Featured Freebie Fridays - July 14th, 2017

Happy Friday! I hope that everyone is enjoying their summer! Some of you go back in just a week or two. Time sure is flying by!

This week's featured freebie is a new one. Write The Room Fruits Beginning Sounds is a fun literacy center that gets your students up and moving. When I taught  Kindergarten, Write The Room was my students favorite center. There are eight pictures of fruit that you can hang up anywhere in the room and children search for the fruit and write the beginning sound or the whole word (your choice) on the recording sheet. Please show your kindness by leaving positive feedback and check out the 83 FREEBIES in my store! Be sure to follow me so you don't miss out on anything else great in my store.

Thanks for hoppin' by Hopkins' Hoppin' Happenings! Keep on smiling!

Tutoring Tuesdays - April 18th, 2017

Last week I actually didn't tutor, but went to a birthday party for the girl I tutor. The kids had so much fun bouncing in a bounce house and her dad hooked up a bubble machine that was very cool! I found out she loves Robots so I have been working hard making some robot teaching products.

Today, I will share some things I used for tutoring in the past.

To practice telling time to the 5 minutes I used this clock. The minutes are self checking as you can lift up the tabs to see how many minutes. I made clocks like these for 2nd graders many years ago.

After doing some telling time with the clock I made we played a game Apple Race Time to the 5 Minutes using these task cards. A game board is also included that I didn't take a picture of.

These 3 Digit Addition Task Cards I used with one of my sight word game boards Fish Sight Word Race to help making adding 3 numbers more fun. We did not use the sight words just the game board from it. Task cards are so perfect with game boards. I laminate the task cards so they can be written on with dry erase markers making them even more fun! They work well in the classroom, in tutoring, or home school.

Check back next week to see what I do this Thursday in tutoring with robots!

Thank you for hoppin' by Hopkins' Hoppin' Happenings! Keep on smiling'!

Interactive Student Notebook - Numbers to 5

Wow I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I last posted.  Time flies by when you are having fun.  I had a fun month of heading to the Brevard Zoo, Busch Gardens, and Gatorland.  Maybe I'll share some pictures in another post.

Today, I wanted to share what I have been really busy working on.  My new Interactive Student Notebook (ISN) for Numbers to 5.  It is geared toward pre-k (VPK) and Kindergarten students.  It would also be ideal for struggling 1st grade students.  I do still recommend a lot of manipulatives to practice counting groups to 5, determining 1 more, comparing objects, etc.  The ISNs are just more fun than the boring worksheets after doing the fun hands on things and incorporates coloring, cutting, and pasting.

Check out my previous post on what is an ISN by clicking HERE and if you want to check out my addition ISN click HERE.  Clicking on any of the pictures should take you to my store to buy newest ISN Numbers to 5!

 

1 to 1 correspondence to 5.

 

Counting to 5

 

Counting Objects NOT in a row

 

Writing numbers to 5

 

Ordering Numbers to 5

 

Counting Backwards 5 to 1

 

Counting On - One More

 

Comparing Numbers

This product will be on sale 50% off through Tuesday July 22nd for only $2!  Grab it while it is on sale before the price goes up.  Your kids will LOVE ISNs and beg you to let them do them daily!

Thanks for hoppin' by Hopkins' Hoppin' Happenings!  Keep on smiling!

Class T-Shirt!

Many teachers use tie dye shirts for class field trips.  I on the other hand went in another direction a couple of years ago since I got really good interest from parents.  I decided to have my own class t-shirt! 

I gave each 2nd grade student a piece of paper and asked them to design what they would like to be on the t-shirt and any words they wanted on it.  They were told it had to be school appropriate.  While many drew action figures and princesses two students actually drew a Kangaroo hopping! I thought the Kangaroo was a brilliant idea as it fit well with my last name!

A company called Tropical Designs (Their link is on the right of my page) did the shirts for us for a super reasonable price!  The shirts were screen printed and not the iron on kind that fade so quickly.  For more information on Tropical Designs, click the link to the right of the website!  My Grandma, a wonderful art teacher for many years actually used the children's drawings and designed it before we sent it to Tropical Designs to be printed.  Check out a picture of the class shirt that we had them make for us.  

A Hoppin Freebie!

Denise over at Sunny Days in Second Grade inspired me with her Task Cards.  I find that they are incredibly awesome and have so many uses, especially to challenge those quicker workers and high achievers to learn something new on their own.  

Another idea for them you could also use them as an Anticipatory Set for the whole class and read them books, magazines, and internet articles about rabbits and then see what they know.

Thus my first freebie for you all is born. Click here to go to Google Docs to grab All About Rabbits.  Of course I had to make my first freebie having to do with something that hops. haha  

It is completely 100% far from perfect, I will tell you all that right now.  I used Word 97 to create it and for the life of me could not get the crazy table to be the same size.  I spent a couple of hours fiddling just with that!  I figure the children really could careless anyway.  We are harder on ourselves than they are.  Feel free to print them on card stock and cut them down to the same size if you want or covert it back to Word and fix it!

If anyone has any tips on keeping it all the same size feel free to send them my way!  I am learning as I go!

I look forward to any feedback on doing a better job next time and/or making this one even better!

Brian :-)

Letter Sand Art!

Here's a great activity that I used when I started my teaching career in Kindergarten.  I hope many of you find it useful!

Materials: colored sand, glue, large index or medium sized index cards, container, and a pencil or pen

1. Write or have your students write the letter of the week on an index card (I had them do two one for capital and one for lowercase).

2. Students trace it with Elmer's Glue (I don't think glue sticks would work).

3. Sprinkle some colored sand on the letter.

4. Pour the rest into the bin, which makes it easy to clean up and reuse the extra like Terri mentioned from Terri's Teaching Treasures with the glitter glue!  I hadn't thought of doing that with glitter for some reason so thanks Terri!  It works well with the sand!

5. Let the sand dry on the index card and the children will have a textile letter.

Differentiate: For the students who already know their letters you can do the same thing with sight words!  Many will fit on the large index cards or you can use card stock!

I hope your students have as much fun as my students had doing this.  I have no doubt it helped them learn their alphabet much quicker!