February Fun

February is LOADED with classroom fun! Groundhog’s Day, 100th Day of School, Presidents’ Day and Valentine’s Day….whew! All these in the shortest month of the year!

Valentine’s Day activities and passing out cards are highly anticipated in Kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms. The thought that goes into selecting that “just right” Valentine to give each classmate can take a LOT of time. I remember sitting down with my niece when she was in first grade to help her prepare her Valentines. What I thought might be a short 30-minute session turned into over 2 hours as she pored over the text of every card, analyzed every cute graphic for its underlying meaning, considered who on her list would be best suited for this card, then wrote their name and hers on the card…then repeated this entire process over and over and over again for each of the 30 students in her class (yes, California has a LOT of students in their classrooms!). My niece analyzed the picture and the words and made comments like, “Oh, Annette really likes unicorns. Is there a unicorn in my box?” Of course, there wasn’t so the search began again for a second choice for Annette! Endless!

Well, we hope our products will be quick to prep and fun to use in your February studies! This Literacy packet, 1-2 a Friend For You, has a book based on the familar poem, 1-2 Buckle my Shoe. It also comes with 2 Take-Home books, Pocket Chart sentence building cards and pictures, a vocabulary chart and some writing activities. Click HERE to find this great resource at our TPT store.

Great Game for Learning High Frequency Words

This game format is one of our students favorite games! They LOVE swiping cards from other players when they get a SWIPE cards. This game comes with 40 words with vowel digraphs such as “ou” and “ow”. These cards have cute monkeys on them. Add in the “candy” and “sad monkey” cards. Stack the cards on the playing mat (included) in the center of the table. The first player takes a card from the pile. They read the word aloud. (If they do not know it, someone tells them and they repeat it). They keep that card and play moves to the next person. When a player turns over a ”CANDY” card, he can SWIPE a “Monkey” word card from another player (plus keep the ”CANDY” card). Game continues until someone gets a ”SAD MONKEY” card that ends the game. Everyone counts his or her cards. The person with the most is the winner! EDITABLE cards are included so ANY words can be inputted and used to play so your students are practicing the skills they need at this time of the yesr, Click SWEET MONKEY SWIPE to see this at our store,

Word Hunt FUN

This is a great way to repeatedly practice reading High Frequency words with the whole class. Words are put in a pocket chart and animal cards are placed BEHIND the word cards. They must be completely hidden from view and NOT be able to be seen through the word cards. Divide the class into 4 “teams” and have each team choose which of the 4 animals they will try to find!

Select a team or student from team to start. They can call out a word OR come up and point to a word and read it. Reveal the animal hiding behind the word card. If it is one of the animals that team is trying to collect, they get to keep the animal. If it is NOT what they are seeking, hide the animal back behind that word card. Play passes to the next team. When a team successfully finds one of their animal cards both the word and the animal cards are removed from the pocket chart. Continue taking turns reading words and revealing the hidden animals. The game ends when the student or team has collected all 4 of their animal cards.

This February Word Hunt comes with EDITABLE cards so ANY words can be. used! Your students will LOVE playing this game over and over again! After several times playing this it can easily become a learning center run by an adult volunteer!

February Readers

One can never have enough “just right” leveled books and these NO Prep Readers cover February subjects including Groundhog’s Day, Presidents’ Day and Valentine’s Day. They also come with an Interactive printable to extend the reading. Print, fold and go! They are super easy to use!

Free Singable- Chocolate, Chocolate

Here’s a FREE song that celebrates all things chocolate! There is a colorful chart, take-home chart, writing booklet and pocket chart cards. Click CHOCOLATE! CHOCOLATE! to download this free song at our JK Singable store.