Mega Word Work

I ventured into my classroom today with my 2 year old.  I actually managed to get quite a bit unpacked and put away with him playing with his cars and trucks and wanting to take out magnadoodles, blocks, markers, books, everything!!!  I am excited beyond words to be moving into a bigger classroom.  My wheels were turning today as I pictured where I wanted everything to go.  Especially my word work center because I just finished wrapping up how it will be organized this year.

  I am going to print, laminate, and hole punch each task card.  They will be held together with a ring.  **Sorry, no pictures, haven't had time to put it together with a 2 year old running around**.  I will create a separate set of task cards for each of my reading groups, based on ability.  I plan on spending A LOT of time at the beginning introducing each task card along with expectations.  I created recording sheets for some of the task cards.  I actually think I will be using a word work journal this year to cut down on some copies.  You can check out the task cards and recording sheets, from my TpT store.  I would love to hear from you if you download them, along with any suggestions for more activities.  Follow my TpT store for more fun stuff to come.  What other awesome ideas to you have for word work??? Enjoy!

***UPDATE***

Now posted in my TpT store are Writing Center Task Cards.  I wanted the set to be versatile for throughout the year.  There are 132 task cards! WHOA!!!  Some cards have writing topics on them like a rainy day, a time I was excited, the beach, my family, etc.  There are topics for creating lists, recipes, newspapers, poems, and stories.  I figured I would just knock them all out at once so I can pick and choose throughout the year.  I think they will work great for an anchor chart bulletin board to give kiddos topics to write about, as well as being hole punched and on a ring in the writing center.  Check it out in my TpT store!   

Going Bananas for Dollar Deals

Check out my latest little find from the Target dollar section...

 

I've been working on center activities for after Spring Break.  (No Spring Break for me until next week...sooooo ready) I've come up with a literacy center for the monkey container.  We will be working with the /oo/ sounds after break, so we'll be 'Goin' Bananas' to practice.  Students will sort the bananas by the oo sound like in soon and the oo sound like in book.  They will feed the monkey only the /oo/ words (like in 'book').  The bananas that make the /oo/ sound, like in soon, will be 'rotten' and the monkey can't eat them!  Then students will record words on the tree map to show how they sorted the bananas.  I use a Sound Muncher in my room weekly and these little guys will be used in the same way ~ to sort words for word study.  Click on the picture to download the bananas and tree map.

p.s.~ elephant and peanut activity for math coming soon!

Ouchie....Ow......Ouch That Hurts!

Who would have ever thought phonics would be so much fun!?!?!  Our spelling words this week are the -ow spelling pattern and we will be reviewing the -ou sound as well.  Firsties can have such a hard time with the -ou, whether it is the long o sound or /ou/ sound.  Well, we are lovin' some ouchies in our room.  I found this fabulous idea from Lindsey at The Teacher Wife.  I introduced my poor, wounded, hurt clown letters today - the o and u.  I gave my kids a long, drawn out story about what happened to them, how they got hurt, and of course what they keep on saying, "OW!!!  That hurts!"  I wore -ow band-aids all over me for the remainder of the day and when the kids would point to one, I gave them a sad face and said, "OW!"  I especially loved the wack-a-doodle looks I got at buses, like, "what is this crazy lady up to now?!?!"  We're going to continue with our ouchie clowns tomorrow and practice reading all our -ow and -ou words throughout the week.  A quick stop at the dollar store tonight and now my firsties will be bandaged up with their -ow and -ou words the rest of the week. 

I purchased Lindsey's Clown unit on TPT and these cute little guys were in there!  We wrote our ow and ou words on band-aids and stuck them on our chart.