them well below. So we are working on grade level skills as well as foundational skills. Here's one of my guys working on a short vowel sort I created, Sort the Shorts.

Check it out in my store by clicking the link above or this pic.

5.) Before Thanksgiving even rolled around I began thinking about what to give my students as a Holiday gift. I only have 10 kiddos but I still don't want to spend a ton of money. So after some research I came up with a coupon booklet, personalized bookmark (that I'm going to make for each of them), and a dry erase board from the dollar store that is personalized with their name using letter stickers. (I'll post pics once I have them completely done) 

Here are the coupons I created for them, they are the only things that I done. Click the picture for your free, editable (the blank section is where I wrote a note to my kiddos. That's why I made it editable in case you wanted to put a little note from you to them in there), copy of them.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!!!

Monday Made It & a FREEBIE!!!

I'm finally doing it, I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It...I think I've only done this once before. I wanted to post this particular Monday Made It last week but I forgot...sorry...I remembered on Tuesday.

Stay tuned to the end of this post for a freebie!!!

This summer I'm working a summer camp, with students from 5 to 13 years old. I know, I know! It's pure insanity. The first 2 days were a nightmare...as you can imagine. Pure chaos! Even though my boss had the best of intentions with her format, it just wasn't working, not with majority boys & the personalities they brought with them. So by day 3 I was like, we need to do centers for the morning academic portion. {We're trying to prevent too much "Summer Slide" from happening} I wanted to make sure that the kids touched upon reading, writing & math with some easy stuff & interesting (at least to them) mixed in. Here are the centers that we have

• Read to Self
• Reading response
• Drawing
• Writing/Picture Prompt
• Math Facts
• Word Games
• Online Math
• Reading Online (which translates to Reading Eggs) 

I'll post another day about what each of these centers looks like, but today's post is about how I organized who went where when! This is what I came up with:

There are 8 centers, so the most groups I have on any given day are 8. Depending on how many groups we have, decides how many centers we do that day. If I don't keep it even like that then I just get myself all confused. These are just printed on regular paper & put inside page protectors so I could write the student's names for each group with dry erase marker & erase for the next day.

On this particular day we had 7 groups, so the students only did 7 rotations, with a break for snack in the middle.

Everything is held on with the sticky putty stuff, sorry I don't know what the technical teacher term for it is, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Below are close ups of the center labels & the time labels.

My time & center labels I just printed on yellow & orange card stock, then laminated with my Scotch laminator (another reason why it's so wonderful to have a personal laminator at home). Then I color coded each group, no I did not intentionally make them striped. That happened because my printer is running out of ink. Then I laminated the group cards with my personal laminator. 

It's nothing fancy folks & I don't even know if this is the exact set-up that I would use in my own classroom (most likely not), but it works for summer camp & I thought I would share it. Maybe it'll inspire you to come up with a version that works best for your class. It does let me at least get a visual of how I could potentially set up my rotations.

Now onto the freebie I promised you.

I have 99 likes on my Facebook Page so to celebrate the close proximity to 100 I have set-up my fan freebie page. Thanks so much to Ideas by Jivey and Ms. Fultz's Corner for their blog posts & video tutorials, I was able to set it up easy peasey!!! As some of you may know I've been working on a polka dot classroom decor pack & am slowly moving through it, but in the mean time I've added an item from my pack to my fan freebie page. I just wanted to thank those of you who have liked me on Facebook, just another way for us all to stay connected & share our fabulous ideas!!!

I can't wait to see what everyone has made for Monday Made It & I hope you'll check out my Fan Freebie!!!