Do Spiders Dance?

It is fairly well known that honeybees do a special dance outside their hive to tell the other bees that a new field of flowers has been found! How they do that is a complete mystery to me! I got to thinking about spiders and asked myself, “Do spiders dance?” Well, thanks to the internet that question will not go unanswered!

Come to find out there are a few kinds of jumping spiders who do dance, mostly to attract a mate! Peacock spiders (appropriately named, I think) do a spectacular dance that a helps a discerning female tell which of these “dancers” possess the best physical qualities that will result in some strong offspring.

Spiders are truly AMAZING to learn about. We love studying them with our students and have created some great SPIDER products ! Click this LINK to see them all at our TPT store.

All About Spiders

This 70-page packet is all you need to teach a Spider unit! It comes loaded with a Shared reading book, informational text, photos, Beginning Readers Interactive printables, a vocabulary chart and themed writing paper and more. Try out a sample of this product (see below). Find the complete product HERE.

Non-fiction Beginning Readers – Spiders

Need more guided reading books to provide that “just right” level of text? Here is our set of 8 readers that focus on spiders. There are both colored and black/white versions, lots of interactive printables that extend the learning, teaching charts, and information to build background knowledge. Your students will LOVE reading these books that promote natural language, use predictable text and have great illustrations. Non-Fiction Spider Readers

Spider Songs

Here are 2 very familiar Spider songs that we have used as a basis for teaching some literacy skills. There are poem/song charts with pocket chart cards that illustrate each line, 2 No Prep Readers, some photographs that illustrate The Itsy Bitsy Spider and a fun game to help teach the most important high- frequency word ever…THE! SPIDER SONGS and ACTIVITIES

How about a Freebie?

This free download is a mini-sampler of the larger product called “All About Spiders”. This sampler has a beginning reader featuring the lyrics of the song, 2 of the 6 beautiful photograph cards, and some of the Interactive printables that are part of the whole product. Download the FREE Spider Sampler here. FInd the full product – ALL ABOUT SPIDERS at our TPT store.

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Yo, ho, ho and a classroom of fun! Pirates make a great theme for any time of the school year but did you know that September 19^th is “International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Way back in 1995, John Baur and Mark Summers of Albany, Oregon, came up with this “holiday”. During a raquetball game, one of them twisted an ankle and, in pain, said, “Aaarrr!” The rest of the game they talked like pirates. After eliciting the help of syndicated humor columnist, Dave Barry, in 2002, the “cannon” ball got rolling and the rest is history! “Talk Like a Pirate Day” has become an International “holiday” (although I’m pretty sure the banks don’t close for this one!). Have some fun and use our resources shown below with some common phrases to get you started “talking like a pirate” in your classroom!  Refer to the children as “mateys” or “scurvy dogs” (if they’re being naughty) and call out “AVAST, me hearties” when you want them to pay attention to something!  

Need Some Pirate Beginning Readers?

Your students will enjoy developing their early reading skills by engaging with these fun Pirate-themed NO PREP readers. Each of the 10 readers is a 1-page foldable and comes with an extension printable to extend the learning. The illustrations clearly support the simple patterned text. Just Fold and Go! With 10 different books from which to choose you will have a great variety of reading experiences. Click HERE to see these at our TPT store.

Need More Readers?

As students advance in their reading skills, they will find this set of PIRATE Beginning Readers enjoyable. The books come with several supportive printables for each book such as “Build a Sentence”, Vocabulary Charts, “Interactive printables, etc. There are 5 book “topics” written at 2 different text levels to equal 10 books. These books were purposely written with a variety of High Frequency words so your students will get repeated practice with these words. Again, the illustrations clearly support the text so the non-High Frequency words such as treasure, pirate and chest can be easily read. Click HERE to find these Readers.

Need a Pirate Song (with some Readers too)?

If you want to enjoy teaching with a Pirate theme for more than just one day we have a great song called Pirates, Pirates. This song is easily sung to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” It comes with a colorfully illustrated book and a mini-movie that shows the pages of the book turning as we sing the lyrics. Show this on a big screen and your students will be singing along in no time! There are additional Beginning Readers included, interactive printables, a path game, a craftivity, themed writing papers and charts on how to “talk like a pirate”! Click here for Pirates, Pirates!

Here’s a Freebie of Beginning Readers!

Download this free set of Beginning Readers to see an example of our work. There are 3 versions of this book (colored, black and white, and Interactive black and white) and 2 additional interactive printables that practice short vowel words. Click HERE to download this exclusively from our website. There is also a download button at the bottom of this blog post.

Other Pirate Themed Products

We LOVE using Pirates as a theme in our classroom so we have created a LOT of products. Here are just a few of our favorites. Whhaaaattt??? we love them all! Click this link to see ALL our Pirate products at our TPT store! Note: The “1-2, Yo, Ho, A Pirate Crew” has several pages on how to Talk like a Pirate”! Sooooo fun!

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Young children begin the path to literacy long before they are able to  “read” or “lift print” on their own. Before conventional reading and writing  skills emerge, Emergent Readers demonstrate their knowledge of the alphabet, gain a sense of what words are, and a develop the concept that stories have  beginnings, middles, and ends. They also hone their listening and  retelling skills and phonemic awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words). It’s a complex process but with the right tools Emergent readers’ vocabulary  and language expression will grow rapidly.

Lots of Books at just the Right levels!

Beginning Readers progress at different rates. What does that then mean for teachers? It means they need a LOT of books at just the right levels for their students to read.  These specially written books are usually not available at a library or  bookstore. Occasionally a book club like Scholastic Books will offer a set that  are at the right level but there is still a real need for more and more titles.

We experienced that need in our own K and 1st grade classrooms….JUST NOT  ENOUGH BOOKS at the right levels! So….we set about writing our own! These books use High Frequency Words with natural language that are clearly supported by the illustrations. Wider spacing between words aids students as they successfully  “finger match” on the words as they read. Some of our readers for the very beginning students have “dots” under each word where the student can touch as they read. Two of these sets with the supportive “dots” are shown below.

Fiction Beginning Readers

We started out by writing fiction sets of readers. They use cute graphics and clipart to illustrate the simple text. Most of the text is based on predictable patterned sentences focusing on High Frequency words. Two of our popular sets are these Dinosaur Readers.

There is a Set 1 and a Set 2.

Non-fiction Beginning Reader Sets

While we wrote several sets of fiction we wrote even more Non-fiction! We found that our students really gravitated to the Non-fiction books. Themes used in class like School, Farm Animals, Bats, Pirates, Penguins, Spiders, and Insects inspired us to write sets on these topics. Our Non-fiction Beginning Reader Sets come with a colored version that has  actual photographs of penguins, bats, farm animals, insects, etc. Students LOVE  studying the details in these photographs. Being conscious of the fact that  teachers often (er, ALWAYS) have to print their own COLORED copies of  things, we made BLACK & WHITE books with the same text but illustrated with realistic clipart. That way a teacher can print them on a school machine and every student can go home with their own copy. They love coloring the clipart and reading the books over and over again. Hey, that’s exactly what  we want them to do…read and reread to develop fluency and see those High Frequency Words over and over and over again..and learn them! These Readers are great additions to your Guided Reading  groups! We found they worked very well for our students.

Here is a picture of just a few of the Non-fiction sets we have written so far.

Click on a word to find each of these sets at our TPT store. BATS SPIDERS FARM

Here’s what one happy repeat customer said about our Readers, “I love ALL your sets for Kinders. I am excited to use these in class!”

Free Reading Book and Resource Pages

Want to “try out” one of our readers? This will give you an example of what comes with each reader. Click {HERE} to find a FREEBIE Reader at our TPT store. Click HERE to grab the COMPLETE Set of Farm Readers!

We hope you find these resources just what you need to give your students plenty of experiences with “just the right” level of texts.

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