Sunday, September 9, 2012

Freebie Linky

 

My friend Cynthia is hosting a new Linky Party for our favorite freebie. I chose our English Letter Writing Box Cards Labels as my favorite freebie. 


It is my favorite freebie because:
 It is an easy way to have a cute little writing center for your students. Add some writing cards and a marker and you have an instant center. 

The story behind it:
I was school shopping with my own kiddies at the Dollar Store when I saw these plastic pencil boxes. I had been working on some letter writing cards for my class and was trying to think of a way to store them. The letter cards fit perfectly inside these boxes. So instant center activity. 

How to use it:
I ran off these labels on a large sheet of sticker paper. There are enough labels on one sheet to make 4 boxes. I just cut the labels apart and stuck them on the box. I did cover the whole box with clear contac paper to make sure that they labels didn't come off. I put the boxes in my writing center and my students have a great time practicing letter writing. 

Spanish Version also available:



 

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Spanish Letter Evaluation Form



One of the first things that we do when school starts is to evaluate how much letter knowledge the students have. We made an evaluation form that can be used all year. We test at the beginning of school. We also test again in January to see how the students are progressing. We do a final evaluation the last few weeks of the school year. One form keeps all of our information about each students letter knowledge. Click on the link below to get your copy FREE.


Saturday, August 4, 2012

Who is Pepe Pato?

Maybe you are wondering who Pepe Pato is? Well, here is his story. 
Pepe Pato is the mascot of our little company. He is a cute little baby duck that loves to make sounds. So we decided to make a book about all those sounds. It took us almost a year to get a book made with this adorable little duck.
We named the book Los sonidos de Pepe Pato in his honor. We even included a special poem made just for him. Each letter has its own page with the capital and lower case letter. A very cute picture of Pepe doing something to help students remember the sound and a short sentence about the sound make it easy to learn beginning sounds. 
Our students fell in love with Pepe and went home telling their parents about him. 
So we made the students their very own Mini Book to take home. 

To introduce Pepe Pato to the students we made a really cute paper bag puppet. 
You can get your free copy of the puppet here.  


More activities to go along with Pepe Pato coming soon. 



Sunday, July 29, 2012

Beginning Sounds Letter Booklets


I was playing around with our black and white Spanish Alphabet Guided Reading Books (or our English Alphabet Guided Reading Books) and I came up with this really cute idea. I thought that it would be a great center activity for the students to reinforce letter recognition.



Here is how I made it:
1. I made a copy of the Bb book and cut it apart.I cut out the letter and the pictures on the title page because it was too big.

2. I then took a piece of 9x12 construction paper and cut an inch off to make it 9x11. I then cut in half long ways. 


3. Mark one of the pieces at 4 inches from the top and fold. Mark the other piece at 5 inches from the top and fold. 



4. Open the pieces and place the piece with the 4 inch fold on the bottom and the 5 inch fold on top. Line up the folds and fold the pages together. Staple the pages on the fold. 



 5.  Add pictures. Glue the front page pictures on the top layer. Glue page 2 on the second layer making sure that the word shows at the bottom when the book is closed. I had to trim the top of page 2 just a little bit to make it fit. Glue page 3 on the third layer and page 4 on the bottom layer making sure that the words show when the booklet is closed. 

6. Students can try to read the words and lift the flaps to see the picture.  

7. These little booklets would be great to put into a reading center or just to send home for extra reading practice.  


Friday, July 20, 2012

Spanish Alphabet Letter Writing Box Freebie

I was shopping with my kids at the Dollar Tree (or Target) the other day when I found some pencil boxes in their "Back to School" area. I bought a couple and brought them home and made these really cute boxes to hold our Spanish Alphabet Writing Cards. You can download the labels here for free to make your own boxes. Just add a washable or dry erase marker and you have a cute little writing center for those early learners. We just added an English version here.



Thursday, July 19, 2012

Alligator Letter Eater Idea!!

 I was playing around on Pinterest the other day when I found the cutest alligator made from a Cascade dishwasher soap container. You could cut up the Spanish Alphabet Chart or use our Spanish Alphabet Matching Cards and feed it to the alligator. The students will just love this game.




Follow us on Pinterest for more ideas. 

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Center Activities

After the first few days of school and after we have established some sort of a routine, we decided that it was time to introduce some more small group and center activities to the students. These center activities are available for purchase on our website. Just click on the picture and it will take you to our site. 

Tip: Instead of giving the students all the cards, we gave them five at a time. We started out using just the vowels.  
1. Flash cards- We made a matching set of flash cards to help the students become familiar with the letters. We made two sets. 

One set we put on the bulletin board so that they could be seen easily. We could not figure out a way to have a download of a poster sized chart so we used the flash cards to make our own. We gave the students pointers to touch and say the letters.  We used the second set to place in a center for the students to practice. 

2. Puzzles- All students love puzzles and it was easy to make a set with the alphabet letters. When designing the puzzles, we made them where they could be used in several different ways. At the beginning of the year, we had the students match the pictures as a way to practice their visual discrimination skills. Later, we had them match the picture to the small letter and the picture to the capital letter. Lastly, we had them match capital letter to small letter. 

3. Letter Match Cards- These are so cute and the students like using clothespins to match the letter to the picture. There are two sets. One set matches the capital letters and the other set matches small letters.

4. Guided Reading Mini Books- In our small group time, we used these little mini books to help students learn tracking and that the letters together make words. These are very simple and only have one word per page. After a few times reading the book together, it was placed in the reading center for the students to practice. We put in tongue depressors to use as pointers.
5. Spanish Alphabet Matching Cards-We used these cards like the game Concentration. There are 3 sets of cards. One has pictures, one has capital letters and the other one has lower case letters. There are three sets of backs also. 


Coming soon!
Spanish Alphabet Flip book
Check back soon!! 





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