Checkin' Chicken Reading Strategy

 The Beanie Baby reading strategies are so good to have in the classroom. They are great to remind early readers of the strategies they need to use when reading. As a Reading Recovery teacher, another strategy we teach children is to make their eyes go to the end of words and check the ending. I came up with 'Checkin' Chicken' to add to the Beanie Baby strategies.

                              

If you would like a copy of my' Checkin' Chicken' reading strategy you can download it for free at  TPT HERE

Tt is for Tortoise

When it is early days in Kinder, I like to give my little ones lots of practise  cutting out to develop fine motor skills. There are some children who come to school and they don't know how to hold a pair of scissors. This little craft activity gives cutting out practise and supports your sound work as well as early number recognition. The little ones need to match the pattern on the tortoise matching numbers 1-10.

 

This little one did a good job of cutting out.

This is the display in my classroom. So cute!

If you would like this little activity you can download it for free at my TPT store HERE.

 

Read, Read, Read

I have had this poster in my classroom for many years. When I first made it, I had done it all by hand. I recently remade it. It looks so cute with  clipart I purchased from scrappin’doodles. It looks much nicer than my handwritten one!  I thought I would like to share it with you.

If you would like to download it for free, go to my TPT store HERE

The Kissing Hand

The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn is an adorable story about a little raccoon named Chester who is worried about starting school. It is the perfect story to read to your class at the beginning of Kindergarten.

I just love the craft activity we did of Chester. I found some little heart embellishments at a craft store that finished off Chester perfectly.

 We did text to self connections about how the children felt on their first day of school. 

We created an anchor chart of their emotions and then I gave the little ones a copy of the emotions and they chose which emotion or emotions they felt on their first day of school and they pasted them onto their worksheet. We talked about how you could feel more than one emotion. For example, while they might have been excited, they could feel scared.

I

                                                We made inferences about Chester.

The children can’t write sentences on their own yet so I had the sentences on strips and they pasted them onto their worksheet and illustrated them.

For a bit of fun we talked about who might be Chester’s best friend. I had a set of woodland animals laminated and put them into a bag. Before we began, the children had a guess who they thought would be Chester’s best friend and we discussed that it could be any of the animals because it was just luck which animal would be selected from the bag. Of course there were squeals of delight when their chosen animal was selected.

I purchased a Chester soft toy from Book Depository that I give to those children to hold who need some extra TLC. 

Just the other day one of my little ones was upset and it was so sweet when another little one brought Chester over and said "Chester will make you feel better".

Oh how that warmed my heart! Children can be so adorable. 

If you would like to purchase my Kissing Hand activities they are available on TPT  HERE

The Journey Has Begun

I have finally joined the blogger world. I have been following many wonderful blogs over the past year and have gained some fantastic ideas and resources from some very creative teachers. 
I hope I can give something back. 

Becoming a blogger and not just a follower is so new to me. 

I feel like a baby learning to walk!