Cool Valentine Technology Links!

Hey all!  If you're looking for some computer games that are fun and educational for this week and Valentine's Day, check out these suggestions!

How about www.pbskids.org for some great activities? 

   

Curious George - I Love Shapes Game

Here are a couple other suggestions for computer games to use this week at www.nickjr.com!

Dora and the Lost Valentine

This is a website that will read "Arthur's Valentine" by Mark Brown out loud! 

That's pretty fun!

Arthur's Story Online 

Don't forget about one of our favs sites, Starfall!

There are so many great games and activities for the kiddies, it's sometimes hard to redirect them to a different site!

Connection Words Mini-Book

There's a mini book listed on this site called,  "Make A Valentine" that teaches connecting words, such as and, and because.

We use Starfall and PBSkids in our rooms often!

I hope you can find something helpful and useful for the kiddies in your clasroom this week!  

Happy Valentine's Day!

                     

Five For Friday!

Time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching!  It's always fun to do Linky Parties!

It is so cold outside!  Snow is on the way! I'm so glad to wind down on this Friday with a little fire and a nice cup of coffee.  What a long week!  Saturdays are my "Work Free" days.  "Work Free" for school work, but "Work On" at the house!  I have to have one day where I don't do any school work so that I can catch up on other things! 

Balance! (aka Balancing Act!)

So inside this sweet little cup is one of my favorite coffees. Are you a coffee connoisseur?

I gave up my favorite, favorite, favorite drink.  I loved the DC. Diet Coke. Drink of Choice.

Lately I've been trying out different kinds and flavors of coffee.  It's interesting and fun to go to the smaller coffee shops around Cincy!

How cute is this?

Now all of this relaxing must be accompanied by a good book!  Here's the book that I've just started!  With all the cold and flu germs swirling around the school, I think I just need all the help I can get to stay healthy.  I hope I have time to finish what I've started!  I've read all of  Dr. Furhman's books and this one looks to be a very interesting read! 

Want to know about boosting your immune system by making great nutritional choices?  

Check out this book and let me know what you think.

I found a new and interesting website to help my kiddies with a variety of skills!  

ABCya.com.

There are many reading and math activities as well as other learning games for the kids to play!  I'm still working to explore all the games myself but so far, I've found it to be a delightful website for my kiddies!

This week and for the next few weeks I'll be reorganizing my leveled collection and my classroom book collection.  To say that this is a BIG project is an understatement!  I have so many books.  There are bins of books all over my room and it's time to sort them out again! 

It's going to be a busy week!

Thanks to Doodle Bugs for hosting this Linky Party! 

Have a wonderful week! 

Kimmie

July 4th Summer School Fun!

The 4th of July is coming up this week and here are some of the books that we read in our Independence Day, 4th of July theme for Summer School!  

We discussed why we celebrate the 4th of July and the history behind the holiday!  We made connections, text to self, text to text and text to the world!  The kids were so excited to read the book, "The Pledge of Allegiance" because during the year, they said the pledge everyday!

So I found this sweet little eagle puppet on DLTK's Crafts For Kids website!  Here's how our puppets turned out!

Eagle Puppet

Writer's Workshop this week was pretty fun!  The kiddies decided to write about fireworks and they worked on this during the week.  These are their thoughts on fireworks!

 I see fireworks when I look up in the sky.

Fireworks are cool because you get to throw fireworks.

This week our skill work focused on syllabication as well as beginning and ending sound review.  We picked words from our 4th of July theme and practiced breaking them down into syllables.  Then, we did a little practice sheet to highlight the beginning and ending sounds in words.  We headed to the computer to continue our practice!

This is a great game to reinforce and practice syllabication!

The Drum Machine Game

This is one of the computer games that I found that helps the kiddies to practice beginning and ending sounds!

Beginning Letter Sound Games

Ending Letter Sound Game

Do you have some great computer games that you would like to share?  Let me know about the great resources you've found to review and practice skills and strategies with your kiddies!

Have a great 4th of July!  

Enjoy the fireworks!

MyCuteGraphics.com

Next Up - 2 Weeks of Summer Themes - Fathers Rock and At the Beach

Here's a great book we read during Father's Day Week!   I wanted to share some of the activities that we've been doing in Week 2 and Week 3 during Summer School!  

Week 2 - Father's Day Theme

In addition to reading some great stories about fathers and the special guys in our lives, we also did some writing about our favorite men!  I had the kiddies do a nonsense and real word sorting game, a review of the vowel sounds and a sweet Father's Day card and craft!

Father's Day Craftivity

Week 3 - At The Beach Theme
We read this book and worked on vocabulary, main idea and details, setting, characters and plot.

We did Beach Umbrella Writing and Flip Flop Writing too!  Here are a few pictures of our great writing!

I found this clip art design at Black Dog's Summer Fun Coloring Book website. 

It was perfect for this writing activity!

The paper design is from Deanna Jump and Deedee Wills'

Writing Through the Year - Unit 3

"How To Writing"

 This was the template that I used for my model. We colored the umbrella and cut it out to use as our design graphic for our writing activity.  I didn't give the prompt, we decided as a group, how we would start the writing and the kiddies finished with their own ideas.

Here's the same paper template, but the graphic came from

Sweet Clip Art

To practice number writing, we filled in the blank June calendar from the Education Center, Mailbox Superbook, Grade K.  I really love the clip art and the boxes are big enough for Kinder size numbers!

Push Pin Art
Finally, I saw this fun craftivity somewhere but I'm not sure where and it's been a few years.  I couldn't find a link, but here are the pictures that I have to share.  We traced stencils of beach shapes and then used a push pin to poke holes along the lines of the designs.  When we finished we held it up to the window to see the light shining through the design!

Finally we used this game to review rhyming words.

The Sandpit Trucks

We used this game to practice sight words!

The Hiding Snails Game

Wow!  I'm finishing up the plans for this week. Week 4 is going to be the July 4th theme because we'll be off next week!  It should be fun, fun, fun!  

Have a great week!
Kimmie!