I am happy to review a few products by Jennifer from Herding Kats. Not only does she share wonderful resources for your classroom, but she also shares her life stories in a way that draws you in as if you were there along with her. I am always happy to visit her blog and learn something new.
I just discovered that she has this amazing Back to School unit: Forest Themed Unit for Back to School or Fall. I was pleased to see that it covers a variety of activities for language arts, math and science. A bonus to this unit is that these activities may be introduced during whole group or small group time. Then, the teacher may place them in centers for extra practice. They may also be used in pocket charts or sent home for review of target skills. Students may work on the activities independently or in groups of two.
Take a look at the activities that you will find in the unit.
1- Alphabet Match Game: These alphabet cards feature a precious raccoon that will go well with The Kissing Hand book. This game helps students identify letter names and become familiar with upper and lower case letters. Beginning readers can work with two sets of cards. All they would have to do is to simply match the upper case to upper case letters or lower case to lower case letters. The more advanced students can match the upper to lower case alphabet cards. These cards also come in handy for sequencing the alphabet. Beginners can look at an alphabet chart for guidance. Advanced students can sequence the alphabet cards without support.
2- Rhyming Cards: These can be used in 2 simple ways. *You can select 4 rhyming pairs to play a concentration game or match the rhyming cards in the pocket chart. Rhyming is such an important skill. I like how these cards only include pictures without the words. Students can concentrate on naming the pictures and listening for patterns in words. When they hear two words that end the same, they pair them up as rhyming words.
3- Student book: This book features the words “I”, “see”, “one”, “two”, “three”. The sight words “I” and “see” are repeated on every page. It is easy for the students to read the unknown words by looking at the picture clues on the page. This makes for a predictable reading pattern that is easy to follow.
4- Number cards 1-20: Whether you are working on identifying number skills or number sequencing skills, these cute cards will come in handy. They can be sequenced in the pocket chart, on the table or on the floor. Make sure to instruct your students to name the number as the card is placed in the chart. This will help them keep track of the number that they are on plus practice one-to-one correspondence.
5- Count and Match cards: Students will be able to practice their counting skills with the acorn cards. Then, they will need to match the quantity of acorns to the corresponding number cards. This activity will be wonderful to use as a review in the beginning of the school year. It will also be great as a differentiation activity throughout the year while more advanced students are ready to move on to more challenging activities. I can definitely see this in a center year-round.
6- Patterns: Another skill covered in this unit is working with patterns. Students will be able to read and complete AB, ABC and AABB patterns using these adorable raccoons. Since the raccoons look alike, students will learn to pay attention to detail to find the pattern.
7- Roll and Graph Forest Animals: There is a dice of forest animals provided. Students roll the dice and graph the results. Wow! Dice games seem to motivate the little ones into learning. When using this with a group of two students, you will notice that kids wait anxiously for their turn at rolling the dice but are equally excited at graphing the results with crayons.
8- Science: Students sort diurnal and nocturnal pictures of animals. This is an activity that must be introduced to the class before they are expected to work on it independently in a center. But, once they are familiar with the terms and animals, sorting them out will become a breeze.
As you can see, Jennifer provides wonderful resources for your Kindergarten classroom. I am very pleased with every product that we were able to review. They cover many of the skills that our Kinders work on all year long. If you like what you see, then head on over to her store and add these items to your wish list.
