Using games and activities that are fun will help to engage children and they will learn skills without realizing that they are learning. It is wonderful to see them taking risks and challenges and enjoying learning. I have always tried to include games in my guided reading lessons and my literacy blocks. Children can often get frustrated if they are working hard at learning to decode or make meaning of what they are reading. Using games to focus on some of the skills relieves some of that stress and allows them to practice the skills in a fun environment. I use lots of different boxed games, but I also use task cards and other games that I have created. The ones that I have made are specific for what I might be covering in groups. I have many different themes for my sight words so that they are always fun to use because they are linked to different holidays, or special times. Here are some other types of activities that I have used with my students. Depending on the abilities and the needs, I have made the materials simple for learning letter sounds and names and more difficult for learning about figurative language and parts of speech. I have also created activities for the interactive whiteboard. Bingo games that go with various topics are also fun to create. If you are interested in checking out some of these products or other literacy activities that I have created, click here. Here is a free sample from the set of game boards. Click the image below to get your copy. I have fun creating games and I love seeing the children react when a new game is presented to them. But more importantly, I am excited to see them learning skills that they were struggling with. It is so thrilling to see them applying the skills to their reading and writing lessons. I would love to hear how you use games in your classroom to teach skills. Related Posts
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This video has been floating around on Facebook for some time now. It really makes you stop and think about how confusing the English language can be to those learning English as a second language. Pronunciation and SpellingPronunciation is not the only thing that is difficult. Many words are spelled the same way but have different meanings depending on how they are used. Here is a small sampling of some words in our language that have different meanings and pronunciations for the same spellings. lead, content, row, sow, live, wind, present, minute Confusion For Second Language LearnersPeople also use words in ways that are very confusing for second language learners. My daughter-in-law is Korean, and she often asks me what I mean when I use an expression or idiom. We are unaware of how much of our language usage is not literal. I love the Amelia Bedelia books because they show just how literally some of the sayings are interpreted by someone who doesn't know the current jargon or expression. Using idioms in the classroomA couple of weeks ago, my reading group was reading a story from the Frog and Toad series that talked about spring being around the corner. Afterwards, I gave them some different idioms and a list of the meanings in a mixed up order and asked them to match them up. It was very interesting to see what choices they made. Most of the sayings were familiar, but there were some that were not. I then read them the book Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish. They found it to be very funny and asked if we could read some more during our reading group time. These books are perfect for showing the difference between figurative language and literal language. We just finished reading Good Work, Amelia Bedelia. I created some activities to go along with the story. We will be doing them this week. Click the image at the bottom of the page to get your own copy to try out. A couple of years ago I did a guest post about Amelia Bedelia and figurative language. At that time, I had a student who was very literal. He really did not understand that we used expressions which had different meanings. Here are some excerpts from my post from back then. Have you ever found an activity or unit that you try that just takes off on it's own path? I have had this happen many times. It always amazes me when an idea that starts out as a teachable moment or a small idea takes on a mind of its own and blossoms into a larger study. Our current bloom is idioms. What started as an introduction to Amelia Bedelia for a couple of literal learners, has turned into a fantastic learning experience. It has become rich with language and writing opportunities. It has so engaged my students, that they are driving their families nuts by catching every idiom or figurative expression that is spoken. Sometimes I have to call for a time out so that we can actually focus on the topics being studied. Not that I mind, though. It is always rewarding to see the kids having fun with something that they are studying. I teach a grade 2/3 class and I wanted to find some books that would capture their interest and be appropriate for reading groups. I scored with Amelia Bedelia. There are some I Can Read versions that are great for my struggling readers, some of the regular editions that are suitable for my stronger grade 2s and my weaker grade 3s, and now the new chapter books that work with my stronger readers. Right now, everyone is reading about Amelia Bedelia. This is a first! What I enjoy most about having the same characters, is that we can really look closely at them as we meet them in different stories. Everyone is familiar with Amelia Bedelia and Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. Now they are meeting Amelia Bedelia's parents in the chapter books because they are stories about her when she was a little girl. They love making connections as they read about her adventures. Herman Parish (nephew of Peggy Parish) has done a wonderful job with these books. He also has some new I Can Read books about Amelia Bedelia as a young child. They are sure to be a hit as well. Did you catch the idioms and figurative language used in the above excerpts? I had so much teaching about idioms, that I decided to create my own activities. Check them out below. Click the image to get your free copy of activities for Good Work, Amelia Bedelia. I hope you enjoy using them. Children love to play with money and they get very excited when they have the opportunity to use it for activities. This makes it a great tool for teaching many different math skills as well as life lessons. Here are several money products that I have used with my students to help them better understand how money is used. One of the first things we want them to be able to do is recognize currency and the value of each coin or bill. They need to be able to count money and figure out how much money is needed for various purchases. These products focus on counting coins and deciding what coins are needed to make different amounts. Once children are able to count money, they need to be able to produce the correct amounts in order to make purchases. They also need to know how to count change when they overpay so they are able to manage their money as they use it in the real world. Money is also a great tool for learning how to do regrouping. I often taught my students that they were going to the bank when they needed more ones or tens or when they had too many and had to trade them in for larger amounts. They would actually use the coins to do the math transactions and this helped them to better understand the concept of regrouping. Word problems can be difficult for children because not only do they need to do the math, they need to understand what the words mean in order to do the math questions. Using money as manipulatives can sometimes help with making sense of the problems. These word problems are some examples of things that children could encounter in real life. This is one of my favorite units. It was created with my students. It started out as a simple activity and grew to be one of our most memorable moments that year. We created a spring fundraiser to raise money for a special field trip. We made many different things to sell. It was a perfect way to put into practice the skills we had worked on during the unit. (It works well for both Canadian and American money.) We recently stopped using the penny in Canada. This created some confusion for businesses, so it was necessary to begin rounding up or down when making change. I created this product to address this situation. This is a set of task cards that helps children to identify and count coins and match them up with the written form of the money amounts. Here are my Canadian money products all in one place. For three years before I retired, my class collected Pennies for Presents to help buy gifts for needy families at Christmas time. This was a wonderful way to give to others, but the added bonus was learning how to count money as we kept an on-going tally of what was collected each day. You can read about it here. I hope that you find some of these ideas helpful for teaching about money in your classroom.
In Canada, Thanksgiving comes in early October. This is a time for thinking about others and for being grateful for all the blessings we have. I feel that it is important to focus on giving rather than receiving, and this is a good start to preparing for the Christmas season that will be upon us before we know it. I love to use themes when presenting Math and Language concepts because they allow for many connections in real life. Real life connections are necessary if we want our students to be able to apply what they learn and find it meaningful. Here is a sample math and language activity that I created using Thanksgiving as the theme. Click on the image to get a copy. If you would like to try some other Fall/Thanksgiving activities, check out my Fall/Thanksgiving bundle.
We are in the middle of summer, and sports are happening all around us. It is fun to use a sports theme when learning as well. I have created these activities to provide opportunities for children to have fun while they are learning. You can check them out by clicking here or on the image. Each activity is available individually as well.
Here is a free template for you to use so you can personalize your cards to meet whatever curriculum you would like to focus on. Just click on the image to get your copy.
I created these activities because they represent being team players. I believe that it is important to focus on being good team players, so I wrote a blog about it. You can check it out here.
The concept of time is a huge one for children. Younger children often ask questions such as "How much longer until we get there?" Days, weeks, months, and years are chunks of time that they struggle to grasp when they are little. How many times have you had to say things like: "We will see them in 4 more sleeps."
Birthdays come and within weeks they are already talking about who they will invite to their next birthday party. A year is such a long time away for little ones. It is important to provide some kind of markers to help them better understand the passage of time. Hour glasses were used as a visual of time passing. Calendars are great to use because children can see the days and mark them off as they pass. Holidays and special days are often used as markers as well because there tends to be something happening each month. If these special days are on the calendar, they can count the days until they come.
Children are intrigued with time and they enjoy playing games that use time. I know that one of the favorites for my students was What Time Is It Mr Wolf? They would squeal and laugh as they ran away at dinner time.
Learning to tell time needs to be done sequentially as well so that it is easier to understand and apply to daily life. Using a schedule for routines and activities can be a great place to start introducing more specific time concepts. As they become more familiar with what happens when, and about how long it lasts, they will be able to better understand more specific concepts of time and how the clock works.
Starting with general times such as times of the school day will help them to apply times to real life. Putting up visuals with the time beside them will also help.
It is important to make sure that both analog and digital time are part of the exposure to clocks as both are still used in our daily experiences. Of course, it is easier for most children to read a digital clock, so it means that they will need to practice more with analog clocks to become proficient at reading them. Using manipulatives to actually move the hands of the clock will help to imprint the concepts.
It will still be confusing for many children, but with continued practice and exposure to telling time and seeing the time written out or displayed, they will eventually become more able to use it effectively. The confusion will disappear and the questions will become less frequent.
I have put together some sets of task cards to help with telling time. There are 3 sets of clocks with times on them and there is a set of clock templates. These are available as a bundle here or as individual products as well. Click on the image to learn more.
Routines and schedules are important for many people. They help to avoid the unexpected by knowing what is happening in advance. They also provide for some consistency. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be some times when there are changes, but those changes will be better handled if there is preparation ahead of time.
I have created a set of task cards to help with organizing these routines and activities. Included in this package are cards with the most common daily routines and school subjects. There is also a blank card for adding the unexpected. Each card has a visual of the activity as well as the words below it. There is also a blank clock face and digital frame so that the times can be added that work with the various schedules or routines.
Here are some samples from the package.
I have also created separate packages for home routines and school activities. Click on the images to see more.
Geometry is a hands on math unit that kids find engaging. I have been creating new products for beginning geometry and I can't seem to get enough of it. The more I create, the more ideas I get. I guess it is just as engaging for teachers as it is for students.
When I was teaching grade 2/3, I created several geometry products that I used in my classroom. I didn't realize that they were too advanced for younger students until my daughter-in-law started her practicum in a grade 1/2 class. She needed to introduce geometry for the first time to her students.
I decided to create some task cards for her to use. The focus was on recognizing 2D shapes and being able to identify them in our environment as well. I also decided to create a 2D and 3D bingo set to make the transition from working with 2D shapes to 3D solids.
If you are interested in trying out different hands on activities, check out the geometry category at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Now that I am retired, I have the opportunity to volunteer and work with other teachers and also work with small groups of children. This work inspired the following product. I created it for a teacher who wanted to help her students learn more about parts of speech and descriptive language.
Children love to make silly sentences. These sentences use words that they identify with a favorite celebration - Halloween.
There are 24 different cards for each part of speech. The pumpkin cards are the adjectives and the spider webs are the verbs. Step one is to match up the words with the numbers . If you put a pumpkin above the adjective column and a web above the verb column, it will make it easier for the children to place them in the correct place. After practicing this for a few times, the symbols won't be necessary any longer.
If you enjoy working with silly sentences, I have also created a more generic set of cards that uses animals for nouns and emotions for the adjectives. The verbs are action words that children will use and be familiar with. Click here if you would like to check it out.
February is full of different celebrations. Groundhog Day is the start of these events. In our part of the world, the groundhog forecast was for an early spring. So far it is definitely seeming to be so. We have had beautiful sunny days and mild temperatures. Flowers are starting to bloom and the campfires are becoming a regular occurrence on the beaches.
At school, we took some time to look at what the groundhog predictions were and then we played some sight word bingo with the groundhog sight word cards and the spring nouns cards. My kids love playing games and I try to use a variety of themes to reinforce the same skills or concepts. I have created many different themed Dolch sight words sets so it never becomes "old" for them. These sight words and bingo cards are available in my TPT store. I combined the Spring Dolch nouns with the Groundhog Dolch sight words to do sentence building. It was a hit. It was interesting to see all the different ways they used the cards that were given to them. I wish I had taken more pictures so I could share them with you. After the sentence games, I handed out the noun bingo cards and the sight word bingo cards and they played with them.
Valentine's Day is another big celebration in February. We didn't have much time to devote to this because of other activities happening, but we did spend the morning doing Valentine themed activities. Of course, handing out and receiving valentines is a big part of the celebration, so we had to have a special place to put them.
Buddy classes combined to make these special bags, and they were so cute, a colleague and I had to join in on the fun. Each class did them a bit differently, but it was fun to see these frogs hanging around in most of the primary classrooms in the school. We also had a school wide skating day. Our class went in the afternoon, so it was a bit different doing our valentines activities in the morning instead of the afternoon.
Family Day is a fairly new holiday for us in BC. We had February 9 off to spend with families. It was nice to take a break and just enjoy family and friends for a day.
Writing is a big focus at this time of the year. We are currently working on writing stories and developing writing skills. Here are some samples of what we have been doing.
We have been learning about the parts of speech. We decided to practice using adjectives, nouns, and verbs to create silly sentences. Each child chose 5 adjectives, 5 nouns, and 5 verbs. I compiled them and typed them out on individual strips. Then each child was given random adjectives, nouns, and verbs. They illustrated each word and here are the results. We will be putting them together as a flip book after they come off the bulletin board.
Coming up with descriptive language that is precise and creates images is tricky for young kids. I decided to try and get them to come up with single words that would describe things. Then we combined them to create poems. They were excited to see the diamond shape of the poems. The kids enjoyed trying these out after we did some class examples. Here are some of our "diamond" poems.
The Lunar New Year was the focus on Thursday afternoon. This is a big celebration in many parts of the world. Here in North America, most people think of it as Chinese New Year, but because my daughter-in-law is Korean, I prefer to think of it in broader terms. The Lunar New Year is an important celebration there too.
A few years ago, I learned to play a game that is played by many families in Korea. It is called "yut". When I was in Korea, I bought some sets for my class. We played the game on Thursday afternoon. My grandson knows the game well and he was able to help the other students with the rules. I wish I had pictures, but I was busy playing with a couple of students.
Well, I hope you enjoyed my update for February. March is going to be a blur of excitement as well. We will be celebrating 100s day, St. Patrick's Day, spring, and also doing our student-led conferences.
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About Me Charlene Sequeira
I am a wife, mother of 4, grandmother of 9, and a retired primary and music teacher. I love working with kids and continue to volunteer at school and teach ukulele. Categories
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