January Fun and a Freebie for YOU!

If we must go back to school, I insist we go back with new Teachers Pay Teachers resources.  I insist!

If by chance you're still looking for new ideas to get you excited about the return to school, check out my new product on Teachers Pay Teachers!  Switching from first grade to Kindergarten this year has given me a unique opportunity to basically start over in my literacy centers and small groups.  I've had a blast creating new resources for my students that I can make specifically to fit their needs.  I can't wait to share the new centers with them this week!

Over 80 pages of goodies for you to share with your Kinders!  

The first activity is all about sight words.  We use Scott Foresman/Reading Street at my school, so I made sure to include some new words and review words for January based upon our reading series.  

There are two types of activities to practice sight words in this resource.  Sixteen sight words are presented over four different Sight Word Spinner activities, and then each of those words has its own Find-and-Color Sight word worksheet.  I personally like to laminate spinner activities for my kiddos.   It allows for me to cut back on paper and ink and lets them do the activity over and over... and they love using the dry erase markers.  It's a win-win!

Mitten Match is a good way to review after break, or to reinforce letter recognition for those little ones that don't quite have the confidence yet.  Students sort and match the mittens with uppercase and lowercase letters.  Included are two worksheets to practice supplying the missing uppercase or lowercase letters.

Snowball Sounds actually has two different activities, basically because I couldn't decide exactly which I liked best.  The first sort is with the entire alphabet, so students are to match the beginning sound to each letter with a letter snowball card and picture snowball card for all 26 letters.  After I made that, I started thinking about how some of my little learners still need the extra practice with just a few letters at a time.  I then created two different sorts, one for the letters Dd and Kk and one for the letters Ff and Rr.  Same concept of matching up the beginning sound with the correct letter, but this time focusing on two letters at a time!  The D, K, F, and R letter sorts also include a cut and paste worksheet for extra practice.

Winter Word Puzzles focus on building words through onset and rime.  Teachers laminate and cut apart the puzzle pieces and students then build words using the picture with the rime cards as a clue.  This center includes a recording sheet so you can monitor their word building.  I also included two cut and paste printables that can be used as a follow-up for the center or just for extra practice any time the students need it!

My kiddos this year LOVE clapping out syllables, so I had to make sure there was a syllable sort in this packet.  This activity includes snowflake cards and a sorting mat where students will decide if the word has one or two syllables.  I've also included a Snowy Syllable worksheet for extra practice.

Finally my literacy centers wrap up with Snowflake Sentence Scramblers.  This resources consists of seven different sentence scramblers where students unscramble the words to make a complete sentence, use their very best handwriting to copy the sentence, and then illustrate what the sentence says.   All sentence scramblers use sight words and really help my kiddos remember a sentence always starts with a capital letter and ends with punctuation.  I know I'll be using these to ease back into our Writer's Workshops after a long break!

As a freebie for those of you who have so kindly visited my blog, I'm sharing the first unit of Snowy Sight Words!  This includes the spinner mat and four find-and-color worksheets.   Click the picture below to download your free copies.  I'd love any feedback or for new followers on the blog and my TPT Store!  And don't forget, if you like this freebie there is plenty more in my Kindergarten January Literacy Centers Packet!

Thanks so much for sharing in my excitement over new centers!  It's the little things, right? :)

-Liz