12 Days Of Christmas Giveaways!

I am very excited to be linking up with some of my best blog buds for this 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop!  I hope you've been enjoying hopping all over blog land and learning new ideas and scoring freebies!  FREE?!?!  That word causes teacher stampeded all over.  Ya know it's true!  We love freebies!  We love to steal borrow ideas and inspirations!  That's what makes us great at what we do!  We are willing to share and support one another!

I will be back later to update this post with a super popular phonemic awareness activity that I have started in my class.  But for now, enjoy this freebie!

Be sure to visit one my favorite blog friends, Nicole over at Lanier's Lions!  She is a very talented clip art artist!  Be sure to check out her stuff and ask her about the glittery peacock that she is creating of ME!

And now, I want to share two of my favorite phonemic awareness activities!

The first one is something I have done since my first year in Kindergarten.  I read this idea somewhere (book, internet) way back when so I can't take credit for it.  But it is a powerful (and fun! And you know Mr. G is all about making learning fun and silly....) activity for working with sound deletion and making new words with different sounds.  We do this every morning during our phonics/phonemic awareness portion of our reading block.  We call this changing our names.  No fancy name, no cute rhyming title.  We're just changing our names.

We are seated on our "Monster Pit" and I ask what day of the week it is.  They answer.  I ask what the first sound in that word is.  They answer.  (Look, first sound fluency review!  Smarter.  Not harder.)  For example, today is Wednesday so the sound is /w/.  So we will change all of our names to the /w/ sounds.

James becomes Wames.
Bob becomes Wob.
Larry becomes Warry.
Oprah becomes Woprah.

We go around the circle and everyone gets their name changed.  And every day we all giggle and laugh because it's silly!  Each day, I also ask if anyone has a name that will not change (based on the sound that day and if they say yes, they have to explain why!)

Give it a try, your kids will love it!  The first few attempts are challenging, but once they get it, they will love it!  And it builds a strong foundation for reading and phonics and working with sounds to make new words.

The second activity is great a super fun way to practice segmenting sounds (and could be adapted for blending and non-sense words too!)  And it just so happens that my version involves everyone's favorite Canadian teen heart throb.....NO NOT ME.  I'm not Canadian.

Yes.  The Biebs has stepped in to help my monsters with their segmenting skills.  (I will keep my personal thoughts and feelings on the Biebs to myself.  Feel free to email me if you want to hear them.  And you know I ain't shy.)

I recently found this AMAZING Duct Tape at Wal-Mart.  Do not punch your computer or iPad.  That really is Justin Bieber duct tape.  I know...I know...if only they made Mr. Greg duct tape....or Kindergarten Smorgasboard duct tape.  The ideas are endless. 

So I had seen this idea for segmenting where the kids sit in chairs as they identify the sounds in a word, so I figured i could use the Biebs to my advantage.

I simply taped off 3 squares right outside of my classroom door.  In order to enter our room in the morning (or anytime of the day) the monsters must segment a word.  For each sound, they step from box to box.

The word is:  make

"MMMMMM"

"aaaaaa"

"kkkkkkk"

And you can enter!  They would seriously line up and segment all day long just because it's Justin Bieber on the duct tape.  Hello motivation, I'm Mr. Greg.  Nice to see you again today!!!  

$7 was totally worth it.  Now, the Biebs needs to repay my $7 by coming to see my monsters step on his face use his face to become better readers!

Now, who's going to buy Justin Bieber duct tape tonight?!?!?  Be honest!