Quiet Book Pages

For the past year my sons nap time was filled with teaching piano and preschool. This summer I've taken advantage of his naps to work on a few personal projects of my own and create documents for teachers pay teachers. My newest fun project is this quiet book for him to use at church, in the car, and all sorts of fun places. He loves it (especially the dog page) and I already am making plans for my next one! Below are pictures and small descriptions of each page. Feel free to use these for your own ideas! I know I got many of my ideas from Pinterest. 

This video link here takes you to a tutorial on binding a quiet book...but ALL of her videos are amazing. I had started my quiet book one way and after seeing her videos tore it apart and began again. She goes through the page prep, binding, and even specific pages if you'd like step by step. She is amazing! 

The cover: Pretty simple and fun. I loved incorporating all of the fabrics I had used throughout the book. 

 I got the idea for my hippo page here but changed it to fit my own style. The only thing I will be changing is adding a real toothbrush. My son likes to take the toothbrush and put it in his mouth and I'd prefer it to be a real toothbrush and not felt :)

 

 A car page was a must for my car loving son. He drives it all over this page and all the others pages in the book! My car page spans 2 pages, one mostly to hold the cars. 

The anchor fabric is a pocket to hold the cars.

 I wanted to throw in some counting, so this jelly fish page uses beads that count from 1-8.

 Since I LOVE owls over here at Little Owl Academy I had to have an owl page. This is a puzzle where all 4 pieces are secured by velcro and can easily be removed and added back on. I got the original idea for this page here.

 Since my extended family and husband love to jeep this jeeping page was fun to make. It incorporates a jeep, the family business Teraflex symbol to hold extra tires, and extra tires that my son can change.

 Around the 4th of July I got the idea for this easy and fun flag page. We practice counting, patterns, colors, and the star is a fun touch and feel.

 The spider page idea stemmed from this page. I like the look of the bigger spider I created. The legs are fun to play with!

I saw lots of ideas for lions on Pinterest. It was fun to find the beads and ribbons to make this touch and feel page.

I've been daydreaming today of how fun it would be, if I was truly ambitious, to create a quiet book for every month for my son and for preschool students. It would be a great quiet activity and teach them SO much! It would be a perfect early finisher activity or a center for your preschool...maybe someday!

Happy Teaching and Sewing! 

Mystery Readers

My favorite activity to get parents involved in our classroom is to have them be a mystery reader. Here's how my mystery reader program works:

I send out an email to all parents asking them to volunteer to be a mystery reader. I tell them that they need to be available on Friday afternoon (use whatever day and time works for you.), that they can bring their own book or I will provide one, but it has to take less than 10 minutes to read, and they need to send me an email with 5 clues about themselves. 

After hearing back from a few parents I scheduled one mystery reader a week. In some schools I have been lucky enough to have one parent a week the entire year....in others I only had a handful of readers. No matter what kind of involvement you get, use the parents, they are amazing!

Many parents will ask what types of clues you need. Here are some ideas:

What is your hair color?

Where is your favorite place to vacation?
Do you have a favorite food?

How many children do you have?

Where do you work?

What are your hobbies?

Then, the fun begins. Every day each week I leave a clue. I always leave the older clues written up on the board for the students to go back and review. I simply help the students read the clue aloud in morning meeting and leave it at that.

Then on Friday we all take a minute and guess who the reader is. I then invite the reader in and have the student in the class who the parent is related to introduce the reader.

It takes a short amount of time: the parent reads the book and then I let the students ask the parent a few questions. But, these few minutes make all the difference. The child whose parent came feels so lucky, the other students anxiously look forward to the reader and hope they have guessed right. And in the end it introduces children to new books and new readers.

I have had a variety of books from silly stories to stories about babies all around the world. Remember to always have some stories on hand in case the parent didn't bring one!

I hope you can take this simple idea of a mystery reader and roll with it. I'd love to hear how it goes! You can find a packet of clue cards and summary sheets at my teachers pay teachers store here if you wish.

Happy Teaching!

Young Learners School Songs

One of my absolute favorite things to do as a teacher is sing with my students. Songs catch on easily and can teach SO MUCH! As part of this blog I will be collecting my favorites and writing my own school songs. Watch for more to come! 

My first song I am sharing is an original I wrote: "The Tracing Song."
 

 Enjoy!
 

 You can download a free PDF version here

Thank you to Creative Clips for the use of your super cute and fun and FREE clipart!

 

My Favorite Tips, Tricks, and Games to Teach Sight Words

Sight Words

I love to teach children to read. To me, it is the most rewarding subject to teach, especially in the younger grades where they excel so much over a short period of time. I have worked with advanced readers, and extremely low readers, and I have found that the key to being a better reader is to PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE your sight words! 

Whether you are a Mom at home with your kids after school, a homeschool Mom, a tutor, or a teacher, these tips, tricks, and games are a fun way to teach sight words!

The Door Trick

At the beginning of each week I place 4 new sight words on my classroom door. If you are at home, place it on a door that you often go out of with your child together. Now the trick is simple, every time you walk out of that door with your child or students, have them read the words to you. It is their "ticket" out the door. The first day or two they may need you to tell them the word. I simply say the word and they repeat it back. I have found that for 90% of students having to repeat these words to me a couple of times a day as they leave the classroom helps these words stick and sink into their permanent reading treasure box. Every Friday I include the 4 words for the week plus I include a couple of review words. Repeating this throughout the entire year really helps those sight words sink in. You can use basic words or even your hard vocabulary words for the story for the week. It is a fun trick to use!

 

Beat Mrs. Falkner

This is by far my students favorite sight word game: "Beat Mrs. Falkner." You, of course can change the name to "Beat Mom" or whatever your name is. This is simple. I keep a large stack of sight words at our reading center table. Every day during reading groups we practice the sight words. At the end end of our few minutes review or at the end of groups I set my timer for 1-2 minutes. (I always let my students choose the sound of the timer going off...they love to help with this and look forward to the game more!) To play I start the timer and hold up a card in front of one student. They read the word. If they get it correct, they keep it, if they miss it in goes into my pile. I continue with this pattern around the group. My pile and their piles slowly add up. When the timer goes off we count how many cards we all have. If they "Beat Mrs. Falkner" by having more cards than me they get a happy smile, a high five, a sticker, a "Hooray!" or a treat from the treat box. 

Memory 

I imagine most of you have played memory before. This is simple, yet fun for students to work together. I print off two sets of my sight word cards. I combine students in groups of 2-4, trying to put my higher readers with my lower readers. They lay all the cards upside down. On their turn they flip over two cards and read each of the words. If they match they keep the cards and go again. If they don't match, they turn them back over and it moves to the next person. The game continues until all of the matches had been found. 

I hope 3 of my favorite tips, tricks, and games have been helpful to you. They have really helped my students excel in reading sight words. If you are looking for fun black and white or colored sight words check out my teachers pay teachers store here. 

Please leave comments with some of your favorite sight word tips, tricks, and games! 

The Simple Mailbox Teacher Trick

Every teacher has their secret bag of tricks. They "carry" it around with them and pull out their tricks at the most needed times. My biggest trick is The Mailbox. 

I purchased a very inexpensive mailbox from Walmart and decorated it in fun school fashion. I did not purchase the base because I didn't have a cute bucket to put it in...but use what works best for your classroom.

Here is my mailbox. It has been used for 5 years. I reglue a few of the flowers every year, but other than that it has stayed in tip top shape! 

 

Every single day I teach, I put something in the mailbox that we need to work on. Usually it is an assignment, or a worksheet we have to work on. Other times it is our art project supplies, or just a special treat. The most important part of the mailbox is to put the flag up!

I have a little mailbox song that simply goes, "Mailbox, Mailbox, We've got Mail in the Mail box." You could sing or say whatever you wanted. Within less than a few seconds my class becomes silent...without a doubt. I then pull a name out of my class jar and if that student is sitting extra quiet they get to be the mailman, open up the mailbox, show the class what is inside, lowers the flag, and either help with the passing out or pass out themselves the items inside. The whole process takes less than a few minutes and it prepares my entire class to be quiet and ready to hear the instructions for the assignment.

I especially loved, when I know it will be a rowdier day (Valentine's Day, Friday, The day before a break) I place something special inside like a treat or a 5 minutes early to recess packet. I let the class know something extra special is in the mailbox that day but we only get to open it when everyone is following directions. It helps keep the peace and order much better than a raised voice or holding them in from recess! 

****I would love if you tried my mailbox trick! If you did, go over to my facebook page 

Here and leave a comment on my wall explaining how it worked. Then head over to my TPT page Here and pick any resource you would like less than $5. I will message you and you can tell me which item you chose and I will send it to you for free!****

Valentine's Day Fun!

It was such a fun, and VERY BUSY week, that I didn't take a single picture! Here are some of the highlights from this week:

-learning and singing with actions this Valentine's Day Song

-practicing addressing an envelope during Math using hearts and numbers

-using Q tips to paint for the letter Q

-playing 3 fun games at today's Valentines Party

-making Valentines gift bags and passing out our Valentines

It was by far my favorite year on Valentines as a teacher yet! These 3, 4 and 5 year olds find joy in everything, and it makes teaching so much fun!

Groundhogs Day

I have been MIA on here the last two weeks because I have been busy creating my own curriculum for Febraury to better fit my teaching style and my students needs. It has been so fun for me to create everything for the week. Here are some of the fun activities from this week celebrating groundhogs Day and practicing a few letters. 

We used tissue paper and modge podge to make these adorable Minions for the letter M.

We practiced our drawing and tracing skills by tracing a path for the Groundhog to get to his flower. 

We made these adorable Groundhogs Masks and learned all about Punxatawny Phil. 

We put together a fun Groundhog Day puzzle to practice the numbers 1-10. 

I felt like this week flowed so much better and my students learned so much more. I will be making all of my own curriculum in the future!!