Phonemic Awareness Activities – Just Grab and Go!

admin October 12, 2014 No Comments

Last year I was cleaning my basement getting ready for our annual garage sale and came across all those old Disney movies housed in VHS cases.  Although our VHS player is long gone and the kids are now into their late teens and twenties, parting with those old movies was pretty difficult.  I can’t tell you how many times I watched Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast- I can still sing many of those songs years later.  While I was looking at that old stack of tapes, I was trying to think of ideas for re-purposing the case and it hit me!  They would make ideal storage containers for activities!  Here’s the vision: The step- by-step directions for the activity

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Teaching Contractions

admin October 9, 2014 No Comments

In our everyday speech we use contractions.  Contractions are a kind of “short cut” in the way we use words to communicate.  Think about it for a bit.  If you were going to tell a friend that you aren’t going to lunch, are you likely to say, “I am not going to lunch” or “I’m not going to lunch”?  Because we use these words so often in our speech, it’s important that we teach students how to use the words in writing.  Teaching contractions can be fun and there are tons of great activities to use to support this concept. When introducing the idea of contractions, it’s helpful to begin by defining the word “contract”.  “Contract” means to get smaller or

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Cookie Sheet Activities Pre K- K Bundle- Early Literacy and Numeracy Activities

admin September 27, 2014 No Comments

We all know that young children learn best through hands-on activities.  When children can manipulate letters to form words or use manipulatives such as counters to learn critical concepts their learning accelerates.  The Make, Take & Teach cookie sheet activities offers students hands-on  fun for learning and practicing beginning literacy and number concepts.  These activities are ideal for both direct teaching and independent practice.  The cookie sheet keeps the activity contained as well provides the engagement of using magnets! There are 6 volumes of cookie sheet activities each volume targeting a specific skill.  Just to keep it simple, I combined the volumes into two grade level bundles- one bundle for my Pre K- K friends and another for my first

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10 Engaging Activities for Teaching Homophones

admin September 13, 2014 No Comments

Teaching and learning homophones can be tons of fun!  Many reading programs introduce the concept of homophones in second grade.  Homophones are words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have a different meaning.  Students need to be able to tell the difference in the meanings of these words and to use the correct spelling in their writing.  If students misspell words or use the wrong word in writing, the reader is not likely to understand what they are trying to say. Of course, using hands-on activities to teach any skill is preferable to worksheet drill and practice.  The Make, Take & Teach Complete Activity Pack for Teaching Homophones includes 10 engaging activities for teaching 65 common homophones.  My

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Dry Erase Pocket Phonics

admin August 8, 2014 No Comments

I just love working with dry erase pockets.  They’re great for small group instruction as phonics pages can slide right inside and then later erased so that they can be used over and over again.  Last year I was able to pick up quite a few dry erase pockets at Walmart during the back to school sale and I have been using them ever since.   I created these dry erase pocket activities for working with short vowel sounds and dry erase pockets.  There are 17 differentiated templates.  They’ve been great for our little learners. The Dry Erase Pockets Phonics Activities for Short Vowels/CVC Words can be found in my online Teachers Pay Teachers store or on the Make, Take

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Even MORE! File Folder Phonics

admin July 23, 2014 No Comments

I absolutely love activities that are super easy to set up and can be used over and over again.  Sure, it takes a little bit of cutting and laminating on the front end, but when they are all assembled you’ll have activities that will last for years!  Last year I created file folder activities for my second grade teacher friends to address higher level phonics concepts.  They were such a hit and the students absolutely loved them.  I just couldn’t wait to create a series for kindergarten and first grade.  The File Folder Phonics for learning the Alphabet is just one in a series that I have in the works.  When you download this file you’ll receive 26 file folder

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Phonemic Awareness Activities On the Go!

admin July 14, 2014 No Comments

It’s amazing sometimes where inspiration hits.  A few weeks ago I had to kill about an hour and decided to hop on over to Michael’s Craft Store.  As I was walking through the bead aisle I found this really handy plastic tote.  It was just the right size to fit picture cards!  Many of my teacher friends are constantly on the move and tote is just perfect! The phonemic awareness tote contains over 500 colorful pictures for teaching the Syllables, Rhyme, Beginning Sounds, Onset-Rime, Phoneme Isolation and Phoneme Segmentation.  Each skill area contains a common core alignment card, activity card(s) and colorful and engaging pictures.  The borders are color-coded per skill for easy organization. Although the tote found at Michael’s

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Blends and Digraphs Game Boards

admin June 29, 2014 No Comments

Oh, summertime!  One of my goals this summer is to revamp several of my earlier created activities and the Consonant Blends and Digraphs Game Boards activity is first on my list.  I’ve added several new game boards for a total of 20!  Each game board is also available in a black and white version so that they can be copied and sent them home with students for added practice.  The consonant digraphs game boards contains the production cues which is a nice companion to the Consonant Digraphs cue card.  Be sure to download the free cue card by  clicking the link below: Just click the following link: Consonant Digraphs Cue Card The Consonant Blends and Digraphs Game Boards are available through

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Fly Swatting Sight Words

admin June 25, 2014 No Comments

Using a fly swatter to swat flies (with letters, words or math facts) during small group intervention or in literacy centers has been an all time favorite activity. It’s always fun and engaging to add a little movement into any learning activity.  To assemble the activity all you need to do is place a strip of velcro on a fly swatter, print and cut out the flies, and then place a small velcro dot on each fly.  Students take turns swatting flies and reading the word on the flies they catch.   Very simple, but guaranteed to keep them practicing those words for a long time. The Fly Swat! activity for sight words is available in the Make, Take & Teach website and

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The Importance of Teaching Rhyme

admin June 22, 2014 No Comments

Before children learn to read, they must first have an understanding of how sounds work within words.  Learning to recognize and produce rhyme  is one of the very first phonological skills that children acquire on their way to becoming proficient readers.  Working with rhyme is an important component of the early childhood curriculum.  Research tells us that most children learn to recognize rhyme by 5 (which words rhyme:  cat, bug, rat) and can provide a rhyming word by 5 1/2.  When children appreciate rhyme and are able to provide rhyming words, they show that they understand that words are made up of individual speech sounds which can be changed to create different words.  That understanding is the basis of reading.  Here’s

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