The Rotten Apple Hunt: A CVC Reading Adventure

I LOVE creating engaging learning experiences for my kiddos. One of my favorite ways to do that is to have "special visitors" come by our classroom. Little kiddos have hearts that are so open to believing in magical people and animals. Whether it be Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, or Clifford the Big Red Dog, little kids believe in them.

In September, we get a visit from the Crazy Apple Bunch Friends. This is a group of apples that want to get children reading and thinking. They try and trick kiddos by seeing if they can find the Rotten Apple words...words that are non-sense and silly! After stopping by our classroom to leave us a letter explaining our mission, we head off to find this crazy bunch!

Their apple words have placed words all around our school AND the Crazy Apple Bunch Friends have words written on THEM!!!

Do you see those round, red balls by these Crazy guys??? That is APPLE POOP!!! 

And the kiddos get to eat the apple poop!

Shhhhh...It is really cherry sour candy.

After collecting all of the apples in a basket, we must sort those crazy guys by whether they are yummy apples (real words) or rotten apples (non-sense words).

The Crazy Apple Bunch also leave us several activities that we can use in our Daily 5 Word Work. These activities help us work on rhyming, sorting words by their short vowel sound, and more practice reading CVC words. Take a peek. :)

I think this activity might be one of my favorite adventures because it was so easy to set-up. All I had to do was hot glue some googly eyes on the apples and write CVC words on them with a Sharpie. The apple poop just added to the excitement and engagement. My kiddos just went crazy nuts over this adventure and I know your kiddos will too!

Happy September sweet friends.

From My Heart to Yours,

/F/ /r/ /o/ /g/ = Monkey...right????

Hi sweet friends! I am not sure where the summer has gone but I hope it has been a fun and relaxing one for everyone. I have spent A LOT of time this summer working on our district's Science and Social Studies curriculum team. I am so ready to give birth to that baby! Lol! =)

I have also spent time at my sister's pool, spent time with my dear friend PJ (aka my pajamas), spent time with my nieces, and spent a wonderful week in the Cayman Islands....I am ready to go back NOW. =)

I have also spent a little time working on activities that will help my kiddos be successful...especially in Reading and Math.

In Texas, we give a test 3 times a year called the TPRI. It is a test that assesses phonemic awareness and other skills that young children need to become successful readers. One part of the test assesses the children being able to blend sounds together to make a word. For example, I say /t/ /o/ /p/ and the child says top. To say that I get interesting answers would be a HUGE understatement. I am talking about beat your head against the wall wacko answers. I might say /f/ /i/ /sh/ and I have kiddos saying words like alligator, monkey, Sponge Bob, pizza, and even their own name.

Since Stretchy Snake has helped my kiddos so much when it comes to decoding unknown words, I decided he could help us with this tricky skill too! =)

Click on the pictures to go check it out in my TPT store. =)

My kiddos are obsessed with Stretchy Snake. This game has helped tremendously with this skill that is so tricky for so many of my struggling readers. It is /p/ /er/ /f/ /e/ /c/ /t/ for your Guided Reading and RtI groups.

The teacher will say the sounds /d/ /i/ /p/ and the child has to mentally blend the sounds together and then cover the correct picture. Once all of the pictures are covered the winner will either share the pictures he/she covered or segment the sounds back to the teacher when he/she calls out the pictures that were covered.

There are 5 different games and 12 assessments/individual practice for segmenting sounds....lots of Stretchy Sounds fun! =)

Since I am obsessed with Word Study I wanted to bring back a few *freebies* that I have shared before. I will be using these the first few weeks of school. 

and one more =)

I would love for you to leave me a heart note if you grab them. =)

I have a lot I want to share with you in the next few weeks....I have some really fun visitors that will be bringing us some very fun packages full of lots of awesome activities, snacks, songs and poems, and more. I hope you hop by again to check it out. =)

From My Heart to Yours,

Monster Snack Attack

I am stopping myself right now to post this before it gets out of hand. I am already thinking of Monster Snack Attack 2. Monsters snacking on letters and numbers have my brain pop, pop, POPPING! =)

Do you think I need an intervention when my dreams are about making things with clip art??!!???? I seriously had a dream about a mini-lesson with one of these activities. I am even thinking of a shirt idea to tell my friend Carla at Sewing Sassy...I am thankful that she knows about me and my brain pops. She almost always has a similar one too!

I am in LOVE with this clip art and have about a gazillion ideas of how to use it! =)

Does this clip art make you happy too?

Maybe these cute monsters will help my cute monsters kiddos learn how to rhyme. =)

sorting real and non-sense words

sorting letters and numbers

50 chips- a great counting game

ordering numbers from least to greatest

adding and handwriting practice =)

Did you say to yourself at least once Those are so stinkin' cute?

Well, guess what???

If you did, you get all of these games as ***FREEBIES*** here!!!!

And if you didn't say they were cute....oh, well- you can grab them too!

I started looking again at everything in Chapter 1 of the CD book and felt VERY overwhelmed. There is so much information in there that my hair starts to hurt and my eyes start spinning in different directions!

I am going to think about the best way to give you that information without overwhelming you too! Please, please, please share with me your doubts and hesitations about Conscious Discipline...I probably had them too! =)

I would love for you to take a moment and leave me a heart note if you grab these *freebies*. I really cannot even find the words to let you know how much each one means to me.

From My Heart to Yours,

*Freebie* Frenzy

I know there are teachers out there who have turned their minds off. They are able to step away from the computer, blogs, and Pinterest. They don't dream of clip art and fonts. They are not crazy enough to already be thinking of August....but that isn't me! =)

It is time to bring back some *freebies* in case you missed them the first time! These are some of our favorite activities that we do the first few weeks of school. Later some of them will go into our reading game basket.

Our reading game basket has word study games in it that the kiddos may play when they have finished all of their work. It is one of the things on our When I finish, I can... list.

My kiddos LOVED this game! It was one of the games we kept in the basket all year long.

Wild about Rhymes

Here is an I have...Who has... game with rhyming words because you can never practice that skill too much!

The next 2 activities are differentiation strategies that I learned as part of my G/T training. In these activities, the children hold cards and have to order themselves according to the game's directions to create a human timeline. They have to do it without any talking! Let me just tell you that right away you learn who the Mother Hen of the classroom will be. They love this activity and it is also great to use as a transition for lining up.

The first one is ordering numbers from 1-20 using 10 frames. The second one is putting words in abc order. The words are from Dr. Jean's Phon-ercise. We sing that song LOTS and LOTS and use those alphabet words for TONS of different activities.

Human Timeline- Dinosaurs

Human Timeline- abc order with Phon-ercise

I found these fun glasses at the Dollar Store and made this game to help know the difference between letters, words, and sentences.

In September, we give an assessment called the TPRI. One of the assessment tasks tests deleting the initial sound. Let me just hear a Help Me Jesus. An example would be, what would the word sold be without the /s/ sound? A typical answer would be monkey. We start working on this skill ASAP. Between this and teaching rhyming words I usually have a headache. =)

This game has helped so much! =)

Here is a *freebie* you can use all year! 

We start the first day of school learning our word wall words. We keep our cheers in a "Cheer" box! =)

These are just a few of the whole group activities we do. I'll be sharing more about how we will start the year off with The Kissing Hand and Pete the Cat....plus building Our School Family.

Don't forget to check out my awesome Pete Rocks giveaway!

hop over here to enter

I hope you enjoy these *freebies*. If you grab them, I would love for you to leave me a heart note.

From My Heart to Yours,

Rhymes Send My Head to Bed

As we were playing a game, one of my little firsties was just having a HARD time finding who was her rhyming buddy.  All of my other kiddos were being so helpful to help but not be a mother hen and tell her cheat her brain.  She finally said "Ms. Price rhyming hurts my head!" One of my other witty little kiddos replied "Yep, I bet Ms. Price is tired too and wants to go to bed!" Ha ha ha.....so true! I do feel like what else can I do to make these little ears be able to hear rhymes??!!!???  I know most will get it but for right now I am pulling out some more games to help.  The first I want to share is a hands down favorite!  All you need is a copy of the song and rhyming word cards.  I wrote mine on sentence strips and then laminated it and added velcro(I love Velcro!)....my kiddos learn to obsess love Velcro too!  Here is a copy of the words of the song (I think it is sung to the tune of Do You Know the Muffin Man but since I cannot sing who knows what I am actually singing it too...hahaha)

Do you know two rhyming words,

Two rhyming words, two rhyming words?

Do you know two rhyming words?

They sound a lot alike.

______ and ______ are two rhyming words,

Two rhyming words, two rhyming words.

______ and ______ are two rhyming words.

They sound a lot alike.

I attach Velcro to the backs of the cards and then to the blanks on the song poster....and they LOVE this!

Here is a picture and the cards. You need to make 2 copies of the cards.

rhyme song cards

The next 2 activities are simple.  The first is just an "I have...Who has?" activity and the other is just a sort.   The cards are cut out in pairs so they are either sorting the 2 words as a rhyming pair or a pair of words that don't rhyme.  This is very basic for those sweet little ears that are just now figuring out rhymes.

I have rhymes
Do You Hear a Rhyme?

I would love for you to leave me a heart note and tell me what you do to help your little kiddos rhyme.