Frog Hat

Today was a very productive and nice day :). We started our day learning the difference between frogs and toads. We read Days with Frog and Toad, and also checked on Kidzone to learn more scientifically the difference between them. Two other websites that helped my son to understand the dissimilarities were All About Frogs and Kiddyhouse.

Afterwards, my son worked on comparing and contrasting frogs and toads. This was a great cut and paste activity for him to compare and contrast frogs and toads on the Venn Diagram.  He also did a creative writing.

Once my son wrote the reasons he would rather be a frog on his creative writing activity :), he was ready to make his frog hat. I used construction paper to cut the templates, which I printed from making friends,  and my son put it together. He used cotton balls and pompons to create the eyes, and chenille pipe cleaners to hold the hat on his head. It looked pretty cool :))!!!

In the afternoon, my son worked with reading comprehension using a Frog and Toad Together Mini Lesson that I printed for free on TPT.  My son did two tasks with this exercise. The first one he read the story and then put it in order according to the text. In the second task, I took all the papers away and asked him to put the story in order without looking at the text. When he finished, I asked him to go back to his first task and compare them to see if his answers were right. He did a great job retelling the story. This was a great exercise in reading comprehension, which I recommend you to download.

He also did a few exercises to practice contractions.

I would also like to remind you about our giveaway, which is ending on Friday at midnight. We are giving away 6 wonderful products from my TPT store, Fern Smith's Classrrom Idea and Oceans of First Grade Fun. To enter the competition and a  have a chance to win follow the link below please. a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks and good luck!!!!

Fabiana  

Leprechaun Hat

Today I took my son to the dentist. Like you, I try to take him to the dentist every 6 months, and I also attempt to make sure that he brushes his teeth after breakfast, lunch and before going to bed. Flossing is also part of his dental hygiene. In my opinion, it is important to have a system which reinforces good habits to ones kids, and as they grow older, these habits are still prevalent and part of their routine.

After arriving at home from the dentist, we created a leprechaun hat, beard and eyebrows . This craft was very easy to design, we just needed to print the templates from Today's Mama website, and then assembled it- http://todaysmama.com/2012/03/printable-leprechaun-hat-craft-now-with-more-beard/. I love everything about this craft, it all looked super cute, like a proper leprechaun :)))!!!

Moreover, my son did an activity about St. Patrick's Day Inferencing cards describing green objects from Kari Radovich - http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/St-Patricks-Day-Inferencing. This cards are quite easy for my child to read and comprehend. This was a great activity to practice reading, and enabling him to practice reasoning from facts or evidences and deducing fact based conclusions that should be true.

Another great material I downloaded from TPT was St. Patrick's Day Math Fun with Lucky Leprechaun by Kayla Parker - http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/St-Patricks-Day-Math-Fun-with-Lucky-Leprechaun. My son had a lot of fun doing this exercises which included: problem solving, adding and subtracting in order to find the secret message, coloring, and a game to help the Leprechaun to find his pot of gold. One of many fantastic worksheets to practice maths, and having fun at same time.

I  also downloaded for free on TPT an exercise called St. Patrick's Day Fact and Opinion by Lili Garcia - http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/St-Patricks-Day-Fact-and-Opinion
I do recommend you to download this material as it is very easy for your first grader to read and understand. As well as practicing differentiation between a fact and an opinion.

 Hope you felt inspired by my post today. Enjoy the parade tomorrow and the weekend. Thanks :)!

Fabiana

Drawing Conclusions

I was looking for materials about drawing conclusions on TPT, and I purchased an awesome activity called "drawing conclusion Jeopardy". This activity is aiming to reinforce drawing conclusions. There are three categories with twelve clue cards each. Each clue card provides three clues about the topic and students will draw a conclusion after listening to each clue. Students will also write their conclusions and keep up with their own score.

My son and I played this game this morning and we had a blast :)). It was fun!!!!!! The clues given were written in a simple language and easy to understand.

This product costs U$3.50, but it is totally worth buying. A great activity to develop your child's drawing conclusion skills. I highly recommend.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Drawing-Conclusions-Jeopardy#tab_ratings_feedback



Thanks.
Fabiana

Word Family

Hello everyone :))), hope you had a wonderful day.

I would like to share an amazing idea I found on the I can teach my child blog - 

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/

She had this awesome idea of taken an paper towel role and make a out out activity to enhance her children reading skills. 

The objective of this tool is to present the word family, for example "ake", then the child will pull the inside board and will utter different sounds to make a new word. For instance: b + ake = bake; c + ake = cake; t + ake = take...and so on.

Materials that I used to create this tool: a flattened paper towel roll, glue, construction paper, wrapping paper, any type of cardboard to make the inside, and marker.

Instructions:

1st step: Wrap the flattened toilet paper with your favorite paper. Afterwards write on a construction paper the word family you decided to work, I used "ake", "all", "eat". I wrote the vowels in different colour. 

2nd step: Cut a piece of hard cardboard (I used a box from a 6 pack spaghetti that we bought) in 10 x 1.5 inches. Afterwards wrap it with your preferable paper. Then write the beginning of the letters on  construction paper and glue onto the wrapped cardboard. The word families I used were:

all - b (ball), h (hall), t (tall), f (fall), w (wall), m (mall), c (call), st (stall).

eat - b (beat), m (meat), ch (cheat), h (heat), n (neat), s (seat), tr (treat), wh (wheat), f (feat).

ake - b (bake), t (take), c (cake), sn (snake), w (wake), f (fake), m (make), sh (snake), l (lake).

3rd step: Put the beginning of the letter cardboard inside the word family paper towel roll, then your child is ready to have fun reading :))).

The blog I found the idea on, suggested to pass a length of yarn through the cardboard to avoid the child losing inseam paper. I did not do this because my son is very organised and old enough to understand that his studies are very important and he has to take care of his materials. However, in case you think you need to put it together the blog aforementioned has the instruction on how to do it: 

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/2011/06/word-family-pull-out-activity/

After doing this activity I may suggest that you ask your child to write down the words s/he read. There are also web sites to help the child improve their reading skills: 

http://www.starfall.com/

http://www.cookie.com/

http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/

http://pbskids.org/read/

My son had already used this tool and he like it and managed to utter all the sounds to make his words. An incredible and inexpensive idea that I hope will inspire you too. Thanks :))).

Fabiana

Sentence Flip Book

Hello everyone!!!!

Yesterday I posted the new sentence flip book I designed, which is available on TPT -
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sentence-Flip-Book

Today I cut them out and put them together. Below are images to show you how it looked.

It looked quite cute, isn't it? :))).

Have a great day!!!! Thanks!!!

Fabiana

Sentence Flip Book

I designed these simple flip books to develop my son’s reading skills and to reinforce the sight words for beginning readers grasp of literacy. Each mini-booklet is on a single piece of paper for simply access of the user. Each flip book has a simple sentence with a word that changes when the page is flipped over. Each word change is supported by a delightful picture which needs to be cut out and placed together to create a booklet, in which the pictured item in the sentence is "flipped" up to create a new sentence each time.

For example: I see a cute “cat”, which will be flipped for “dog”, “monkey” and “panda”.

Each flip book has a ‘write-in” page for the student to write the sentence s/he read.

The objective of the flip book is to improve reading skills as well as build knowledge of sentence structure and order.

The material is available on TPT, to download your copy just click on the following link:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sentence-Flip-Book


I hope this idea will inspire. Will you please inform your queries, suggestions or comments about this material? I would also love to receive a rating. Thanks very much!!!

Fabiana
www.fabianacarter.com

The pictures below are samples of the flip books:

Genre

Today was a great day, we studied genre. I printed out on Teachers pay Teachers website the genre label to stick on my little library I have at home. The labels are: fairy tale, folktale, realistic fiction, poetry, fantasy, mystery, non-fiction,  biography, autobiography and historical fiction.

I read the labels aloud to my son and explained each one of it to him and also gave examples of books we read. Afterwards, I placed a few books on the table and asked him to label. He was very good in sorting the books out, I was impressed :))). 

Subsequently, I rearrange our library. I asked my son to arrange the books according to the label. It seems that he loves fantasy books :)).

We did not have any book about biography, autobiography and historical fiction which we have to go to our local library and borrow. If you have any suggestions of books please inform me.

I also want to introduce narrative genre to him, I would love to know if you have any suggestion of books I could show him.

Have a terrific day.

Fabiana

Missing word

Hello :))), I created an exercise where the student read the sentence and choose the word that is missing. Then he writes the missing word on the line give. This exercises is available for free on teacherspayteachers website, just follow the link below to obtain your free copy :))). 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Missing-Word

I would love to hear any comment or suggestion about this work :))).

Thanks. Have a great day.

Fabiana

The following image is a sample of the exercise.

Rhyming words

I would like to share a worksheet I found on Teacherspayteachers website which aims to focus on rhyming. I worked with rhyming today with my son, and found this activity very useful and easy to comprehend. The worksheet is free, just click on the link below to download your copy.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Free-Rhyming-Worksheets

Hope it will be useful for you as it was for me. Have a great weekend :))!!!!

World wall

I finally finished our word wall and the picture bellow is a sample of how it looks like. I put it together last night and when my son woke up he was delighted with the pictures and told me it looked very beautiful. 

The words I have already introduce to my son and he knows how to write are: see, my, is, friend, the, I, name, look, at, me, cat, pig, dog, hat, bat, love, you, men, man and up.

These are some of the words I will work on: am, little, to, a, have, we, like, he, for, me, with, she, they, of, are, that, do, go, from, what, said, was,  where, come, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, red,  yellow, orange, blue, green, purple, white, brown, black, pink.

I always try to formulate a sentence every time I teach him a word, so he can also learn how to put it into context.


Bring to my awareness if you have any suggestion or word to add to my wall. Thanks!!!!

Rhyming words with phonetics

I have been researching extensively to discover efficient tools to teach my son how to read. I had begun working with him intensely to teach him how to utter the phonetic sounds of the alphabets. The following link is the song I play every day for my son with the intent for him to learn about phonics. This song is quite cute and very easy to learn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGpsVmWLRFA.
He often asks me the spelling of words, and instead of spelling the requested word, I ask him to repeat the word and think of the sounds he is making. He is becoming very good with recognition of words, and he is extremely proud of himself when he deciphers the name of the word he sought to understand :)).

I read in some teaching websites that the best way to teach your child to read is by not teaching them how to spell words, but to teach how to pronounce the sounds of the alphabets first. Once they are mastered in this matter, spelling becomes easier. Hence, the reason I am focusing on phonics a lot.

In addition, to the work we have been doing, I made a flip books to help him learn how to read. I made 4 books for the familiar words "at", "en", "og" and "an". I wrote the vowels in different colours to teach him awareness of the difference between vowels and consonants. I used construction paper and markers to make the flip books.

We worked with these books today and I was extremely delighted with the results; I highly recommend the use of my book.  I asked my son to pronounce the sound of each letter presented in the book, and repeat it as many times as he needed to be able to recognise the word he was saying. Working with rhyming words are important tools to develop the child's reading skills.


Instructions to make the flip books:

1 - To make the cover, take a construction paper and fold it in half making a rectangle shape. Then bring the endings together and fold it again.

2 - With the paper folded, cut a thin string on the side that is closed to divide the paper in half, and to make two covers.

3 - Meanwhile take a white construction paper and write just one word for example cat, and then just the first letter of the other words you would like to have. For instance "m" to make mat, "r" to make rat, "b" to make bat. I suggest to write the vowels with a different colour so the child can differentiate what is consonant and what is vowel. Afterwards glue the written word onto the cover book.

4 - The next step is to glue the top of the written letters on top of the first consonant of the word written.

5 - I also recommend to write the final word onto the cover page.

The words I used for my flip books were:

"at" - mat, rat, bat and cat.

"og" - log, fog, hog, frog and dog.

"an" - tan, man, can, fan and pan.

"en" -  ten, men, pen and hen.

I am also doing for words ending with "ig" (big, dig, pig and wig), "et" (jet, net, pet and wet), "ip" zip, dip, sip and rip), "ot" (dot, lot, pot and cot), and "ug" (bug, mug, rug and hug).

I found these flip books very useful and a great tool to make my child be familiar with reading. Once you explain and set the path they can do it on their own. It is something they can carry along in a long journey, or even just going to the supermarket. If you desire you may laminate it and bind the books to last longer. You may also add more letters to any group as you feel your child is progressing and ready to be introduced to new words. The words can become more complex as they grow and will develop their reading skills.

I also would like to recommend an incredible website that I used today to support his learning and add in support in the form of improvement in the process of being familiar with phonics. http://www.starfall.com/n/level-a/learn-to-read/load.htm?f

Let me know what you think about the aforementioned please :). If you have any questions feel free to ask as well.  Thanks :)))))!!!!