Falling in Love with Fall!

   I must admit that ever since we moved from Chicago to the suburbs of Buffalo, I have fallen in love with Fall... I had never really seen the beauty of Fall until we moved here. With tree lined streets and a huge backyard, the scenery is gorgeous. Fall has since become my favorite season, hands down!
   And I have come to look forward to planning and making Fall themed activities for my little munchkins. A few weeks ago, I stopped at Michaels and caught a great sale (and had a 25% off entire purchase coupon)! I picked up two of these fun craft foam party trays.  Once I walked out of the store, the ideas started coming!

    I feel like I haven't posted much about what my little munchkin has been working on these past few weeks. She is determined to master her sight words so that she can start reading and writing! Those are her two biggest interest areas right now. 

I made two different Sight Word Activities for her to review and practice writing & spelling sight words.

Read & Write the Sight Word

Spell the Sight Word:

And of course, I found ways to use these in the classroom, as the preschool munchkins are currently learning how to Make Sets and how to Match Number to Set:

 And I used this exact setup to teach the concepts of More and Less:

    There are so many other ways that I plan to use these throughout the month for math activities, such as making patterns and graphing and counting.

    The kids love to use them, they save on having to print anything and they can be used over and over, for so many fun kinds of learning activities!

    AND if you are reading this blog post, I have a little secret: Tonight I am hosting a Fall Giveaway and will be giving away my Fall Literacy Pack:

(Here are samples of what is included)

    There will be 2 lucky winners on my Teaching Munchkins Facebook Page... I will pick a winner tomorrow afternoon! So if you are not a fan, head over there now and become one... I will be posting within the hour!

Crazy over Pizza!

    There is no question about it in this house- my little munchkin LOVES pizza! And the funny thing is, about less than a year ago, this was far from the truth, as she wanted nothing to do with pizza...and I thought that was the weirdest thing ever. What preschooler does not like pizza? But sometime before her 5th birthday, the love for pizza finally emerged! Now I have to be careful when I ask her what she would like to eat...because nine times out of ten, the answer will be pizza. (That is, if the answer is not chicken nuggets, yogurt or a Nutella sandwich!)
   So we did some learning with a fun little pizza theme. She learned quite a few sight words during the last school year and I have continued to reinforce them all summer long.
   With Kindergarten right around the corner, sight word review was on the to-do list and so we reviewed sight words with a fun activity idea that came from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas. All that is needed is some construction paper, glue markers and some paper plates. I colored the paper plates to look like pizza slices and wrote different sight words from the Pre-Primer Dolch Sight Word list onto the "ingredients" (broccoli, pepperoni and sausage)

She read each sight word and if she read it correctly, she glued it onto a slice of pizza.

She made three of these little pizzas... enough for everyone!

     And everyone has heard of the book " The Little Red Hen", right?  Well, I was shocked when I found out that there is now a book called, "The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza" I was shocked b/c many years ago in a teacher training workshop, my group and I were asked to modernize an old folk tale as part of a Reader's Theatre activity, and this was the exact twist we put in our modern version of The Littlle Red Hen. Interesting.... I could have had a published book right now...who knew?

     Anyway, we read this book and then made a pizza! Well, actually, we made mini pizzas, using flatbread, pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and my favorite topping: Pepperoni

She put hers together like a pro!  Just cheese, please! 

All ready to go into the oven!!

YUMMMMMM!!

Rainy Day Learning Fun!

   Well, things are looking great for my 1st Facebook Fan Giveaway and I ecstatic at how much it has reached my target audience! My fan page has almost reached 100 fans.... it is very exciting! I might have to start planning to have a "100 Fans" Giveaway very soon!
    Click HERE (if you haven't already) and join in on the giveaway!
    Anyhow, I know the past 2 weeks have been wild and my blogging routine was out of sorts, but I am working hard to get back on track. There are so many things to share with you, so let me get moving along.
   Is it raining where you are? It has rained almost every day this week and it seems the week will be ending with lot of rain. BLAH.... I guess it's good because then one day we will wake up and there will be lush green leaves on all the trees and  gorgeous flowers blooming everywhere.

    All this rain has inspired me to create some fun learning activities for the little munchkin. 

    The little munchkin is getting ready to end her preschool year and she is still working hard to learn as many sight words as she can. If I didn't know any better, I would think she really wants to be reading alot of words (and maybe even reading on her own) during the summer!

So, I made a few Sight Word Games with a fun, rainy theme:

Sight Word Match

Sight Word Spelling

(Both of these printable activities will be available in my TPT store by the end of the week)

Raindrop Counting

This activity was a simple, DIY idea that I came across at My Nearest and Dearest. 

Raindrop Rhymes:

    I made this game to give the munchkin some practice with rhymes. (Afterwards, she found that playing with the paper umbrella was much more fun!)

    We are in for some more rain for the rest of the week and I am looking for more Rainy Day fun for her to come home to! Please share any ideas that you may have!  

"Egg-cellent" learning games with plastic eggs!

    The Easter holiday is just around the corner and I am seeing plastic eggs all over the place! From simple colorful ones, to ones with fun designs and characters, to ones in very cute shapes. I LOVE the cute carrot & bunny eggs I found at the Dollar Tree. I bought some last year and went back for more this year!
    All the cutesy eggs that are out there aren't just cute and great for Easter egg hunts and filling baskets...the little munchkin and I are discovering all sorts of fun games to play and different ways to use these little plastic eggs.
   Earlier this week, after I raided the Dollar Tree for their cute eggs, I set out baskets and activity trays of learning games for the little munchkin to do, if it sparked her interest. And I say "if" because since I have been using Montessori-inspired activity trays, I change the trays maybe every 1-1.5 weeks, depending on how fast she completes the activities and how interested (or uninterested) she is with the activity trays.

 (Read more here about how I started with my Montessori-Inspired Activity Trays in her playroom)   

   And all week long, she has been excited about the new activities and has been doing one or two activities a day.

   Here is one activity that I borrowed from Nicole over at Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten:

    I filled each carrot egg with letter tiles (or you can use magnetic letters).

    She had to choose an egg, dump out the letters and try to put the letters in order to make a sight word. 

(To make it a little easier, I only used the 8 sight words that she has been learning)

    Once she figured out the correct spelling of the sight word, she wrote it on the carrot. 

    This recording sheet is part of an Easter FREEBIE, so head over to Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten to grab your own copy and make any kind of game you wish! (It could be a spelling word game for older kids or a letter/ number recognition game for preschool kids) 

The ideas are endless!

    For some upper and lowercase letter identification practice, I also made a game where each carrot egg had two letters that did not match. She had to dump the eggs and match the upper and lower case letters.

There's more!! She grabbed another tray and basket with yet another egg game.

    This time she had to open each egg and sort letters from numbers. I also had her name each letter and number as she sorted it into the correct group.

And then I thought of a way to make the classic game of Memory  Match even more fun:

I bought 2 sets of these little erasers at Walmart. I filled small eggs with the erasers and we took turns opening the eggs to try and find a match.

    So, what are you waiting for? 

    Get over to the Dollar Tree and raid their Easter section! There are TONS of fun things to do with these eggs. And the best thing about all this learning fun-- very cost effective!

   And with Spring break next week, you can be sure that the little munchkin and I will be exploring a zillion more ways to have fun with plastic eggs!

 So, stay tuned!

Freebie Friday!

   It's Freebie Friday!

   This week, I am also linking up my Freebie at Teaching Blog Addict!

    The little munchkin has been continuing to chug along and learn her sight words. And even after she receives a new set at school, I make sure to always make fun games/activities for her to practice and retain the sight words that she has already learned,

    I created this quick little Tweetin' Sight Words Activity for her this week

Click the image to download your FREE copy:

That's all I have for today... I have a busy weekend ahead of me and lots more to share next week!!

Shamrockin' Sight Word Fun!

    Well, we are not Irish at all, but that hasn't stopped the little munchkkn and I from engaging in some green fun!
    She has been all about learning her sight words lately, so I pulled together a few activities to help her to learn her new set of sight words.
    The funny thing that I love about my brain, is that it always seems to be in creative teaching and learning mode. I went to Joann's to look for a little leprechaun statue of some sort for a game I had in mind, but I had no luck. And when I spotted little leprechaun hats and little pots of gold- Bam! I thought of a different game and knew these things would work.

Sight Word Hide N' Seek:

    I wrote a new sight word on each hat (front and back) and she had to identify the sight word in order to lift the hat to find the pot of gold!

She loved it and after a few tries, she wanted to switch the hats around herself and had mommy and daddy try to find the pot of gold.

For some art fun, we did an activity called:

 "Secret Shamrocks":

I cut out shamrock shapes on white cardstock paper and used a white crayon to write out sight words.

 She used watercolors to paint the shamrock and as she painted, a sight word was revealed!

 She even painted rainbow colored shamrocks!

And another activity we did this weekend with her sight words was a sorting activity.

 Pots of Golden Sight Words:

I  made some black pots and labeled each one with a new sight word. 

 She sorted through the many gold coins to find and glue the right coin into the correct pot- 

and made lots of Pots of Gold with her sight words!

The best thing about all three of these activities is that they can be made in many different ways for many different skills such as counting, identifying numbers, letter identification, matching letter to sound, etc.... the list goes on!

Sensory Fun with shaving cream and sight words!

   So, the snow is back... We enjoyed a few snow-free days and then got hit with reality once again. Ugh, this Buffalo winter sure has been long! And sadly, I don't think we are done with it quite yet!
   Anyhow, as much fun as snow can be to play in (and it is easy to just bring some indoors), the little munchkin and I opted for some sensory fun with another awesome white and fluffy substance: Shaving Cream!!
   She has been learning just over 20 sight words in the past two months, and can correctly identify almost all of them.  I try to do fun games and activities with her to reinfore sight word learning every day. Today, she went on a "Snowball" sight word hunt.  (This is a type of activity that can easily be adapted to learn letters, numbers, etc.)
    I bought some ping pong balls at Dollar Tree awhile back and actually forgot I had them until a few days ago. I wrote sixteen of the twenty sight words she has been learning, onto the pig pong ball. I filled up a bin with shaving cream and hid all of the ping pong balls inside of the pile of "snow".

She dug into the "snow" to find the "snowballs".

    I added another bin of warm water when I noticed that her hands were so full of shaving cream, she couldn't wipe the shaving cream off of the ping pong balls very well. 

She dipped the "snowballs" in the water to reveal what sight word was written there.

    And then of course, once she found all sixteen "snowballs", she begged to play in the shaving cream for awhile longer. She was elbow deep in shaving cream and it kept her busy for awhile, which is exactly what mommy needed in order to get a few things done around the house. Hey, whatever works some days, right?

    So, every few days we review some sight words and we have since reated an "I Can Read" sight word display in her playroom, right on the basement door.

    Every few days, we review the words and once she is able to correctly identify the word at least 3 different times and sometimes on three different days, I know she has mastered it and I give her a star with the word written on it. She colors it (in rainbow colors) and proudly puts it on the door!

    Teaching and learning sight words has been so much fun. I constantly seek new ways to teach her sight words in a fun, engaging way. I know learning sight words can be difficult or even an unattainable skill for any preschool child, as it used to be something that was taught in the later part of Kindergarten or even First Grade. So I always, always try to make it fun at home, no matter what!

    For now, we are both so excited how much (and how fast) she is learning and I love to hear her read the little sight words books that her teacher sends home with her sight word list every few weeks. It gives her so much confidence and I know she is proud of herself everytime she reads a word she knows!

Falling in Love with Sight Words!

   What's not to love about sight words, right?
    There are SO many activity ideas and fun ways to teach children sight words. And I am having an awesome time teaching my little munchkin sight words. I am waiting for her preschool teacher to send home another set of sight words. I like to try and work on the same sight words that she is teaching in the classroom. It has been over 2 weeks since we received a set...The little munchkin has already mastered the first 14 sight words that she has been taught and she is ready to move forward with another set.
   In the meantime, she has been "falling in love" with her sight words. When we read books at bedtime, she always wants to go back and look through the book to find any sight words she knows.
    And we had a funny moment at mass this past weekend. She pulled out the song book and was flipping through the pages and when she spotted the word "the", her eyes opened up so wide and she whispered loudly, "Mommy, my sight words are in here!" It was PRICELESS.... she is discovering a whole new world full of words and is excited by it all!
    Anyhow, with Valentine's Day coming up, we needed some fun Valentine activities to practice sight words. I found these oh-so-cute felt envelopes at JoAnns the other day. I took the last five they had and I would have liked to have more. But.... I did some research (ok, ok, I just looked on Pinterest) and found out just how easy these are to make. But I didn't have the time or energy to make some more. So I made a little game with what I had.

     Each envelope had 2-3 sight words that she had to identify and then color the heart with the matching sight word.

 Everyday Celebrations, has super easy directions on how to quickly make your own felt envelopes!

    Although I can't figure out a sewing machine if I tried... I am sure a glue gun would work just fine too!

   Aside from making sight word learning lots of fun with a variety of games, I also made a little flip book from a photo album I picked up at the Dollar Tree. Each page has a card that contains a sight word that she is able to identify. It has been a portable way for her to learn her sight words on the go... and she loves to flip through it and shout out the words.

   We have used the flip book album on many occasions and in many different ways.
    She used it to name the sight word and them counted out the number of hearts she needed to spell the sight word. She wrote each letter on each heart and glued them together.

    *Here is the best part: When I taught Kindergarten (way back in 2007), this was one of the activities that I did with the students! And here is my little munchkin- 4 years old and in preschool- doing the same activity with alot of confidence. It makes me such a proud momma!

So,yes, as you can see, we are in love with sight words! 

They are so much fun to learn and teach!

Stay tuned tomorow for my first 

Crafty Tuesday post!!