Fun Word of the Day Activities for Fun Friday

Today was the last day of our Word of the Day calendar for February so my students chose 5 words from their calendars  to write a story today.  Most of my students can just circle 5 words on their calendars and start writing since we do this every month.

 Some of my students have trouble doing that so they tell me what they want to write about and we write the words from their calendars on the top of the paper like this.

Now look at what a great story this child was able to write using those words.  He is one of my ELL students and I am so proud of how his writing improves every month!

The really great thing about this is when we played the Brain Bounce game I will share with you in a minute, is he knew what patriot meant.  Yay!!

Here is a story about the dentist.  The students circle the words they use from our Word of the Day Calendars.

And here is one on Abraham Lincoln.  We try to incorporate lots of rich vocabulary words each month.

Here is our new March Word of the Day Calendar which is on sale all day today.  Remember the TPT code at checkout to get the extra percentage off. TPT3

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Word-of-the-Day-March-Calendar-1119945

Then my kiddos got ready to play our Brain Bounce games to test their knowledge of their February words from our calendars.  I gave them about 10 to 15 minutes to discuss the words on the calendars and then we were ready to play.  I divide the class into 2 groups and they pick a team name.

They take turns choosing a card to read and answer.

This little girl was so excited to read her card!

Here is a sample of our cards.  We try to make them go with the monthly theme because the kids like to see the designs on the cards and they are nicer to use in a center.  You can do that earlier in the month and let your kiddos use their calendars to help find answers.

Well it looks like the Redskins won this time.  My kiddos love this game!  They always ask me if we can play again.  What a fun way to review our monthly words.

Our Brain Bounce is also on sale all day today Feb.28.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Word-of-the-Day-March-Brain-Bounce-Game-1121771

 We also have a Quest Game where your kiddos find parts of words or chunks in our Word of the day words for the month.  The kids love being detectives and finding the word crumbs.  We have 3 ways you can play.

Here is a sample recording sheet.  Now the cool part about this is I am finding that my students are finding "word crumbs" in their other work.

Here is a student who was writing about the word "lawyer" in her calendar notebook, one of our word of the day words and she was excited to discover her own "word crumbs"

She found ham in Abraham and law in lawyer.  The 2 is how many syllables lawyer has.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Vocabulary-Quality-Quest-Game-March-Word-Crumbs-1137343

We also have March Activities where your kiddos cut and paste our Word of the Day words in order, and write the sentence, illustrate it,and do a bonus question about the words.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/March-Word-Activities-1136564

We hope you have gotten some great information about our Word of the day activities and games and you will take advantage of getting them while they are all on sale today during the big sale.

Thank ya'll so much for stopping by and we hope you will check back every Friday for Fun Friday.

Have a great weekend!

BIG TPT SALE!!!!!!

Everything in our store will be on sale.  Come check out all of our new March activities and games.  We will be posting some brand new items as well so come follow our store so you know when we have posted them:)
http://www,teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Sol-Train-Learning

We hope you find some great products for your kiddos!

Monday Mood Lifter #6

Hello all!

Hope everyone's week is off to a good start.  Here is your encouragement for the day:

"Stay committed to your decisions; but stay flexible in your approach." --Tony Robbins

I know for me personally, this can be difficult to follow.  Share with us a fun story of a time you had to be flexible.

George Washington Activities

FREE Download today Feb. 21 to celebrate Fun Friday and tomorrow Sat. Feb.22.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/HIStory-Mp3-Song-453032I started the week with singing this song about history and then we discussed what history means.  Then we started our study of George Washington and talked about his history.

I read this book and discussed it with the class.  It is a nice short book that is on their level.  We also started this Magic Treehouse book for a read aloud:

My kiddos love these books!   The cool part of our discussion came when one of my students noticed this:

He remembered the picture from the first book I read and all the kids were like"Yeah"

So, we talked about the picture and how it is a famous painting.  I laughed when one of my students said,"Yeah, but Jack and Annie aren't in the real one."

My students wrote a class book about George Washington:

Here are a few pages form our book:

I had my students do a book response half way through the Magic Tree House book:

We ended our week with an awesome and easy George Washington craft:

Start with a paper plate

Fold the plate like this:

Turn it over for the white horse.

Punch a hole for the tail that will be made with white yarn.

Put the yarn through the hole and tape on the bottom.  The students will also need to make a horse's head out of white paper and glue it on the plate.  I had my students make their own instead of giving them a pattern because it makes them all different and I love that!

Draw a face on an oval piece of manila paper.

Cut out a blue hat and glue it on the head and then glue cotton balls for the wig.  Glue him on a stick.  We used tongue depressors.  Cut out a small red rectangle to wrap around the stick for a cape.  Cut a hole in the middle of the plate for the stick to go up and down .

Done!:)

Of course, my students decided to add arms,rein for the horse and some added a sword.  They are just so creative!

How cute are these!  My kiddos loved making these and they love that their  horses rock!

We hope you got some great ideas today and we would love for you to share any great ideas you may have for teaching about Washington.

Thanks and Have a Great Weekend! 

40% OFF TODAY:)

Last Day for 40% off of this great game that our kiddos love to play every month.  I divide my class into 2 teams and let the kids take turns reading the cards that have questions about the March vocabulary words.  They get a point for their team if they get the correct answer.  If they don't, it bounces to the other team to answer.  The vocabulary words are also introduced daily in our March Word of the day Calendar, which is also 40%off today.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Word-of-the-Day-March-Brain-Bounce-Game-1121771

T

his is our Word of the Day March Calendar that has a ABC pattern for the kiddos to follow as well as a March vocabulary word on each calendar piece.  My students write about the word every day in their calendar notebooks.  Their writing as well as their vocabulary has really increased since they started using these calendars and playing our Word of the Day games and using the word of the Day products.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Word-of-the-Day-March-Calendar-1119945

Here is a sample of  what some of my students wrote using words from our January Word of the Day Calendar.  They chose 5 words and wrote a story using those words.

This one was done by an ELL student who was not writing at all at the very beginning of the year.  He was so proud of himself.  I know I was very proud of him!