Rhyming activities

This post is a continuation of my old post why is rhyming important ? Children love rhyming and doing fun activities to promote rhyming only enhances their love for it. So after you have done the singing bit, what else can you do? Below, i have listed a few activities that i know for sure will be a hit with the kiddos. Yup! they are tried and tested, so go ahead and do them without a hitch.

Activity 1

I sing this song to add a fun element to the activity. I downloaded it from growingkinders.blogspot.in

Activity 2

 Download the story by clicking on the image below

Activity 3

Activity 4

Rhyme Go Fish!

This game is great for emerging readers and is best played in a small group.

To play the game, put all the cards upside down. Each player takes five cards.

Player one asks another player, "Do you have a word that rhymes with cat?"

If the player has the word, he will hand it to the first player. If not, he will say, Nope! Go Fish! Play continues until the first player has no cards in his hand.

These activities will not consume too much of your class time but can be incorporated through the day as filler activities.

 Phonological awareness is an integral part of literacy and these small steps to develop it, can't be missed. I was fortunate to attend a wonderful workshop on reading and gained a deeper understanding of why such activities are essential for a good reading foundation. All the activities mentioned in this post were learnt in that workshop.Learning Matters, India is doing a fabulous job in the field of education. If you are keen on knowing more about them,then you can click HERE. 

Hope you will enjoy doing these activities with your kids. In my next post i will come up with a list of books you can read to children to strengthen their rhyming skills.

Manners and a unit on Feelings

Few weeks of school have passed smoothly but my class still needs to get a hang of classroom expectations and good manners. So i decided to use the story  "The day a monster came to school" by Kathleen Pedersen. I downloaded the free unit from her blog

growingkinders.blogspot.in

It has a story, fantastic pictures to form class rules and great posters to encourage whole body listening.

Kids had fun listening to the story and found it funny to imagine a monster in school.

We brainstormed appropriate and inappropriate behavior and made our manners chart. 

We made our own monsters and children talked about good choices.

We also sang the five little monsters song. The idea came from Deanna Jump's blog.I made finger puppets to go along with the song.

Children had a blast learning about manners through this unit. I am hoping that their enthusiasm to make good choices won't diminish any time soon. Which teacher doesn't like a class full of kids who make good choices especially with LISTENING ! 

We also did a mini lesson on feelings last week. We touched on four basic feelings- happy, sad, angry and scared. We sorted various pictures and made a collage.

I made some activities for center work.

 You can download by clicking on the link below:

I have feelings !

 This is a feelings chart that i made for each child. Children circle the feeling with which they relate. Click on the picture to download