Valentine's Day Ideas

Valentine's Day is such an exciting part of the school year. I have a few Valentine's Day ideas that I would like to share with you. Please make sure to click on each one to read more about it.

Gift for mom

This is a nice Valentine's Day project that students can make for mom. It will take at least a couple of days so that students can work on it in parts. They can do the fingerprints for the background on one day and the handprints on the next. Let it dry and take a third day to assemble the pieces.

Valentine's Day Card Messages

Here are a couple of ideas for little Valentine's Day gifts for your students.

Read Alouds

These are some of my favorite books to read during the Valentine's Day unit.

Shared Reading

These are some simple sentences that you can add to the pocket chart. Read it during whole group and then allow your students to read it with a pointer during centers.

Student Crafts

If you have alphabet beads, students can make these bracelets with Valentine's Day messages. 

If not, you can make this:

Free Heart Clip Art

This Valentine's Day clip art is free.

Conversation Heart Crowns

I LOVE the sweet messages on these Conversation Heart Crowns. If you would like to read more about it, click on the picture.

Enjoy!

Lidia Barbosa @Kinder Alphabet

How to Establish a Successful Writing Experience

Students in Kindergarten write at different levels. We try to engage them in activities that will help develop their writing skills, but sometimes it's difficult to find something that will fit everyone's abilities. We have always been told to differentiate our activities to meet every student's needs. But, how can we do this in a room full of 20+ kids? I came up with Differentiated Thematic Journal Prompts that include a picture/word bank and sentence starters. How can these journals help? The focus on themes will make their writing meaningful and engaging. The thematic picture/word bank will develop their vocabulary skills. And, the sentence starters will help struggling writers feel successful. There are 5 journal prompts for each theme which will cover a week's worth of writing. Each journal prompt has been provided in three versions. As the students develop their writing skills, the teacher will provide the corresponding writing page. This is how the writing pages are differentiated.

Level 1: These journal pages includes a sentence starter. They may also have extra wording on the picture labels. This will help students write a complete sentence by using the wording on the picture cues.  This format will help struggling writers use complete sentences and have a successful writing experience without the stress.

Level 2: This journal page does not include the sentence starters. Students are encouraged to use their knowledge of phonics skills. They are also encouraged to use any other words that may not be in the illustrated word bank.

Level 3: This journal page is for advanced writers. It does not provide place a for an illustration. This is so that students may have more writing space where they may include details in their sentences. Illustrations may be added to the back of the paper.

I have sets ready for the entire year. If you would like to learn more about them, you can find them all under the JOURNALS tab at the top of my blog. You can also find my Differentiated Journal Prompts in my TPT store. Click on any picture above to see my December Journals :) I hope that you like them :)

Back-to-School FREEBIES

Hello Blog Hoppin' friends! This is Lidia from Kinder Alphabet. I know that our return to school can be a little stressful. Just to make things a little easier for you, I have decided to blog about some freebies that you might like during this time of year.

School Forms

These will help you keep a class roster which includes student name, phone number, transportation home and a section for brief notes. It also includes a class list and student information forms. These may be placed in your lesson plan binder and/or in your substitute folder for quick reference.

Change of Clothing

Our little ones do not always make it to the restroom on time. Sometimes we have to run around looking for a change of clothing or call parents to bring clothes to school. With this parent letter, parents will know that they are to send a change of clothing to school for these little emergencies.

The Kissing Hand

These are some fun printables to go along with the story of the Kissing Hand. I love to read this book on the first day of school.

The Coconut Tree

Students love the story of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. This activity will help students practice match upper and lowercase letters.

Christmas Activity and Crafts

Are you looking for last minute Christmas activities? This is the last week of school before our Winter break and students are getting very excited about this holiday season. Here are a few activities that you could incorporate into your stations this week.

Gingerbread Man
If you read them the story about The Gingerbread Man, you can use this activity. Students will read, solve and draw the secret words. Each secret word will reveal a character in the story.

Bead Snowflakes

How about making some snowflakes with beads? Your students can use their favorite colors, or you could ask them to create patterns on each stem.

Christmas Ornaments

There are many more ideas for making christmas ornaments with beads. Here are just a couple of them.

Paper Santa

This Santa is so cute and easy to make too.

Would you like to try some of these activities? Just click on each picture to take you there:)

Happy Holidays!

Sight Words On-The-Go

I had so much fun creating this new activity. I made a cute way to carry sight words on-the-go. The girls will get a Sight Words in a Purse. The boys will have fun with their Sight Words in a Car.  Simply choose your words of the week  and have your students assemble the purse or car in a center.  There are two cover options. The cover includes two lines where you can add the Dolch List # and expected date of mastery. After it is assembled, students may carry their sight words wherever they go. Great to use as review and practice on sub days, rainy days, in a center, at home, in the car, ... well you get the idea :) 

This is how the completed project will look.

First, the student will color and assemble the purse.

Now, it is ready to use wherever they may be go.

Students can keep track of their progress by highlighting the words that they are able to read.

This is the template for boys. It is included in the same download as the purse template.

This is the Spanish version.  It includes a second cover page in English that says, "My Spanish Words." It can be used by English speakers who are learning Spanish :)

Do yo like it? Hop on back to my blog for a freebie. 

CVCC Word Work- Free Printables

Hello there. I am back with some word work ideas that you can use with your students when you return from winter break. I started making some activities for CVCC word patterns. These will help meet several learning objectives plus differentiate instruction. Some of the objectives that I want to address are beginning sounds, ending sounds, missing vowels, and identifying word patterns. When the students return from break, these will serve as review for some and a good challenge for others. So, I came up with a list of 40 words and created the clip art for it. Here are some of the word work activities that I have so far. You can download your free copy by clicking on the picture.

Here are your free CVCC Word Work Printables

This will help review beginning sounds. 

This will review ending sounds.

Are your students ready for identifying the missing vowel?

With this next one, students will stretch the word to find the letter sounds in words.

Then, they will write them in the boxes. 

And, if you would like to see the rest of the clip art that I created, here it is.

Lidia R. Barbosa from Kinder Alphabet

Short Vowel Clip Art and Some Freebies

Hello Blog Hoppin' friends. I have been spending some time on my new passion. Can you believe that I am actually making my doodles into clip art? I have done so much research on how to do this, but have not found an easy way. It is very time consuming for me, but I love it. Here is a sample of short vowels clip  art that some friends requested. I love drawing:) Make sure to go to the end of this post for some freebies.

Click here to see where you can download these short vowel graphics, if you need them.

Here are some Christmas freebies. 

Just right click on each picture to save them to your computer. Make sure to read my terms by clicking here.