Candy Land: Parts of Speech

Hey everyone!!!!

I hope this finds you with a smile on your face and like our school we are in fourth quarter already.  I talked about Jen Stamm and her AWESOME material's she has over at teacherspayteachers. If you haven't checked her out...you really should.  She has even made things for me.  Well...I popped over to her page again one day and found out she made...drum roll please...CANDY LAND GAMES!!!!!  That was my all time favorite game to play when I was little.  So, of course I bought all of them.  I even asked her if she could do an alphabet one for my students who are in preschool and kindergarten.  As soon as I finish printing them out and getting the materials together I will continue to post more.  Here is one of them I have completed with my students.

With this...I divided the student's up into groups and made sure that the different learning ability levels were mixed in.  

They had to work as a team to come up with the answer, instead of just one person providing the answer all the time.

Cards are just like the original candy land cards, except they have words on them.

Just bought an Candy Land game from Walmart for $5.  Now days they don't have ones with the cards.  They just have a spinner, board, and the pieces in it.

Well...I highly recommend her.  I cannot speak enough about her work.  

Happy Learning!!!

Shannon

Scavenger Hunts

Hello!!!!

I am a big time crafter when it comes to making things, cards and scrapbooking, but due to being so busy with work, I have to rely on my favorite website.  teacherspayteachers When I'm on that website, I don't always find what I am looking for, but you can put out a request of what you want and see if another person has something similar or you can work out a deal and they make it for you.  I have been working with an awesome lady that has been making my scavenger hunts.  Her name is Jen Stamm.  It started out with...ummm...I guess I really don't know anymore, because she has made so many awesome scavenger hunts for me that I own then all and continue to buy as she makes more. She is now making candy land games and we played one yesterday for the first time and the kids just loved that!  I will post that in another post.  If I were you and what learning games and fun games to head over to her page.  Here is the link Jen Stamm  

This is how I do it in my classroom, on Thursday's I set up the scavenger hunts and determine which ones the students will do.  Some of the scavenger hunts are harder then others, do I pick which ones will work with the different students.  I did make an excel sheet, so I do know what student has already done that scavenger hunt.  Below are some pictures to see some of the action.  Did I mention how much my student's love these?  They are always begging to do it more then just once a week.

I set it up right away in the morning and it just so happened that one of the student's was absent.  HEHE so I got the other special education teacher hunting for the cards.  :-)

Happy Learning!

Shannon

Movement

I've always known that you need to get student's up and moving around to get the energy flowing back and recess is not always coming fast enough for it to happen.  I recently went to a workshop that is called SMART and they really focus on movement, the brain and activities that incorporate learning along with learning.  They had us up and moving and normally I'm one of those teachers that are like ya right you aren't getting me to do this, but it was so much fun that when I came back I ordered the different CD's that I loved.  The one advice the presenter's said was make sure to practice before you have your students do it.  Well, knowing my special education student's I wanted to learn right along with them and let them know it's okay to make mistakes.  We sure had fun learning together.  Then they got the bright idea to do the Cha Cha slide too and honestly I didn't care as long as they were getting up and moving around before we switched to another area of learning.  Here are some video's to show you what we are doing.  I do still have some student's that are quite shy about doing it.  I also showed the other special education teacher in my room that was helping.  Hope you enjoy!

Happy Learning!!

Shannon 

Being Unusually Good

When your teaching whether it's a regular education classroom or a special education classroom you need that little extra boost for the students to work for. I found this on teacherspayteachers and you can find it under the name of Being Unusually Good. It comes with bugs and frogs. The students have to earn bugs for points or if they not behaving a frog. We have it set up that the students have to earn 5 frogs before they get a prize. The other special education teacher and I put a prize box together. If they get a frog all the their bugs have to go back. If they end up with 5 frogs, then the student and I have to call the parents. Right now, the most frogs I have seen one of my students get 2 frogs, but if they get a bug even though they may have 2 frogs, all those frogs disappear. Hope you enjoy!!!

 

 

 

Happy Learning!!!

Shannon

 

Spelling Scrabble

I'm always looking for ways to teach the student's their spelling words besides writing them over and over again or worksheets after worksheets. A kindergarten teacher and I were talking one day at lunch and the idea of using scrabble letters to make their spellings words. I ran with the idea from there. I found a free board online that you can print off and put the pages together. I would recommend laminating the papers, so that you can use it for a long time. I found it at Quirky Artist Loft: www.quirkyartistloft.blogspot.com/2012/11/diy-printable-scrabble-board.html

I looked at her blog to see if you could search for it and I was unable to find a spot that said search.

Once I printed that out and matched all the sides together, because you will have to cut off parts to match it up to the other side. You'll see when you print it out that the first sheet will say A1 and A1 and then the bottom sheet will say A1 and A3. You will just have to cut off one side of the A1 and line it up with the A1. It sound's tricky, but it actually isn't.

Then the fun begin with seraching for scrabble tiles besides having to buy a whole bunch of scrabble games. I went on ebay, Amazon and then I bought the Bananagram game and used those tiles. I then separated them out into each bag with all the same letters.

I wasn't for sure how to go about introducing this game, because I have younger students in here and some 2nd and 3rd grade students. I combinded the studenet's based on what spelling level they were. Here is how I started it:

1. Each group get's a game board and a list of their spelling words.

2. I took each spelling word and put the tiles that spelled that word into a pile and continued with each spelling word. Yes there was duplicate letters in the pile.

3. Did the same for the other group. I would highly recommend doing the separating of the words before the day you want to play the scrabble game.

4. If you plan on playing the game more then once, put all the tiles for one game board in a bag and then all the tiles for the other game board in another bag.

5. The next part was a little hard, because I knew once the older kids got the hang of how to play the game and understand that the tiles had to spell a spelling word and that you couldn't put a letter below another tile that wouldn't spell a word. With the younger kids, I let them for the first time on the board just see if they can spell a word, but I will know teach them how to actually play the game.

I hope this makes sense! If not, email me! Here are some pictures!

 

Happy Learning!!

Shannon

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry.....

I know it has been extremely long since I have posted!  Life has been truly busy and I've been working on a scrapbook album for my cousins wife who has stage 4 breast cancer and now with numerous of spots on her brain.  I have finally finished that and got it sent off to them.

I'm currently working on spelling games and word games using scrabble letter tiles.  I'm always looking for new activities for the students to work on besides worksheets and repetitive work.  

I am still working on my nursery rhyme units and let me tell you they are coming along great and the students love them. It makes me feel more organized and feel a sense of accomplishment having something more structured for them. To me it doesn't feel like repetitive work and they love it!!!  I will take pictures again and post as now we have some letters up on the tree.

Well, time to make supper!  Stay warm!

Happy Learning!!!

Shannon

Nursery Rhyme Units

With being a special education teacher you always have to be on your toes changing materials, be ready to quick change something on a lesson because the students don't understand the concept and if they catch on to the concept really fast and you need to challenge them more. I teach a wide variety of ages from birth to 21. Granted, I'm only in the elementary building and the highest grade level that's in our school is 6th grade. With also being the early childhood special education teacher, I feel like I'm always having to find different materials or what I'm finding is pinpointing the kinds of topics I want the students to grasp. I was at a loss and didn't honestly know where I needed to go from there. I talked with the kindergarten teacher finding out more with what the students need to learn with the changes in our reading curriculum. The curriculum now is a lot harder then before. She stated that she used to do nursery rhymes that would focus on teaching students a nursery rhyme, identifying letter, sequencing, numbers and rhyming. I took that idea and ran with it.

My first step was determine if I wanted this to surround a certain theme. Looking through my books, I found the "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" book. I really liked the idea of the coconut tree and having coconuts with letters on them. Then I would place them on the tree and as we learned so many letters I would drop them to the bottom of the tree like the letters fell off the tree.

Once I picked my theme, I went to my principal and asked if I could pain the actual tree on my wall otherwise every year I would be remaking the tree and wasting a whole bunch of paper. The kindergarten teacher helped me with the painting. We found a picture of a palm tree, copied it on over head transparencies and put it on the wall. We then traced the outline and the painting began. It did take more then one coat of paint to make sure there were no white spots.

This is a picture of the wall before we started the project. I did put a pocket chart on the hall with the concept of yes or no. Which means.....the letter we are working on, we will look at our name on a card and determine yes the letter is in my name or no it's not.

The starting of painting the tree. (I roped in the kindergarten teacher to help me!) :-)

This is what the tree looked like on e it was painted.

The next part and was the hardest part is finding all the materials including, tracing letter activities, sequence cards, puppets, art projects, stories and magnetic letters. I also found that having to pick a nursery rhyme to go with a each letter was challenging. As of today, I identified every nursery rhyme I am using with the letters of the alphabet. I found this process easier with making a word document with the letters of the alphabet and writing down what nursery rhyme I used help me make sure I didn't use the rhyme more then once. Once I gathered the materials I put them in plastic folders and put them in a drawer that I designated to that letter. With my drawers I did put more then one letter in a drawer.

I labeled each folder with the nursery rhyme on the top, so I wasn't having to open the folder every time I switched letter.

As I am finding the materials, I looked around on the internet for coconuts with the letters on them or coconuts that I could program myself. I was lucky enough to find it already done. I printed them on card stock and then had them laminated. When looking for materials, I looked for nursery rhyme lesson plans, activity ideas, the actual nursery rhymes and if there was a book that went along with it. Between the nursery rhyme books that I had and with the materials in them and the internet, I came up with quite a few materials for the different nursery rhymes. With my search I looked for some sort of puppets or something for the students to use to recall events from the story. I started with the idea of a felt board, but looking around that was going to get expensive. I then found a nursery rhyme packet that after each nursery rhyme, came the characters that were in the story. I once again printed those and laminated them.The process of cutting them all out and sorting them. Yes, it does seem a lot of work, but in the end it was a lot cheaper then completing a felt board.

The beginning of the puppets

Once I was done with that, I had to come up with how I was going to have students show these. Whether I was going to have them just hold them up or use magnets and have them putting them on a cookie sheet. Well, for the size do the pieces it wouldn't work. Then my next thought was a white board and if that was magnetic. As we all know it's not. Then, I figured out that I could have two magnets connect to each other. So, I found my old white board and sectioned off a place to make it magnetic. There is paint out there that you can spray, but I still wanted to be able to use the white board. I am a person that things have to have an order and spaced evenly. Granted I can't always make it happen. I started measuring with the help of the kindergarten teacher of the area I wanted it. I will tell you before I show you I did. It make my lines straight. I just kind of drew lines to mark the area. As I went to put the magnets up, I held the puppets in the general area I wanted them.

I wanted to also have the numbers on the board so they knew 1st, 2nd, etc.

With the cut out numbers.

I am the type of person that is very organized and likes to know where everything is at and at my finger tips. I got these bins from thirty one and hooked them to the wall with 3M hooks.

Here's what it looked like with the names in place.

This is where I sit when I read to the students, but do majority of the teaching on the floor next to them.

Finally......the title is put up!

I hope in someway I have inspired you to come up with new units and fun activities for your students.

I am pasting my list below that I used to help keep track of the nursery rhymes I used.  Feel free to use the list or modify to your liking!  :-) 

Nursery Rhymes Coordinating with the Letters of the Alphabet

A: Way Up High in the Apple Tree

B: Baa Baa Black Sheep

C: Hickory Dickory Dock

D: Old Mother Hubbard

E: Little Bo Peep

F: Once I Caught A Fish Alive

G: Mary, Mary How Does your Garden Grow

H: Humpty Dumpty

I: Itsy Bitsy Spider

J: Jack and Jill

K: Lucy Locket

L: Mary Had a Little Lamb

M: Little Miss Muffet

N: Jack Be Nimble

O: Polly Put the Tea Kettle On

P: Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater

Q: The Queen of Hearts

R: Three Blind Mice

S: Pop Goes the Weasel

T: I’m a Little Teapot

U: Little Boy Blue

V: Five Vipers

W: The Old Woman Who Live in a Shoe

X: Sing a Song of Sixpence

Y: Hey Diddle Diddle

Z: Fuzzy Wuzzy

Happy Learning

Shannon