Food, Fun, and ABC's Part 2

Food for the ABC's Continued...

i:  For long i sound have an ice-cream party.  That is always fun.  For short i make inch worms with dough. You could use sugar cookies that you roll into worms.  This is a good time to teach measurement too.

j:  Jello Jigglers are fun.  You could also just make jello together and eat for fun.

k:  k is hard...fly a kite or play kickball or kick the can.  Make a picture with Kix cereal.

l:  Licorice and lollipop fun!  You can have some lollipops together and reinforce that you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth when you say L.  You can get string licorice and make licorice pictures.

m:  We would always read Mr. M from letter people (I hear these books are available on ebay).  Mr. M munches on marshmallows and macaroni.  You can also eat M&M's and mushrooms.

n:  Noodles are good to eat.  Make some noodle art by coloring your noodles with food coloring and a little alcohol.  Put the coloring and alcohol in a baggie, place your noodles in there and shake them up. Place them on a cookie sheet to dry. Make noodle jewelry or pictures.

o:  Eat octopus!  Go into great detail how you are going to boil up some octopus.  Take a hot dog and cut it down the middle half way up.  When that is done cut it again until it has 8 legs.  You can then poke two holes for eyes.  Boil in water and the legs curl up and the eyes pop out and they are wiggly like an octopus. FUN!

P:  Pepperoni pizza and Pepsi!!! Using a biscuit, have your child flatten it like a pizza crust.  Put some sauce, cheese and pepperoni on it and bake until golden brown.  Eat the pepperoni pizza and drink your Pepsi!  You could even have pineapple for dessert!

q:  Play the quiet game to see who makes a noise first.  Use paper to color and make a small, paper quilt to put on the fridge.  Drink Nestle's Quick or go to Dairy Queen for a quick snack!

r:  Try to eat red, radishes.  Eat some good raisins, roll a Rollo.  Rocket pops are good and red, raspberry jelly on toast.

s:  Have sandwich day!  Create a new and tasty sandwich and see how it tastes.  Can you find some s words to go on it?  Salami, salad?

Well that is all for today!

Enjoy!

Food, Fun, and ABC's

Hey everyone!  I wanted to do a fun post on all the foods I have made to help my students remember the alphabet.  We used to cook every week, and I hope to do more of that this coming year.  I will put the letters in ABC order and give you some ideas on foods you can make with or for your child that will help them remember the letter you are working on. 

A:  cooked apples...  Have your child peel and cut up several apples.  Use a plastic knife. It really works!  You can help too and when you are done, put the apples in a pan, add some water to cover the apples, 2 Tbsp butter and some sugar.  You can add cinnamon red hots if you want.  We called those red hot apples. Boil until the apples are soft.

B:  Bubble Bread...get two cans of biscuits.  Spray a bread pan or angel food cake pan and open the biscuits.  Have your child roll the biscuits up into balls and roll them in cinnamon and sugar. Place all these covered balls into the pan.  When you are done, melt 1/2 to whole stick of butter and pour over rolls.  Bake 375 degrees until brown and bubbly. 

c:  crazy cookies...using the premade sugar cookies have each child decorate their cookie with the ingredients they want.  Some things to have on hand...icing, sprinkles, M&M's, cherries, fruit...

D:  donuts...you can have them cut donuts out of biscuits and you fry them and let them decide if they want to dip them in powdered sugar or cinnamon and sugar.

E:  egg salad...I would give each child a hard boiled egg and had them peel the shell off.  They then used a plastic knife to chop the egg in pieces and but it in their plastic cup.  Have them put a tsp or mayo and some pickle relish in their cup and stir it up.  They can put this on bread and eat!

F:  french fry party!  We would bake some fries and have the kids chose their condiments and we would eat and play go fish.

G:  gorp...this is just a fun mixture like party mix.  We provided cereal, pretzels, candy, marshmallows and peanuts and the kids would get a baggie and go to each bowl and fill their bags with the mixture they wanted.

H:  honey balls...this is a yummy treat made with honey, powdered milk and peanut butter.  I have lost the recipe over time.  I just put peanut butter in a bowl and add about 1/2 the amount of honey.  Then I add powdered milk until it is a stiff dough.  This is fun for them to play with and eat. 

I will continue this fun cooking blog in two more blogs. 

Bye

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Hi everyone!  I couldn't wait to write some more so I thought I would talk to you about phonemic awareness.  As a teacher, I hear this word a lot, but as a parent I am sure it is a mystery to you what it means.  Phonemic awareness is just that the student is aware of phonemes or sounds in words.  Each letter makes a sound and when you put those sounds together you get words.  We as adults do this without thinking about it, but kids need to learn this process.  To be a good reader, you must be able to hear phonemes or sounds in words.  When you get better, you should be able to manipulate those sounds and make new words.  I am going to give you some websites to go to and some activities you can do at home to help build up your child's phonemic/sound awareness.

• Say a sound of a letter and let your child repeat it to you.  You say "B" and they just repeat the sound.  This can be done in the car or anywhere.  You don't show them the letter or anything.  Just let them repeat the sound.
• Say a word like cat.  Have them tell you the sounds they hear in cat.  Ex... "c"  "a"  "t".  If they can't do this, do it for them and just keep practicing.  Remember...you want this to be a fun time not a stressful time.  They should want to do this.
• After you have done the sounds in words, place some cereal or candy on the table in front of them.  Say a word... do.  Have them move their candy forward to show you how many sounds are in that word. (2)  Do only 2 or 3 letter words.  Be careful with blends and digraphs.  Digraphs are sh, th, ch etc... and blends are st, sl, gl, etc... they should be simple words that they can segment apart.  Here are some I would use... go, to, my, so, but, can, dog, pig, pop, top, tot, hot, mop, map, tap, lap, sun, fun, (I think you get the idea.) Let them eat the cereal or candy when they are done.
• Compound words...compound words are two words that come together to make one new word.  It is good for them to be able to separate these words apart.  I have mine hold their hands together.  I say a word like doghouse.  They take one hand and put it to the side and say dog.  Then they take their other hand put it to the side and say house.  I then have them put their hands together to say doghouse.  This gives a visual clue as well as verbal that this word has two words in it.  

Continue doing these sound awareness activities and later I will give you more difficult activities to do with them.  Remember...this is to be fun.  You can easily do this in the car because you don't need to show anything it is all verbal.

Web sites to go to...

http://www.professorgarfield.org/phonemics/farm3.html  This is a phonemic site that is so much fun.  Orson's Farm has several fun activities to do.

http://www.literactive.com/Home/roadtoreading.asp  This site is not completely finished, but what your child needs right now works great!  Begin at the nursery rhymes and continue down the road

http://www.starfall.com/ This is one of the best sites on the internet for reading.  Check out the ABC's and all the activities they have you do.

I hope these activities will help you.  I have so much more that I want to share on this topic so I will post more tomorrow and remember... read to your kids if you want them to be good readers!!!

How to Begin Teaching your Child to Read!

As many of you can see from my information, both of my children are getting older and graduating high school.  That made me think...what am I going to do with all my spare time?  Time that I spent sitting in bleachers and benches watching my children play sports and be active while I developed serious bleacher butt!  I decided that I would take the information that I have gathered over 18 years of teaching kindergarten and first grade to give parents some ideas to use at home to help better prepare your child for school.  I know many of the parents I talk to and give ideas to are really shocked at how simple it is to help your child prepare to read and even learn to read.  Our brains at a young age are really quite marvelous!  They are like sponges, unlike people my age whose brains are like full sponges that seem to leak information out at the worst of times!  In my blogs, I plan on starting at the beginning of reading and math and continuing on until they are readers.  These are the things I do every day and unless the child has a learning disability, they learn to read.  I will post websites that are helpful and books that I think work well for different situations.  If you have any questions for me, just leave a message.
Short advice for today...purchase a cheap set of magnetic letters and put them on your fridge.  Pick out one letter and throughout the day as you walk by the fridge pull off that letter and show your child and tell them the letter and sound.  If you don't know the sounds of letters I will help you...
a:  a   a   apple
b:  b  b   ball   (Make sure you don't say buh!  VERY IMPORTANT~)
c:  c  c   cat  (again no cuh)
d:  d  d  dog  (not duh)
e:  e  e   egg and eagle  (don't be afraid to tell your child that e makes two sounds and it is cool!
f:  f  f    fish
g:  g  g  gold
h:  h  h  hot   (huh  not!)
i:   i  i  igloo or ice
j:  j  j    jump
k:  k  k  kangaroo
l:  l  l  lollipop  Make sure the front of your tongue is on the top of your mouth.  Show them where yours is!
m:   m  m  monkey
n:  n  n  nose
o:  o  o  octopus and over
p:  p  p  purple
q:  q  q  quiet
r:  r  r   race
s:  s  s   sing
t:  t   t   top
u:  u  u   umbrella and unicorn
v:  v   v   vulture
w:  w   w   walrus
x:  x   x    fox  (we use the ending sound for x   it sounds like ks together.)
y:  y  y    yarn
z:  z   z    zipper
Again, do one for several days...you can play hide the letter m and see if anyone can find it. Write the letter M with shaving cream (fun and cleans the table!)  I would even have them find pictures in magazines and cut and glue them to a paper with M on it.  Yes...I said cut!  PLEASE don't let kindergarten be the first time your kids use scissors.  Imagine 18 kids using scissors all at once!  I have had some very dandy haircuts come out of my class!  HAHA  Finally, I would even find things to eat that start with m...meatballs, mangoes etc...Once they get m, put it aside and pull out another letter.  This is fun and the kids get your attention, and they learn so much!
Have a great day teachers and children!!