Nonsense Word Mystery Pictures

So our new focus during our reading extension time is nonsense words.  We are trying to get the kids ready for their next DIBELS benchmark and of course for progress monitoring.  I can say that I do enjoy doing something a little different, but it is taking so much of my time gathering and making all of these new materials.  I love the stuff I am finding though!  I even made some of my own!  

These are my nonsense word hidden pictures.  Basically, the kids read each word and decide if it is real or nonsense.  If it is real, they color it one color and if it is nonsense, a different color.  The end result: a hidden picture!  I have one set that is just basic pictures and another set that is holiday pictures.  You can pick them up  here!

Nonsense Word Mystery Pictures

Nonsense Word Holiday Mystery Pictures

Candy Corn Nonsense Words

We have been preparing for those lovely DIBELS progress monitoring tests, getting kids ready for that phoneme segmentation and nonsense word assessment!  So here was a fun activity that I put together for my kiddos.

The first thing that I did was to call out several CVC words, some real and some nonsense words.  The kids wrote the words on pieces of candy corn - one sound in each section of the candy.  This was a fun review for some phoneme segmentation.  We segmented the sounds in the words and then wrote the sounds. After we wrote all of our words, the kids sorted their real and nonsense words.  Then we taped them onto our candy jars and reviewed all of the words in each jar.

Pumpkin Seed Ten Frames!

We did a mini pumpkin unit during science.  We made many scientific observations and predictions about our pumpkin.  We wrote our observations all over our pumpkin with a black sharpie.  I saw this on pinterest and it turned out really cute.  After we made our observations about the outside of our pumpkin, we predicted what the inside would be like.  Then we estimated how many seeds our pumpkin would have.

After cleaning out our pumpkin and drying our seeds, we glued them on to ten frames.  This made it easier to count and integrated something that we had already been learning in math!  Here is what it looked like when we finished:

Homework Helpers

I have worked for quite some time on my homework helpers and I think I got it.  They are working well so far this year.  I have a math helper with basic first grade skills, a phonics helper with many different phonics sounds, and a mini word wall.  I also have a homework helper that goes along with my reading and spelling homework.  Here is the homework folder that the kids carry home with all of their homework and homework helpers:

Inside each pocket I hot glued an envelope for them to keep their materials in.  One is for spelling words and the other is for the book they are reading.

My homework is on a weekly basis, due each Friday.  For homework, my students have to complete three activities with their spelling words and answer two questions about the story they read each night.  I have included a homework helper with a retell chart for parents to look at and questions for parents to use when reading with their child.  The homework also includes a variety of "Fun Writes" so that students can practice writing their spelling words in a fun way!   You can get a copy of my homework and this homework helper at my TPT store.

 The phonics helper includes alphabet sounds, digraphs, short/long vowels, vowel digraphs, adding ed/ing endings, y as a vowel, r controlled vowels, and more.  You can get a copy of my phonics helper here.

 

 Here is the last page of my phonics helper and the mini word wall helper.  The mini word wall includes all of the Dolch words and is a great reference for students when they are writing at home. You can get my mini word wall helper here.

  I have also included my math homework helper.  It includes many of the basic math skills for first grade including some addition strategies.  You can get a copy here.