Stop, Swap & Roll!

Hi Everyone! Time for another Stop, Swap & Roll! 

Something fun to carry us into the BUSY month of May :)

I am so lucky to be paired with Suzanne from Kindergarten Planet for a product swap. She is the sweetest and she has great things in her TpT store! 

I got to use her Rhyming Rocks pack in my classroom. It couldn’t have been a more perfect unit.  I used it in my Kindergarten intervention group, my grade level group, and my enrichment group! It fit all of my students’ needs. 

Here are some of the things we loved!

The students had a great time matching picture cards to their word chunks! We played it like a memory game. 

When they found a rhyming match, they put the cards into the pocket chart. 

We have been working a lot with reading strategies and my kids made a connection between rhyming words and "chunky monkey!"

 We enjoyed working on CVC words and vowel sounds. We also enjoyed making matches at Word Work! This week we were practicing CVC words with "short u" -- This rhyming page fit perfectly with our curriculum. 

               
   

Rhyming Rocks was so much more than just practicing rhyming words. It had students thinking about providing rhymes, matching rhymes, and listening for sounds. The students worked on word family words and finding words with the same word chunks. 

You definitely need to enter to win Rhyming Rocks! Please like Kindergarten Planet on Facebook & follow on Instagram & Teachers Pay Teachers. Keep hopping along and entering for other great resources! Kindergarten Planet will be on sale for 3 days :) 

I will have a 2nd give away on xoxokindergarten Facebook page! Head over there to double your luck :) 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

PS. Kindergarten Planet is giving away my Reusable Primary Math Stations on her blog AND another copy on Facebook! Hop over to both places! 

MN Kindergarten Conference 2015

Over the weekend I had the chance to attend the Minnesota Kindergarten Association conference. Our guest speakers were Nancy Carlson, Shari Sloane, and Pete Harry from Harry Kindergarten! I had such a great time learning from them. 

The conference was back up in Moorhead where I went to college! J It was fun to be back on my stomping grounds.

I loved to hear the creative process that these teacher/musician/authors went through and it inspires me to put more of a musical and creative spin on my classroom management and teaching style!

Here I am with Pete Harry aka Harry Kindergarten music.

He had so much to say about using music during transition, during student responses, and pretty much during everything! He has a very loving and welcoming classroom environment. He is a pro at using technology and music. (obviously with his videos – but he does so much to involve the students!) He has a lot of FREE music on his youtube page and also has exclusives for previews on songs to purchase! Here is one of my favorite for movement, but check out more:

It will be fun to have some more musical tricks in my back pocket. 

SIDE NOTE --

I am a very musically expressive teacher too – I grew up in a MUSIC family. I come from a line of choir directors. My dad is the HS choir director in Alexandria, MN. I spent my undergrad at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN where I sang in the choir too. I even traveled to S. Korea with the choir! 

We also heard Nancy Carlson speak about her art career and the transition into writing children’s books with animal characters to teach necessary emotional themes for children. She even did a directed drawing with us! SO FUN.

 Ahh! I would love to write children’s books! Maybe a future for me? Who knows! J