Five for Friday: gingerbread, syllables, sight words and more

It's been too long! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for my of my favorites:

It's 10:54 PST so technically I made it on time! :)

1. With my first grader students, I used several activities from my Gingerbread literacy pack.  My students have mastered their vowel sounds, but I want to keep it that way! So we did this activity where they tried every vowel on the word on each pan. They had fun with this one!

We are focusing on consonant blends, so we practiced with this little number.

2. One of the the things that my students struggle with most is memorizing those sight words! 

They LOVE to make words in the sand. Definitely a favorite!

They practiced making these words in the sand. I added one at a time. Each time I added one, they had to reread the previous cards. Then after making the new word, I mixed the cards up and they had to read them again. Then they were given the next word. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

Then we made short sentences using our sight words and a few simple "sound out" words.

This is one of my additions to my Christmas Ready to Go pack. They highlight the sight words then read through the story. We go over the sight words a lot before reading! While answering the questions at the bottom, they have to go back up and reread to find the answers.

 3. With my 2nd grade students, we focused on syllables. First, they matched up the bowls of dough to make the two syllable words. THis was a great activity! I laid out the 2nd syllable cards. Then we took one of the 1st syllable cards and tried it with ALL of the 2nd syllable cards. This was great practice because they were reading nonsense two syllable words to try to find the one real word. This is also in my Gingerbread pack.

I put these cards under the document camera. I modeled how to split the word into its syllable parts. This week we focused on CVVC words. Next week, we'll do open syllables. First, we found the vowels and determined how many syllables it would be based on the number of vowels (or vowel pairs). Then we looked at the consonants in the middle. Since they had two consonants in the middle, the kids used the pointer to split the word. Then they read each syllable separately before blending them together to read the actual word. This isn't in my gingerbread pack because I made it afterward. Maybe a freebie for next year? 

Some get a kick out of making the shadows. They just held up their pointed and divided the word with the shadow. It's the little things, right?

4. I stinkin' love readinga-z.com. LOVE. I don't do this often, but as a special treat, I'll use the "projectable book" option while reading a story. They love to take the pointer and read a page out loud to the group. Extra special.

And I did the same with my kinders who are just starting to sound out words. They were thrilled!

This reading passage is from my Gingerbread pack. I did this with my second graders. Working on that close reading! The pack has three ability levels for each reading passage so I can actually use one with first graders too. :)

5.  My son had a "homework" assignment where he had to decorate this tree with his family. We had so much fun. You were encouraged to use things around your house. He was so into it! My favorite of course is his PRECIOUS angel at the top.