'Tis The Luck O' The Irish!

TOP O' THE MORNIN' (aka afternoon) TO YA, LADDIES!! 

...sorry...it's been a long week. 

Anyways, we kept the St. Patty's Day spirit going all week with a couple Irish activities...but first, my little leprechauns slapped on some bandaids and learned all about "OW!" sounds. With help once again from Babbling Abby (LOVE her), I differentiated the sounds by calling them either "cow" words or "mouse" words. We read a bunch of big books and searched for the sounds throughout, then, the kiddies became doctor detectives by looking for "hurt" words (that make the "OW!" sound). If they read an ow/ou word in a book, or even used an ow/ou word when they were speaking/writing, they got to sort and write the word on our anchor chart:
Monday                                 Friday

At word work, the kids completed a "write the room" activity where they found and sorted words (that I pre-posted around the classroom) as "ow" or "ou" words. Then they used one "ow" word and one "ou" word in a sentence:

Our writing centre activity for the week involved putting together mixed up (St. Patty's Day themed) sentences. We have done this activity in the past but, this time, we did it with a different purpose: we focused on the structure of a sentence (primarily a capital at the beginning and punctuation at the end) as our focus during writing period was "No Good, Rotten, Run-On Sentences."

Next up, our investigation station/oral language centre: The primary division at my school has been working on an EPCI project, focusing on the development of oral language skills in the primary grades. I made the following activity to compliment our project: I printed a number of the Dolch phrases on cardstock and grouped them by difficulty using shower curtain rings from Walmart. My lower kiddies could simply practice sight word recognition and build fluency by reading the phrases at their own pace, and I added the timer to challenge my higher-achieving kids (see if they could read one or all of the "fluency rings" before the timer runs out). Simple. They love it. I love it. All is well in the world.

In the spirit of sight words, I'll quickly share one more word work idea with you that we did a couple weeks ago but I never got around to posting: The kids loved this activity! They took crumpled pieces of paper out of a trash can, read the word on the paper, and determined whether that word was "trash" (a made up word) or "treasure" (a Dolch sight word). After sorting the papers into trash or treasure bins, the kiddies recorded each word:

(This activity is part of my Word Work pack in my little TpT shop)

At the art centre (formally the listening centre), my little leprechauns wrote about who was worth more to them than gold:

(I have had this activity for a long time now and I can't remember where I got it from...If it was you, let me know so I can give you credit!!)

Obviously I had to share this one since it confirms that I am, in fact, the best. Ha! I joke.

 It definitely melted my heart though :)

Last but not least, I spent my March Break making Easter and Spring-themed activities to use for the next couple of weeks. I compiled most of my hands-on activities into this packet of 8 math and literacy activities:

(If you'd like to enjoy these activities with your kiddies, you can grab your copy HERE!)

I introduced the patterning math centre to my kiddies this week (see bottom right) and they LOVED it...it's one of my favs, too! I'm going to be using the rest of these activities throughout the next couple of weeks, so check back to see how I use this product in my own classroom.

As an aside, I have also had a couple emails asking me about how I run my math centres--so stay tuned for a post about that some time next week! 

For now, enjoy the beautiful, sunny weekend! :)