Tammy over at Live, Love, Laugh is hosting a great "Teaching Smart" linky party that you can find here:
Teaching Smart Linky Party
One of the best things that I have learned, for any grade level, is that preparation is critical to having a happy, organized, fun-loving classroom. So, with that said, I have been working diligently on making centers that will be interesting and effective for my kinders. The center ideas and activities that I'm going to show you are for the beginning of the kindergarten school year.
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| Color Pizza |
The first idea is a color-matching word game that can be placed in a center or in a station. Students match colored pieces of "pizza" to the corresponding color word on the circular "pie". I picked up some unused pizza boxes that I thought would be a great way to store these pieces.
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| Shape Placemat |
The second game is a shape-matching activity where children place the correct parts of a table setting on a laminated place mat. This game really helps develop visual matching and shape identification and can be used for cutting and gluing if you don't wish to laminate the pieces. Here is the download:
Shape Placemat Long Free
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| Fantasy Folder |
Finally, I have found that my students at the beginning of kindergarten do not wish to go to writing center as much as math, ABC, or science centers. Therefore I really accommodate their interests by making mini word walls that they can use to label their own drawings. I truly believe that the beginning of kindergarten should be all about instilling in the children a real love for reading and writing. Later months can be used more for expanding labels into phrases and full sentence writing. I know philosophies about this may vary, but I also know that kids who aren't excited about reading and writing can only be taught so much.
I just put up a collection of 10 mini word walls on sale at Teacher's Notebook for a really great price. I also have some free products that you may be interested in on TN as well.
Sharon's Shop
Let me know what you think! :-)
CLEVER and CREATIVE, and most of all educational! Wonderful job (love how you re-purpose things).
ReplyDeletePlease feel free to check out my Blog...I am always looking for new Blog Followers :>)
I love your ideas! They're very kid-appealing. By the way, I'm passing you the Lovely Blog Award. You don't have to participate if you don't want to, of course, but if you like that type of thing, visit http://missangelread.blogspot.com/2012/07/hey-look-at-my-new-award.html to pick it up!
ReplyDeleteHi, Sharon! Great post! I'm totally in agreement about building a love of reading and writing being fundamental. Some of our little ones are a hard sell on this... which just means that "marketing" the joy of books to them becomes our challenge! Once our students are sold on literacy, there's no stopping them!
ReplyDeleteLinda
You are so talented. All the work that you put into your classroom is so amazing! Thank you
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