Monday Made It: Fishing Poles!

This Monday I am bringing you a cheap, quick, and fun project that is perfect for back to school. Fishing poles! 

We all have magnetic letters in our classroom and have a huge focus on learning letters at the beginning of the year. So, here is a fun way to engage your students in the process!

You will need a package of dowel rods, string, and circular magnetic stickers. I already had plenty of lacing string, so that is what I used. You can get the materials to make a set of these fishing poles for less than $5!

Here are what mine look like. Nothing fancy, but it works. Tie one end of the string to the end of the dowel rod. On the other end of the string, place two of the circular magnetic stickers back to back.

This is the fun part! Fishing for letters!

I had fun doing this as an adult, so I know the students will love it as well. Have the students stand over a bowl or bucket of letter magnets and go fishing. They have to identify the letter and sound of whichever letter they catch!

BONUS Monday Made It!

I also made these tactile number and counting cards from burlap stickers I got at the Target dollar spot. They will be great for students to trace with their finger to practice number formation and one to one correspondence. 

 

I hope these ideas give you some ideas for your classroom! Happy Monday!

Back to School Dollar Centers

I am so excited about all of the Dollar Tree finds I have grabbed this summer! They are going to be awesome to use during centers this year with my kinders.

Here is a look at my stash and how I plan to use them.

Chalkboards and Chalk

These chalkboards come with two pieces of chalk and an eraser. I got the  purple sandwich holder from the Dollar Tree to hold everything. I love using the sandwich holders to store just about anything! I grabbed a whole stash of them. I also grabbed some colored chalk from Michael's for a dollar to add some fun. I plan on having students use this center to practice writing letters, sight words, or write the room.

Double-sided Hero and Princess Crayons

I think my kiddos are going to love these! They are perfect for little hands and add just enough novelty to make rainbow writing super fun.

You can grab a Rainbow Write FREEBIE I made specifically for use with this center over at the Grow and Enjoy TPT store. It includes a recording page for super heroes and princesses.

Shape Storage Containers

These awesome storage containers come in one set, so you get all four for just a dollar! I immediately thought of a shape sorting center when I saw them. The pattern blocks shown are already in my classroom.

Small Plastic Containers

These small plastic containers come in a set of 10. I used six of them to hold dice and keep them off the floor, in mouths, etc. Last year I used plastic Gerber food containers and they did not hold up very well. Hopefully, these will work better! One easy way to use these is to have students roll the dice and practice writing the number it lands on. You can also have them roll and graph the numbers. I have a ton of roll and write activities that the kinders always love.

Coordinating Paper Die Cuts

I have to give Mr. Greg over at Kindergarten Smorgasboard for this awesome idea. The Dollar Tree has all kinds of different die cuts you can use for matching games. I did capital and lowercase letters with the milk and cookies and will probably do math facts on the lock and key die cuts.

Foam Counting Blocks

I don't actually have a specific use for these yet, but I can imagine lots of possibilities using them as dice, letter blocks, etc. If you have a good idea for using these, please share!

I hope you can find some of these products at your local Dollar Tree! I have also done some previous blog posts about Dollar Tree centers. Click on "dollar tree center" in the label cloud to the right for more ideas.

Dinosaur Week

Today we wrapped up our fun unit on dinosaurs! You can see my previous post for a couple of resources we used earlier in the week. Yesterday we made shape dinosaurs and dinosaur fossils.

I used the Ellison die cutting machine to cut out pattern block shapes from construction paper. The rest of the project was up to the students' creativity! They loved creating their own dinos.

We used Crayola air dry clay and Dollar Tree dinosaurs to create the dinosaur fossils. We let them dry over night and the kiddos took them home in plastic baggies today. We discussed how real fossils are made, the job of a paleontologist, and what "extinct" means.

I created a Dino-mite door to display all of our dino themed work from this week. I love displaying student work in as many places as possible. 

Here are some other dino-mite resources we used throughout the week that are free:

Dinosaur Make Ten True/False by First Grade Kate 

Dino Dominoes by Wild About Teaching

Number Line Addition and Subtraction by The Teaching Treehouse

Next week we are on to plants!

March Madness Addition

This week we finished up our March Madness themed lessons. They were so much fun!
One of our math centers focused on addition stories. The students got five chances to shoot an easter egg into the basketball basket I got at the Dollar Tree. 

After shooting, the students had to work with their teammate to fill out the addition story and write an equation showing how many points they made.

This center was so easy to set up and kept all of the students engaged! They wanted to see which teams could get the most points.

 

We also incorporated several other basketball activities into our lessons this week. You can see the students using the number line cards below. Click on the links below for more basketball ideas that we used. Oh, and go CATS!

Math Facts Game

Basketball Syllables by Live Laugh I Love Kindergarten

Real Word/Nonsense Word Sort by Nicki Thigpen

Madness in March Core Training by Primary Graffiti

Dollar Tree Center

I am always searching for easy center ideas that will keep my kinders engaged. I have seen several games on Pinterest where students "feed" some kind of animal made from recycled detergent containers, tupperware, etc. When I found this little trash can at the Dollar Tree, I knew he would be perfect! I added some googly eyes, wrote some sight words on index cards, and instantly had a new center.

  

We call it "Feed the Monster".  I had the little monster sitting out and the students were immediately interested when they entered the classroom. The students take turns drawing a card and reading the sight word on it. If they read they word correctly, they get to feed the card to the monster. We will add more sight words to the pile as the year progresses.

Not only do I like this center because it reinforces sight words, the kinders really got a kick out of feeding the monster. I love hearing, "Ms. Harlan, I like this game!" when we are learning.