Language Arts

Thanksgiving Math & Literacy, Art, Science & More….

October 26, 2017 By Valerie Mcclintick Leave a Comment

Do you ever wish someone would just plan out your entire homeschool year for you….then maybe bundle it all up and email it to your inbox on Monday morning?

Yeah….me too.

Well, I don’t have an entire YEAR of curriculum to send you, but I do have something that will make your homeschool planning super easy this November.

SMART: Science, Math, Art, Reading & Take Home activities for Thanksgiving! This helpful set is filled with a week’s worth of fun, educational math games, hands-on activities, science experiments, art projects, early readers, writing prompts and a Bible memory verse. Everything you need to add a little holiday fun to your kindergarten classroom this year!

Thanksgiving Science: This set includes five simple science experiments and challenges. Each thematic activity guides students through a fun, hands-on science exploration with very little prep-work. Students work their way through the scientific method using the step-by-step science journals. Each experiment includes a follow-up activity for added learning.

Thanksgiving Math: Each day students will play a fun game or activity then follow up their learning with a lesson sheet to show mastery. Games focus on learning to frame numbers to ten, basic addition, counting to 100, and counting by 10’s.

Thanksgiving ART: We include five stunning autumn art projects that are perfect for Thanksgiving. Each project comes with a full photo tutorial, printable templates and easy to follow materials list. Students work with oil pastels, paint, textures, blending and more.

Thanksgiving Reading (and Writing): This set includes three early readers covering social studies and history. Each story includes a carefully controlled word list and incorporates key vocabulary for extended learning. Students are provided narrative and comparison writing prompts that are not only simple to follow, but would make wonderful educational keepsakes.

Take Home/Review Work: T is for Take Home Review Sheets. These sheets can be used as review work in the homeschool classroom or as homework in a standard classroom. Each page features reading, writing, vocabulary, and scripture memorization activities. Character thinking points are available instead of Bible memory for those using this resource in a public school setting.

Hold the Phone for Homophones!

January 22, 2016 By Valerie Mcclintick Leave a Comment

I couldn’t resist that title.

I know, it’s a tad corny, but this game is super fun and you’re sure to forgive me once your kiddos fall in love with it two….errrr…um….too.

I love games that are versatile, and today I’ve created a set of game cards you can use to teach 12 different homophones all while having fun!

I’ve posted this free game on our sister site FileFolderFun.com so hop on over and grab a copy for yourself!

Kindergarten Sight Words Game

November 14, 2015 By Valerie Mcclintick 2 Comments

If you’ve been following our blog this month you’ll have noticed that we’ve been on a bit of Sight Words binge lately! That’s because I’ve got two boys, a 1st grader and a Kindergartner who are in desperate need of learning these important words.

I’m afraid I’ve been a bit neglectful by focusing so much on word families, phonics and vowel sounds that they’ve missed out on some of the other more important aspects of reading.

Earlier this week I released a Dolch Pre-Primer game for Preschoolers, and Today I’m sharing this Dolch Primer game for Kindergarteners. It’s called, “Sweet Sight Words, ” and it covers all the primer words your child need to know by the end of Kindergarten. (We also have follow up worksheets for every word here).

But before I get to that I need to tell you about our BRAND NEW Sight Word of the Week Curriculum:

Sight Word of the Week covers 40 key sight words for Preschool and Kindergarten students. Each week covers a single sight word with fun and engaging worksheets, activities, games and hands-on resources. Students put their knowledge to the test with a weekly sight word mini-book that will bridge the gap between emergent and early readers. Providing your students with a springboard to success with this ready to use program. The 40-week curriculum covers all 40 Dolch 220 Pre-Primer words and prints in the necessary order. Simply add the pages to a 3-ring binder and you are set! Suggested Age: PreK or K4 Click Here for Sample Pages

How to Play:

First print your gumball machine gameboards onto colored construction paper. I love neon cardstock for game as they are bright and engaging and much less expensive than printing in color.

Print your gumballs onto white cardstock then punch them out using a 1.5″ circle punch. Note: Investing a a circle punch is one the best purchases I’ve made for our classroom and ALL of our Punch and Play File Folder games on File Folder Fun are designed with this size punch, so you can create many of our games in a matter of seconds with this handy tool.

Each child chooses a gameboard. You’ll notice that there are special “Candy Gumballs” at the bottom of each board. This is just a little extra fun to keep your little ones engaged!

The games starts by placing all gumballs into a center jar (or coffee mug) as pictured below. You want to be sure this is not see through. Children take turns by drawing one gumball, reading the word and looking for a match on their gumball machine. If they have a match they get to keep the gumball and it’s the next players turn. If they don’t have a match they return the gumball to the center jar and it’s the next players turn. The game continues until one player has filled their entire gumball machine with matching words (candy ball included.)

You can speed up the game by allowing children to draw three gumballs instead of one. Additionally, removing gumballs that match unused gameboards will speed up game play as well. There are five separate gameboards, each with unique words so there are exactly the right amount of gumballs for all five boards. You can expand this game for more than five players by printing an additional copy of the game.

Print Sweet Sight Words Free from File Folder Fun

Print Coordinating Worksheets Free from Kindergarten Mom

More Free Printables

We have a ton of reading games and printables available. Here are links to some of our most popular resources:

Preschool

Kindergarten

First Grade

Word Ending Block Game

This game is great for children who are learning basic phonics and early reading skills. Children match up letter blocks to word-ending blocks to create new words. Keeping score for each assembled word makes this a fun and engaging activity for multiple children. Find free Word Family Printables on our sister site KindergartenMom.com

Materials:
1.5″Wooden Craft Blocks
Craft Paint
Sharpie Marker or Paint Pen

1.5″ Unfinished Hardwood Blocks

Perfect for crafts, artistic purposes, and other uses
1.5″ wooden cubes are made of natural, kiln-dried hardwoods
Set of 10 packaged in a convenient zip-top bag

TIP:Shop around for your wooden blocks, there are discount craft stores that might have them much cheaper! Or consider purchasing the 1″ size blocks. They are smaller but you get 32 of them for a better price and children can still read the words without difficulty.

Choosing Blocks

We are using 1.5inch wooden blocks but you can easily use smaller (see the link above). Each block has six sides so plan accordingly for how many word endings and first letters you want for your game.

Step 1

Choose how many blocks you want for your game. We are using 6 word ending blocks, and 3 letter blocks.

Step 2

Choose colored paints which are complementary to black marker showing through. (We also used a paint pen)

Step 3

Since we have three different colors we're going to paint each color on the two sides opposite each other.

Step 4

You can use a hairdryer to speed the drying process. Here is a photo of how were are painting the sides.

Step 5

Using a black sharpie marker or a paint pen, write a different word ending on each face of the cube.

Step 6

Write different consonants on each of the blocks. It took three blocks to get most (18) of the letters but you could do 4 blocks to get 24 of the letters.

Step 7

Ready, Set, Roll a Word!

How to Play:

Have children shake the cubes and roll for their turn. Then have them arrange the blocks to make as many words as they can. As children form the words, let them add up their score. If they miss a word you can help them too!

Extra:

Children can write their word on a piece of paper, this is a great way to sneak in a little extra copywork and handwriting practice.

Storage

We found these great boards at the Dollar Tree that work perfectly for a storage container.

W ord Family Printables
Word Families are a group of words with the same ending. For example cat, rat, mat, hat, bat are all part of the “at” word family. Learning about word families is a key part of learning to read. Children can pick up on patterns and rhyming sounds very quickly which in turn lends to reading confidence and success.

M aking Words
Making words is a great way to teach phonics and spelling. In these lessons, students incorporate cutting skills, writing skills and manipulation of letters, a total work-out if you will.

Speech File Folder Game

February 28, 2015 By Valerie Mcclintick 2 Comments

There is just something so fun and simple about our Circle Punch Games

that I can’t stop making them.

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s so easy to get the game set up and ready to go…..

no more cutting of obscure shapes and bumps.

Maybe I’m just being lazy.

I don’t know, but today I put together this simple gameboard for children working on beginning blends sounds with the letter L.

You might remember that my son is ready to start pronouncing words correctly (even if I’m not.)

So I’ve made this game in hopes that he will practice, practice, practice

saying those blends as he plays.

In fact, the whole family can practice because

this game can easily be played as a multiplayer version as well.

Head on over to our sister site File Folder Fun to print and play this game too:

Printable Beginning Sounds Game

BTW- This game uses a 1/5″ circle punch, you can find out more here.

And the adorable clipart is from Ink N Things, Little Red’s Clipart and Graphics From The Pond

Sight Word File Folder Game

February 17, 2015 By Valerie Mcclintick 3 Comments

My kindergartner has been making so much progress with his reading! We’ve worked our way through many word families and it’s time to start getting serious about sight words. I decided to make him a simple game he can play to slowly build up his sight word reading skills in a fun way. This game features 54 different sight words from the Dolch 220 PrePrimer list and is a fantastic starting point for young children learning to read.

To play, children roll a die and move their guy, reading the word they land on as they go. There are detours, crosswalks, and other traffic related hazards along the way to the Candy Shop, making this a fun game that builds a bit on sportsmanship as well.

Sight Word Gameboard

Scholastic First Little Readers

25 book set

We personally own and cherish these little books. I must have spent an hour in the bookstore examining all the different early reader book sets they had to offer and this series was the one that stuck out the most. Both my preschool and kindergarten aged boys love this set, we own set A, B, and C and they offer my kiddos a chance to experience success at reading which is worth it’s weight in gold. Most pages of these full-color storybooks feature just one line of simple, repetitive text to help children learn to read with ease and confidence. Click Here for Sample Pages

Find More Free Sight Word Resources Here:

Sight Word Worksheets

Sight Word Bingo

Fishing for SightWords

Word Family Printables

Poetry Notebooking Printables

April 28, 2013 By Valerie Mcclintick 16 Comments

Happy Monday!
We’ve got another awesome freebie for our Subscribers!

Our Poetry Notebooking pack is just what you need to guide your children in the process of starting a poetry journal! We cover nine different forms of poetry:

Couplet
Triplet
Quatrain
Acrostic
Concrete
Haiku
Limerick
Cinquain
Diamante

For each type of poetry we’ve made these handy guides that provide children with the specific rules of form, an example, and a brainstorming exercise.

There are “Final Draft” notebooking pages as well so children can display all their creativity in a fun and colorful way.

If you’re looking for a fun unit to finish up your homeschool year, this may be just the thing!

This freebie is no longer available. Please Subscribe for our current Subscriber Freebies.

It’s free to join and you’ll received updates and exclusive offers.

You can purchase our Writing Poetry Pack from our eStore.

Stay tuned for more helpful resources,
Come visit me on Pinterest for more poetry inspiration!

A Simple but Effective Tip!

January 8, 2012 By Valerie Mcclintick 2 Comments

Today I just wanted to take a quick second
to share something that has been working for us.

If you follow me on facebook you saw I posted these
Parts of Speech printables last week.

Well, here is just a QUICK little tip for how to use them.

First I simply put them back to back in a page protector,
so that my children could store them in their binders.

Then, they can pick one of their reading assignments from the day,
and go through and find two of each of the different parts of speech.

(I have them underline them in different colors and make a key at the top)

I suppose it’s pretty obvious, but I loved how simple it was,
and that by the end of the week my children didn’t need much help
looking for the different words.

(Not to mention that there is WAY LESS complaining
when my kids get even the smallest bit of choice in the matter)

Happy Teaching!