If you're like me, you're always looking for meaningful literacy centers that will engage your students; however, getting those centers prepped and ready can be overwhelming at times! Now, I love a themed literacy center {proof here}, but there are times when I need center activities that are low prep and non themed so that I can pull them out any time I need a group of students to work on a specific skill.
When all of that in mind, I started working last summer to create some phonics activities for my students that I could use when they got to a certain phonics skill. Because I teach phonics in small group, and my groups are usually on different skills, I wanted something I could easily print, laminate, and cut. That's when I decided to make mats!

I started by making mats for my visual discrimination pack {read about it here}. When my students first started literacy centers at the beginning of the year, these were perfect to get them exposure to letters as well as sorting.

With most of my mat activities, I use them in a sensory bin. The students have the mat in front of them, and they use tweezers to find the pieces for the mats. 

For my kiddos working on beginning sounds, I have mats for sorting pictures by sound/beginning letter. These are perfect in the beginning of the year, and for mid-year for students who may need some extra reinforcement of those letter sounds.

Now that the majority of my students know their sounds, many of my students are working on sounding and blending CVC words, and CVC mats are perfect for this. There are two versions of these mats - one has the word and the pictures get sorted while the alternate has pictures on the mat and the words are sorted.

Our cards for the CVC mats are currently in our big sensory tub, which is filled with fake snow - messy, but the kids love it!

For my kids who came to me knowing the majority of their sounds and have mastered CVC words, we're now working on long vowel patterns. This week, we were working on long a spellings, so I only prepped those mats from my long vowel pack. I love that since they've been working with these mats this week, they're already so much more fluent in these words!

The thing I love most about these mats is that they're super easy to prep - print, laminate and cut {and it's all squares, so the cutting is easy!}. Because of that, I have a wealth of phonics resources at my fingertips whenever my students need to move to a new skill.

Update: :)
I was asked if I would bundle my mats, and I bundled all of them except for the letters, since they're part of my visual discrimination pack that has other activities. You can grab the bundle by clicking the picture below :)

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Vickie

This past week, we dove into all things spiders. While I don't care for the real creepy crawlies, this is one of my favorite themes, and the kids always love it! Warning: Long Post Ahead!

We began our week by discussing our spider schema. My kids knew quite a bit about spiders!

Then, we read the book Spiders by Gail Gibbons. It's a great informational text! After reading the book, we added our new knowledge to our spider chart. My kids are doing a great job at recalling details!
The next day, we read the book again and made a can/have graphic organizer. Each student used the organizer to write their own sentence about spiders, and we added them to our paper plate spiders.

Wednesday, we read The Very Busy Spider and practiced sequencing. We made sure we had a friend to go back and check the story to make sure we were sequencing correctly. My kids love our sequencing activities!

We used The Very Busy Spider again on Thursday to work on onomatopoeia. We wrote all the sounds words from the story, then each of my kids created their own Eric Carle inspired spider. I love how different they turned out! You can grab the student sheet here.

In math, we had so much fun using spiders to learn all about the number 8! I've shared before that we teach a number a week until we get to 10, and we really dive into learning all about that number. We count, write, decompose, count on to make it, etc. and our kids have such an awesome number sense! Most of the activities we did are from my friend Deeanna's spider pack.
On Monday, we introduce the number. First, we rainbow the number and glue cheerios on it.

Then, we use our floor ten frame to act out a spider chant Deeanna made up that helps us decompose the number {some are on the "web," and some are off}. After acting it out, each student gets their own ten frame. We glued black beans to be spiders, and the kids added 8 legs.

On Tuesday, we used a web work mat and spiders to practice decomposing 8 again with our song. Since we've been making equations since our second week, my kids are doing amazing now! The majority of the time, we do math on the floor, around the rug using clipboards. I don't know why, but I love doing it this way!

Wednesday, we graphed whether we thought spiders were creepy or cool. I was so surprised that so many thought they were cool! Yuck! After we make a graph, I always have kids tell me what they notice about the data instead of asking them specific questions. It always leads to great conversation! You can grab the graph here.

Thursday, we used our math stick to decompose 8. I've blogged about these before...we use them every week to match our theme and they are great for getting kids to recognize what decomposing is, and to visualize part-part-whole.

We ended our week by working on counting on to find a missing number in an equation. This was a little tricky, but by the end of the lesson, my kids were doing great!

After we did this activity, I let the kids use their spiders to make their own equation that equaled 8.

 We ended our week by making a special spider snack with crackers, Jif Whips, peanut butter chips, and pretzels. So yummy!

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Vickie

Somehow, we've managed to already make it into our 7th week of school...7 weeks! Truthfully, it all feels like a bit of a blur, and in a few more months, I probably won't remember any of it {everyone says the beginning of kindergarten is like childbirth - right?}. However, right now, we are in the swing of workshops {what we call literacy centers}, and my kids are doing a great job! We have been working hard to work on our whisper voices, not interrupting my group, and using Rally Coach in many of our workshops {another Kagan structure I hope to share about soon!}.
At the beginning of the year, I have so many students on various levels, so I try to start meeting their needs immediately. For some, that means basic visual discrimination and fine motor. I've been using these lowercase letters and mats in a small sensory tub {this one has leaves for fall right now}, and having the kids use tweezers to pick a card, then put it on the correct mat. Best of both worlds!

When the kids finish finding all the cards, they can use a highlighter to do a little letter detective activity. They love highlighters!

We've also been working on our fine motor skills while practicing matching lowercase to uppercase letters. For this center, I got some paint sticks at Wal-Mart, wrote letters on them, wrote letters on clothespins, and that's it. Super easy! I also have a group that is matching lowercase to lowercase or uppercase to uppercase.

Some of my students began school already knowing many of their letters, so they've been working on beginning sounds. In my large sensory tub, I have dyed noodles, and my kids use the tweezers to find pictures and match them to the correct letter mat.

Another area my kids need a lot of practice in this year is letter formation/handwriting. We've been doing lots of roll and write with our letters and sight words and making our letters out of playdoh.

As we were getting deeper into small groups and workshops, I realized I was going to need more centers that worked on letters and sounds that were simple, quick to make, and still fun for the kids. So, I created a new pack of simple alphabet centers that can be used any time of year {each center comes in color and black and white!!}. So far, my kids have used the beginning sound clips, letter match puzzles, and beginning sound puzzles. For the puzzles, I don't have pre-made lines to cut the pieces. I free hand the cut so they are self correcting.

 To see more from my new center pack, you can click the picture below.

I'm also using, and will use in the coming months, some of my themed centers. It's a chore some times to change them out, but my kids love themed centers year after year! To see other centers from this post, click the pictures below.

If you don't currently use literacy centers in your classroom, I urge you to start taking baby steps to using them. It is truly amazing how much differentiation you can get in during this time, and the growth the kids make!

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Vickie