Spelling and Sight Word Cheers and Chants

Why not make sight word learning fun for your students?  I have created some wonderful cards that will help get your students moving!  Some of the cards are for sitting and others are for standing up.  Some can be used for either.  There are even a few cards that students will need a partner!  These can also be used to learn spelling words so the cards will work for all Elementary grade levels!

How about some fun examples:

- My second graders I previously taught absolutely loved Movie Star Kisses.  The students start with their hand at their mouth and blow kisses for each letter like a movie star winning an award!

- Volcano: Students start out at a whisper and get louder with each letter.  Then explode when you say the word at the end.

- Hand Jive: Pair your students up.  Children clap hands together for consonants and lap clap for vowels.  They put their hands in the air at the end as you say the word.

- Motorcycle: Hang on to the pretend handle bars and do wheelies for each letter.

- Back Tracer - Students stand up and form a circle.  Trace the letter of the back of the person in front of you.

You can find many more fun chants and cheers including Batter Up, Hula, Surfin' and Spellin', Frog Jumps, Yo-Yo, Chicken, and Ketchup.

Click on the pictures to check them out in my store.  Download the preview for some free cards!

I would love to hear any ideas that you have for using sight words and spelling words that allow your students to move!  Share below in the comments!

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 :-)