Fun with ABC's and 123's Day 2 in Vegas for I Teach K

Teaching the ABC's and 123's is a part of all pre-k and kindergarten classrooms. Whether the kids know a few or many, letters and numerals are used as a baseline for many skills.  They are power standards thus requiring a deeper level of understanding on recognition and use. Here are some fun activities that we use to teach these basic skills. (Be sure and scroll all the way to the bottom for today's free file.)

Letter Activities

The Dollar Store is my FAVORITE store!  Where else can you spend $25 and feel like you hit the jackpot! I love picking up novelties to make games and activities more engaging.  I picked up this monster gift bag and cut out the mouth. Now, instead of just flashing the letters for the children to read, they get to feed them to the Letter Monster.

My favorite way to teach letters and sounds is through music. There is so much good music! I love Shari Slone! Her music is slow enough for the kids to keep up with the words and learn the concept (not to mention she has a beautiful voice!). I made music books to go along with my favorite Shari Sloane and Jack Hartmann songs. Now, when I am singing the songs, we can flip through our books and "see" the letters we are singing about! To get Shari's music head over to iTunes. Be sure and check out Jack Hartmann on youtube!

Number Activities

This is such a fun way to use those number puzzles that are collecting dust.  I picked up this cube dice from Lakeshore. To play, put numeral cards in all 6 sides of the dice...you  can decide which numerals to use.  Invite the children to roll the dice. Remove the numeral from the puzzle that is on the dice. If you rolled a 3, remove the 3.  Roll again. Keep removing numerals.  If you roll a numeral this is already removed, you put the numeral back in the puzzle. The goal is to remove all of the numerals.  Guess what? The game is never over! See how long it takes your kids to realize that all of the numerals are not on the dice! 

Another great way to visit numerals and number sense is through children's literature.  I love Mouse Count.  To make this prop, I painted a jar on a cookie sheet. I picked up some mice cat toys at the Dollar Tree and added magnets to the back. I made the snake from felt and added magnets.  As I am reading the book, I manipulate the mice.  While this is fun and engaging, there is a REAL BIG reason this is important! Children show develop mathematical concepts through manipulation before learning to understand that concept through pictures.  By manipulating the mice, the children are able to develop the number sense that is taught through this book.

Here are the resources I used to plan this session.

I am doing 3 other sessions today in Vegas. Here are some other blog posts that share some of those ideas.

Marvelous Mini Lessons for

Motivating Young Writers

Here's a blog post where you can read about some of the ideas that I shared that will help you get writer's workshop up and running in your room.

Here are the resources I used to plan this session.

Differentiated Small Group for Math Success

Here is a blog post with how I organize and manage my math small groups. It shares how I assess to determine groups. It also explains what the "other kids" are doing while I have a small group. Here are the resources I used to help plan this session.

Don't Wait Early Literacy Interventions

Here is a blog post where I shared how to use the ABC book based on Reading Recovery strategies. You can grab the free ABC Book that I shared during the session in the blog post.

One of the things that I shared in this session are the tutorial bags that I use with my kids.  You can grab these for free at the bottom of this post.

To use these cards I make a bag for each child. After teaching the standard in large and small group if the child still needs more practice, I drop the card in their tutorial bag. When parents, older students, peer tutors, etc are available, they can pull the child one and one to review the things in their bag!

Here are the resources I used to plan this session.