The North Carolina
Kindergarten teachers are rising to the challenge by making lemonade with the
lemons they have been given. One
of the first things we all learned in early childhood education was the significance
of going from concrete and hands-on to abstract. You’ll discover some awesome examples of that in the ideas
below.
Cooking Up Yummy Words (Mindy Lane)
1. Write sight words on recipe cards.
2. Put magnetic letters in a soup bowl with a ladle.
3. Children pull out a recipe card, scoop out letters,
and place the letters on a cookie sheet to spell the word.
Mega Blocks for Mega
Learning (Kendra Wolfe)
Buy Mega Blocks and write
letters on them. Put them in a
basket by the word wall. Students
can build words using the blocks.
*You can also write words
on the long blocks and students can build and read sentences.
2-D and 3-D Winter
Pictures (Bridget Groce)
Make winter 2-D pictures
using black construction paper, glue, and spaghetti noodles. The children use the noodles to make
simple shapes (trees, houses, etc.)
Next, give them miniature marshmallows to construct three-dimensional
shapes.
Letter Necklaces (Dana Sampson)
Make letter necklaces by
punching holes in letter stencils and tying on a piece of string. (Do vowels in red.) Spread the letters on the carpet. The teacher says a sound and a child is
chosen to find that letter. Put
the children together to make words.
Sight Word
Accomplishment (Kyleen Douglas)
You will need long paint
chip samples for this activity. As
students learn a sight word, they get to write it on the paint chip. When their chip is filled up, they can
add to it with another chip and continue writing words as they learn them. Students try to see who can get the
longest chain.
Yellow Pages (Lisa
Johnson)
Make your class yellow
pages with a page for:
Shoe tying
Jacket zipping
Milk carton opener, etc.
Students sign their name
on the page when they master the skill.
Students who need help can look up a helper’s name in the yellow pages!
Extension/Bottle
Activity (Lisa Sawyer)
Place small objects in a
bottle. Children write sentences
with “a” or “an” using the objects.
I see a ________. (consonant)
I see an _______. (vowel)
Behavior Bracelet (Trammonnieo Cooper)
Cut a strip off an
envelope to make a bracelet. Give
dots, stickers, stars, stamps, etc. on the bracelet to reward children.