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Great Read Alouds for Preschool Aged Children

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. A told B and B told C I’ll beat you to the top of the coconut tree!  And off you go into the catchy rhythm and rhyme featuring the letters of the alphabet. Kids easily memorize the words and repetition which makes this a fun and educational early story. It’s one of our family favorites!     Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin…

The Importance of Reading Aloud to Children

Reading a story to your child isn’t just a nice ritual before bedtime. Research has shown that reading aloud to a child is the single most important activity that leads to language development. According to Dr. Betty Bardige, reading aloud to young children not only stimulates language and cognitive skills, it also increases curiosity, memory, and motivation. Children who are read to before attending school have a huge academic advantage compared to those who haven’t had…

Top Pinterest Picks for June

If you are like me, summer is a time when I get to reflect, relax, and renew. What better place to find great ideas than Pinterest? I’ve been surfing around for inspiration and came across these 3 ideas I wanted to share with you. Name Banners Imagine the fun our students will have creating their own banner while waiting for the rest of the class to arrive! Later on, it will become a great banner to…

FREE Resources

This page contains links to free resources you can download and use right away. I will periodically update this page. To receive an e-mail of the newest addition, please sign up at the bottom of my HOME page. Leveled Reading Correlation Chart There are a variety of systems or codes being used to identify the reading complexity of a book. This chart correlates Fountas and Pinnell’s Gradient Text Levels with grade level equivalencies and Reading A-Z.com’s…

Community Helpers – Booklist

This week we are launching a unit on communities and being a good citizen. One area of focus is on the importance of people helping other people to meet their needs. As part of learning about goods and services, we spend some time learning about different ways people make our communities a better place. Last week, our Harcourt Trophies story was Good-Bye Curtis by Kevin Henkes. In this story, Curtis has faithfully delivered the mail to…

Fun with Beginning Readers

So what is the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness? Phonemic awareness is the foundation of our written language. Beginning readers learn that each letter has a sound associated with it. By combining individual letter sounds (phonemes) children are able to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in words. For example, the word cat has three separate phonemes: /c/   /a/   /t/.   These three sounds can be rearranged to spell tac:   /t/   /a/   /c/. Children who can…

February Morning Work – Try For Free!

Having something for students to do when they arrive in the morning helps establish good routines. My students know that after they arrive and have had time to catch up with their classmates, its time to grab their morning work. This year, each student has a pocket folder to store the monthly packet. A binder would work well also. I print the entire month ahead of time and staple it at the top. After attendance and…

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