Do A Dot Art Markers

I love using these "bingo" markers in guided reading groups.

When we work on word families, we make a book with many of the words in the family (-at family: bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, rat...).

Sometimes it's hard to get kindergartners to isolate the onset sound of these words - we call it the "leader" - just like we have a leader in our line, words have leaders too! We use the dot markers to put a dot under the leader of the word so that kids will pay more attention to the sound that starts each word.

It has worked quite well, and the kids love it! Do-A-Dot even has their own website - linked to the title of this post - check it out!

Fun New Website!

I love the little 5 minute "filler" programs that are on the Disney channel! I'm a big fan of Daniel Cook - Daniel goes on little field trips to learn about all sorts of things, it's a great show for young children.

Anyway, Daniel now has his own interactive website, and it is awesome! I learned about it in a class I took last night, and I'm so glad I did!

Click on the title of this post to go to Daniel's site!

Mr. Alligator

I love to use this alligator "snapper" (from Safari Ltd.) to teach greater than and less than! Jack Hartmann has a song - Mr. Alligator Can Chomp on his CD - Movin' 2 Math. Here are the lyrics:

Mr. Alligator can chomp, he can swim and he can stomp, he's a real smart alligator...he chomps at numbers that are greater!

Once we get a couple of numbers up, Mr. Alligator looks them over and then decides which one he will "chomp"! The kids make alligator mouths with their hands open in the direction that they think Mr. Alligator should chomp. It's a lot of fun!

American Sign Language Font

I think that finger spelling is a great way to teach letter sounds. It is a way to make an auditory concept visual and kinesthetic. I have had a lot of success using this to teach kids to use letter sounds in their beginning reading and writing.

The title of this post is linked to a University of Oregon site that lists many different sources where you can download free fingerspelling fonts. The one I use is the Gallaudet font.

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Avery® Inkjet Clean Edge Business Cards #8371, Matte Finish, 2" x 3 1/2", White, Pack Of 200 (Item # 422371) - Office Depot

These Avery Business Cards are great. You can print sight words on them, math facts, whatever you want. Avery has templates on their website that you can download to your computer and just use them to set up the cards so that they print correctly. The cards are perforated and come apart very easily after they are printed.

These cards are also the perfect size to fit in the business card protectors that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

The title of this post is linked to avery.com where you can find a lot of resources to use with their products - the word "template" in the text is linked to the specific Avery template for business cards

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Firefly 20 GB External Hard Drive

Today's favorite thing is very serious. Having an external drive for back up is critical! Trust me, I have suffered a recent loss! This is something I feel silly about because there is more than enough space for me to have stored every file I have to this drive.

This Firefly is listed at Amazon for $149.99 - (the page is linked to this post). If you shop around, I'm sure you can find a better price, and you certainly don't have to have this particular storage solution, but make sure that you have something that you can rely on. Don't be caught without one!

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PDF Lab

District computers have this available in the applications folder, but if you don't have it, here's how to get it...
Open your Universal Locker > Teacher Info. > Software > OSX > ("P" folder) > PDF Lab.

This is one of those tools that I often take for granted. If I suddenly lost it, I wouldn't know what to do!

Here's how it works - you open up the window, and you can drag .pdf files into the window. From there, you can "stitch" separate files together to create one document with multiple pages (this is a big bonus - you can then send them to print center for 2-sided copies). OR - you can open a document with multiple pages and select only the pages you want to have included in the new file you will "create". That way, you don't have to print pages you don't want or need.

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Are you looking for a great FREE software download? Tuxpaint is a free drawing program, and my kids love it!

It has a lot of tools and fun effects that kids can use to create fantastic artwork! Tuxpaint even has great sound effects - try it, I'm sure you will enjoy it!

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Looking for a good way to teach kids about nouns & verbs? Here's a technology solution! Get your hands on a digital camera AND a digital video camera. Let the kids experiment with the two different cameras, guiding them to the conclusion that nouns are things you could take a still picture of - using the digital camera. Verbs are things that you would need to use the video camera for - to catch the action! Of course there are always exceptions - some words that wouldn't quite work in this scenario, but I think you get the "picture", and I think that kids will not soon forget the difference between a noun and a verb!

Oh, the title of this post is linked to the National Educational Technology Consortium's website. They have a couple of publications there that talk about wasy to use technology to teach literacy.

These are a few of my favorite things...

Acrylic Box Photo Frames.

All you need is one of these clear plastic box frames and some corn meal and let the learning begin! Put the frame face down on a table and cover the bottom with a thin layer of corn meal (corn meal isn't as abrasive as sand or salt). Students can practice writing letters, numbers, sight words, anything! Put it down on top of a piece of colorful wrapping paper, OR - one of my favorite things...put it on top of the overhead projector! After the student "writes", they can check the screen to see how they've done!

The title of this post is "linked" to the Hobby Lobby website. Check their specials this week to find out if these frames are on sale, or print off a coupon to use in the store. They come in many sizes!

These are a few of my favorite things...

Apple Video Adapter

Use a video adapter cable to connect the mini-VGA video output port on your iBook, eMac, or iMac G5 to any S-video or Composite enabled device.

Price: $19.00

I'm surprised I didn't think of this favorite thing sooner. I guess I could teach without it, but I know I wouldn't teach as well.

If we're not careful, our teaching can be unbalanced and directed only toward auditory learners. This is the most natural mode for us to teach to. It has to be a conscious decision to include visual and kinesthetic learners in the lessons we teach. This is one tool that can help us "adapt" (pun most definitely intended) our teaching to include learners with various learning modes.

I use it ALL day, EVERY day!

These are a few of my favorite things...

Linkin' Logs - My computer died earlier this week. It was quite stressful. I had backed up quite a few things, but had missed some too. Thanks to Mike, our travelling tech genius, some of the things I thought I couldn't live without were able to be recovered.

Through all of this, the one thing I didn't even give a second thought to were the bookmarks I keep. All of my bookmarks are safely and neatly organized in my Linkin' Log account.

Linkin'Logs...priceless!

These are a few of my favorite things...

Favorite things #4 - Free Printables!

There are a couple of sites that I visit over and over again, and my guided reading instruction wouldn't be the same without them.

Hubbard's Cupboard is a great place to find printable booklets for children to read and take home. These booklets are carefully written by an educator and categorized by the word family or sight words that they teach. I love having these little books that kids can take home and read.

From Hubbard's Cupboard, you can get to Carl's Corner where this creative educator has organized a seemingly endless collection of activites that reinforce word families. I use so many of the materials available here. I don't know what I would do without this resource. Oh, and one of the best things is that she has put all of the activities for each word family into a "zip file". So that you can just download the whole file and use what you want (some are word documents and others are in .pdf form).

These are a few of my favorite things...

Favorite things #3 - I'll put two things together here. My absolute favorite teaching tool is iTunes. But, I have to admit that my iTunes wouldn't be nearly as valuable without their content, and the person most responsible for providing the content of my iTunes is Jack Hartmann. He has put together so many songs that are invaluable for instruction. There are kids in my class who know some pretty impressive things as kindergartners, all because they learned it from a song!

This is Jack's latest album - I purchased it just the other day, I'll let you know what I think when I get it.

Oh, and it's important to note that Jack got his start at the University of Florida - Go Gators!

These are a few of my favorite things...

Favorite Thing #2 - Magnetic tape in a dispenser!

Here's what the manufacturer says about it "Make your student's work refrigerator-ready with this revolutionary magnet tape. As thin as masking tape, the magnetic power is strong enough to hold paper to any acceptable surface."

This is such a handy tool to have. I can make anything and everything into a magnet so that I can put it up immediately as a visual for my kindergartners, or even to use as a manipulative. This is especially useful when you're sorting and arranging things in some kind of an organizer.

Dick Blick has a pretty good price for it.

These are a few of my favorite things...

I'll borrow this line from The Sound of Music to introduce some of my favorite things that help me teach kindergarten.

Favorite thing #1 - Business card sheet protectors from office depot

Acco–Wilson Jones® Business-Card Untabbed Binder Pages, 8 1/2" x 11", Pack Of 10 (Item # 157078)
	$2.39

These are awesome - I usually focus more on teaching literacy - math planning is Kim's job, so I bought these at first to make my own personalized bingo cards with whatever I wanted, right now I'm using alphafriend photos so that my students who are struggling with letter sounds can practice putting their markers on the picture that starts with the sound.....

When Kim saw them, she immediately thought to turn it sideways and turn it into a ten frame! What a great idea - we use them every morning when we're counting the letters in our helper's name - they can put a colored chip in each pocket for all of the letters in their name.

We're still discovering great ways to use these - if you have any ideas, let me know!