Kindergarten Literacy Centers

Calling all kindergarten teachers! I've had so many requests to make kindergarten centers, so I gave it a shot. I have a friend using them and she loves them (unless she's just being nice-LOL). Before I post them, I wanted to ask you all! Below is a preview of what they look like. Take a look kinder teachers! I can tweak anything to fit  your classrooms better if you need. I looked at the standards closely and thought back to my days teaching reading for those kinders. I also thought May kinders are about where my first graders are at the beginning of the year.

Next year I'll working more closely with kindergarten since I will be changing my job. That's right folks! You'll now be getting more "snippets" about reading for k-3. I'll be teaching reading to the k-3 students in my school who need a little extra TLC. I'm  SOOO excited. The best part is I get to have more time with my own little boys at home. This will be part time! I get to be a mommy and a teacher. When I'm working full time, it feels like my students get all of my patience attention and then there isn't much left when I get home. My youngest is 1 1/2 and I realized that he will be ready for school before I know it. I need to treasure these years!

Anyway...on to the kinder centers . Critiques are welcome!

It looks a lot like my first grade centers, but much more basic. I can also make a menu with only 3 rows so it's not as overwhelming. What do you think?

Read and Sequence has few words and lots of pictures!

Read, Visualize, Draw is very basic with more picture clues.

There are 2 choices for Read, THink, Match and each of those has two levels. One level using only a few sight words and then the word that would match the picture. The other level has a second sentence or a longer first sentence. 

Rebuild a poem has sight words, picture clues and sound out words. I made sentence strips to help.

Spring Blends: Look at the picture on the bee and sort based on the beginning blend. The worksheet asks them only to write the blend, not the word. 

Is it e?: This center has picture cards with the vowel missing. They need to decide if the vowel is e or not. You can choose how many picture cards are appropriate for your class.   I made 9 with e and 9 without.

Sunshine Words: Match the sunshine parts to make a word. I made a bunch so you could choose. Using all of them would be overwhelming, but you could just choose three endings (like -at, -an, -ap) and then more beginnings. 

Real or not: students sound out the words on the frogs and decide if they are real or not. 

Word Race: Roll the sight word cube. Write the word (or color it in, depending on which sheet you choose). The word that fills up the boxes first wins. Students can keep rolling until their boards are full. 

Sticker Story

BE an Author: I made two versions of this. Both have the same pictures, but one has the words "I like to..." and the student will fill in the rest. The other has no words.

Spin and Write: Spin the spinner on the picture board. Write a sentence (or words) about that picture. 

Match a Sentence: Read first part of sentence and match it to the ending. I tried to use very basic sight words and sound out words only. PIcture clues will also help.

Flip a sentence: Make a flip book. Students will mix and match to make sentences. I used sight words, picture clues, and sound out words.

Sentence Scrambler: 4 basic sentences 

Build a sentence (only three words in the sentence/ with picture clues)

WOuld love to give one away for free too!

    

A way to help

There are two amazing opportunities  to help the victims in OK. This is such an amazing thing that Teacher's Notebook is organizing. There are SO many fantastic products. I just bought it and WOW! I also donated two of my products: Writing Rubrics Mega Pack and Fairy Tales Pack. As of right now, this has already raised over $15,000!!  You definitely want to check this out:

Another fabulous opportunity to help is by donating to this amazing fundraiser organized by Teacher's Treasure Chest.  Click on the picture to see all of the amazing units you can get by donating only $25. Thanks so much to Ashley for organizing this! 

Comparing stories, Geometry, Maps and More

Good morning everyone! I'm finally starting to do the countdown. I don't know how many days are left, but I'm counting weeks. We have only four weeks left! I know some of you are already done or have only days left. It's crunch time now! 

Here are a few things we did this week. 

We read several versions of Jack and the Beanstalk. First, we read the original and they sequenced the story with a Read and Sequence sheet from my Fairy Tale unit. 

Then we read Jenny and the Cornstalk. 

This book is the perfect book to do a Venn diagram. As I read, they would raise their hands if they found a similarity or a different. I wrote it on sentence strips (if I had more time, I would've had them write it). Then we placed it on our  invisible Venn diagram. 

After reading, we made sure our sentence strips were in order. We sequenced both stories using the sentence strips. This made it easier to do our writing assignment which came next. I don't have a picture of it though. :( For shared writing, we used our class venn diagram to write about how these two stories were alike and different. I really wish I took a picture! I'll update this post after I get a pic.  I color coordinated it so the opening and closing sentences were one color, the similarities another color and the differences in yet another color. For this one, we retold the story together, putting similarities and differences as we went. The colors helped to see the structure of our paper. I love shared writing! It's such a nice way to teach those difficult writing skills. 

Kids did their own venn diagrams on their own too.

We also read Giants Have Feelings Too. I love this book because it shows the giant's perspective. 

Then we completed this worksheet:

I love this because it really makes them think about both "sides".

Here are two other books we read that are also really fun:

and for one of my guided reading reading groups, we read these from readinga-z.com

 

In writing workshop, we tried to do our own comparative writing. It is tough for them to do that on their own! Last week we had read two versions of Three Little Pigs and used sticky notes to write down similarities and differences. I took my sticky notes and organized them like this to show sequence. The similarities have just one sticky and the differences have two to show the two stories. For example, the two stories were the same until after the wolf blew down the houses. Then in one story, he ate the first two pigs but in the other, the pigs ran away to the 3rd brother's house.

It was way too hard for most to write a comparison like this (sequencing the story and comparing together), so  we used this format: Opening sentence. Name two similarities, two differences then closing. 

After taking this picture, I drew two lines at the bottom in that  same blue color for the closing. This was much easier!

 For Social Studies, we did map skills. One of the activities we did was make our own maps. I should've taken a picture when they were done!

This comes from Michelle's unit:

THere are so many cute activities in this unit!

In math, we are deep into geometry. We did a lot of activities  from Jen's fabulous unit:

They loved the geoboards! There are also tons of cute flashcards in here that I love!

I also used a ton of stuff from this fabulous unit:

I love this shape flip book and my students were SO excited about the Star Wars theme. 

Last but not least, I've been working on Kindergarten centers. It's late for this year, but maybe you could use it next year. Here's a peak at the menu. If you are a kinder teacher and would like to take a peak at it to give me some input before I post it, I would LOVE that! 

Cinderella Freebie and a Winner

Hi everyone! Just a quick post to announce the winner of my Fairy Tale pack and a little freebie for you all. Congrats to Brandy from Firstie Kidoodles! I'll email you my Fairy Tale pack tonight. :) I'll classroom post more action shots from this unit  later this week. I love me some fairy tales! 

Here's a little freebie for you all. I hope you can use it. :) If you download, I'd love to hear what you think. Your comments about your favorite fairy tales were so fun to read. :)

Click on the picture to download this freebie:

Clip art by Melonheadz

Head over to my Facebook page to see the other winner over there!

To check out the rest of this Fairy Tale literacy pack, click here. 

Fairy Tale Unit

Happy Mother's Day! I promised I'd show a full preview of my fairy tale unit. We are having so much fun with this. We will be doing more fairy tale activities this week because there is so much to choose from! 

Goldilocks: 

• character analysis
• Read and sequence
• Sequence writing
• cause and effect
• Author's purpose

Cinderella: 

• character feeling chart
• Read, THink, Match
• two story maps
• character analysis
• Writing about endings
• Comparing stories (T chart and writing)

Jack and the Beanstalk: 

• Character Analysis
• Should Jack Take the Gold? T chart 
• Read and Sequence
• Venn Diagram (to use with Jenny and the Cornstalk)

3 Little Pigs: 

• Cause and effect
• character analysis
• Read and Sequence
• 2 Story maps and summary page
• Venn Diagram
• T chart
• Comparing Tales writing page and graphic organizer

• My Side of the Story: speech bubbles with writing page
• Persuasive writing: convincing reader that a bad character isn't so bad

Hansel and Gretel

• character analysis
• Problem solution map

• Little Red Riding Hood: Read and Sequence and Author's Purpose
• Rumpelstiltskin story map
• Snow White: Character feelings comparison chart and Read, Think, Match (not pictured)

• Fairy Tale opinion questions
• Favorite story prompt with rubric (two formats)
• 2 Sentence writing pages

• Story maps for any fairy tale
• Read, Visualize Draw for any fairy tale
• Flip a Fairy Tale writing activity

• Comparing Fairy Tales writing prompt (to use with any fairy tale): 3 formats

• Comparing Stories chart
• Venn Diagram
• Comparing tales sticky note planning page and writing page

Word Work: 

• Enchanted e: Making words with and without silent e
• Syllable sort: two options
• Royal Words: real or nonsense
• Noun Sort

• Fill a Verb
• Summary Slide
• Sentence Scrambler
•  

• Read, Think, Match 
• Fairy Tale letter writing
• Mix a Fairy tale (with picture  cards and sorting mat to guide writing)

You can get this unit at my TPT store.