The Gingerbread Man

This is one of my favorite times of year. I love the lights, the decorations, the excitement, and of course the books! One of my favorite units to teach when I was a first grade teacher was the gingerbread unit. We had a wonderful time comparing and contrasting the numerous versions of the Gingerbread Man. My personal children's favorite this year is the Gingerbread Cowboy. It is always fun to read this story to them and I think they enjoy it a little more with the southern accent I add to the reading.

Below I have compelled a list of the 16 versions of the Gingerbread Man I have come across. We were able to find most of these at the school or public library. These are great to read at home or in the classroom. The kids love to point out the similarities and differences. 

This year I held our first annual Gingerbread Night. Our students and families were invited to come down and take part in making gingerbread houses, gingerbread men glyphs, and reindeer food. If you would like to hold a Gingerbread Night at your school I have put together all you will need to run the night. Check out this FREEBIE for all that you will need to hold your own Gingerbread Night. We had a blast and I hope to make it even bigger next year!!

FREEBIE!! Gingerbread Night

If you do something like this at your school or need some guidance on what worked and didn't work for me feel free to email me or leave a comment and I would be more than happy to help! Until then, I hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful holiday season!!

Click Clack Moo - Literacy Bag

Check out my newest literacy bag. It is a great way to increase parent involvement in your classroom! This is ready to print and assemble.

Enjoy!!

Click Clack Moo Short Vowel Literacy Bag

Success is Sweet!

Goal setting is one of my favorite things to do with my groups. It really gives my kiddos a sense of where we are going and why they come to see me each day. With the goals that each group has made for themselves individually, they also came up with a group goal. (You could track individual goals in a classroom setting but I have over 80 so we stuck to groups.) In the picture below I have kinder through second grade and each group in that grade level has a marshmallow stick. When each group reaches their goal they receive a marshmallow on their groups stick. Which ever group per grade level wins will receive a "smores" party. After each quarter the marshmallows are taken down and we start fresh. 

I have been very impressed with the enthusiasm my kiddos have shown in reaching their goals. They have not only been pushing themselves but they have been helping their team members in positive and productive ways. 

If you would like to have your kiddos set goals to reach I have included a simple goal sheet that you can download for free. 

Goal Sheet Free Download

Alphabet Literacy Bag

Literacy Bags are something the parents at our school had recently asked for. I know many parents love to help their students at home but are often at a loss with what to do. These literacy bags take away the guess work. In my classroom these bags are checked out to families for one week. I created QR codes that I print and connect to a google doc so that I know which bag is where. 

Once the bags are home they read the book which the bags theme is based on and then they have activities to play, QR codes that link to YouTube videos as well as online activities, journal prompts, parent discussion cards and even simple kid friendly recipes. 

The first bag I created was the Alphabet Rescue Bag. I used the book Alphabet Rescue and came up with activities based around the book. This bag was created for my kinder families.

Again, this is a great way to get parents involved in their child's education. Check it out and if you have any recommendations for any literacy bags let me know!

Have fun and Happy Teaching! 

Alphabet Literacy Bag

Tap it, Map it, Zap it

Hi Everyone!

Well I took a little break from blogging due to the holidays and getting back into the swing of things at school! I made it back though! So what I wanted to share today was a method to sounding out words that I began using recently with all my kiddos kinder-3rd. It is called Tap it, Map it, Zap it. With this strategy I have found that my students are becoming better spellers and are more conscious when they read and write.

The first thing I do is introduce Tap It. The students will hold up their fingers and tap their index finger to their thumb as they say the sounds in a word. For example, I say dog and they say /d/ /o/ /g/ as they tap their fingers. They will then hold up how many sounds that they tapped out.

I will then tell them to map it. At this point the students will move to their sound boxes and use those to map the sounds out loud.

To finish it up I will say "ZAP IT" and all of the students will recode the word. In this case they would say "dog".

For my second and third graders we take it a step further and Graph It. I will use large box graphing paper and the students will write the sounds they heard in each box. As they improve their writing I add words with blends, vowel pairs, silent e, etc. In these cases the students will graph the words with one sound in each box. For example, flag would be graphed in 3 boxes: fl-a-g. The word lake would also be in 3 boxes: l-a-ke.

I love how quickly my students have caught on to this strategy and how often they use it in their classrooms!

If you have used this strategy or have tried it since reading this post let me know how it goes for you!!