This week, my kindergartner and I decided to work on recognizing beginning blends. To practice sorting the beginning blends sounds, I made a beginning consonant blends game just perfect for the autumn season, since it involves sorting turkey feathers and returning them to the correct beginning consonant blend turkey.
Although the consonant blends game I set up does not require reading of consonant blend words, it does require the child to hear the consonant blends. Before a child can learn to read words (decode) and spell words (encode), they must hear it themselves.
Each consonant blends turkey sort center has a turkey with a beginning consonant blend label on it. These poor turkeys are missing their feathers! The turkey feathers show images that start with blends. I made different sets for S blends, R blends, and L blends. My daughter can only do so much at ones! I believe most early readers are similar. Less is more!
Since Strawberry is an early reader, we started doing just one turkey together. We named the pictures on each feather and put it on the poor naked turkey. Strawberry loved helping him get his feathers back. After she understood the concept of becinning consonant blends, I gave her two different turkeys (that is two different beginning consonant blends), and she sorted the feathers for between the two of them.
For each turkey set, center I provide the turkey with holes to punch (so the child and use his or her own fingers as a puppet) as well as with feet attached. My kindergartner certainly enjoyed playing with her turkey once his feathers were attached! Even my fifth grader came along and got in the fun!
Each of the turkeys are provided in full color (shown in the images), less color (the turkey bodies are not colored; print on colored paper instead), and black and white. The children can color their own turkey sorts with the b/w option, thus letting them take ownership in helping their poor turkeys get clothed once more. The colorful versions can be used in a classroom or group center and be laminated for more permanence.
It is time to start thinking about Back to School. For those of us who homeschool, by August it sometimes actually is back to homeschool time! Are you getting overwhelmed at the thought of homeschooling kindergarten? Are you homeschooling for the first time? It’s not that bad. Below are some of my thoughts on my
Read More
To begin my hands-on American History class at my homeschool co-op, I decided to introduce the world explorers by playing our Guess Who?-inspired game: Guess the World Explorer! Not all of the kids knew details about the various world explorers, so we revisited the information cards to learn as we played.Setting up the World Explorers
Read More
If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you’ll know I love incorporating learning moments into familiar parts of our lives, especially reading favorite picture books. Here are some of our favorite preschool picture book lessons. Some of these book-inspired preschool lessons I’ve blogged about. To see the picture book preschool activities
Read More
During wintertime, it’s easy to add “snow days” fun into your learning. Start with my snowman vowels sort freebie! Play with snowmen as you sort long vowels from short vowels in a simple phonics file folder game or classroom center. While you’re at it, here’s another wintery idea: Make learning fun with snowman breaks during
Read More
I am so excited about this year’s plan because we are starting out with STEAM the center of our minds! At our co-op, I’m teaching an upper elementary-level STEAM Challenge class. Besides that, I’m super excited about the ideas in the book STEAM Kids, a fantastic book full of gorgeous and creative ways to implement science,
Read More
Once my kids were beginning to show interest and ability in sounding out words and recognizing the print around her, I read up on it too and find the early reading activities that will be a perfect match for her personality. If you are starting out in teaching a child to read, this ultimate guide
Read More