Nursery Rhyme Fun!

How many of my kindergarten teacher friends teach nursery rhymes?  It is amazing to me how many of my students come to kindergarten not knowing nursery rhymes.

Nursery Rhymes are so beneficeial to our students.  They are good for the brain!  They are great for fluency and rhyming.  Plus, let's be honest, they are just fun to say!

To supplement my nursery rhyme instruction, I created this Nursery Rhyme literacy unit.

Inside this unit, you will find activities for the following nursery rhymes:
~Humpty Dumpty
~Hey Diddle Diddle
~Itsy Bitsy Spider
~Jack & Jill
~Mary Had a Little Lamb
~Hickory Dickory Dock

I usually teach this unit early in my school year so I made some simple cut and paste sequencing activities.

There is also reading response sheets for each nursery rhyme.

Three simple and fun center activities are also included.  The all-time favorite in my classroom Read & Write the Room.

We work hard on beginning sounds at the beginning of the year (as well as fine motor skills) so Itsy Bitsy Beginning Sounds is perfect for both skills.

Since nursery rhymes have lots of rhyming, it is the perfect time to start to work on that skill with Nursery Rhyme Rhymes.  The students can play rhyming memory for this center.

Then they can record their work by completing a cut and paste activity.  I like to do a lot of cutting and pasting in the beginning of the year so my students can work on their fine motor skills.  Many of my students come in lacking scissor and gluing skills so this is great practice.

If you are interested in this low prep literacy unit, just click on the picture below to grab it from my TpT store!

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Pencil Grip Review & Giveaway

At the beginning of this school year, I noticed that the majority of my class had trouble with pencil grip.  I had never had so many students in one class with poor pencil grip.  I didn't know what to do so I asked our district literacy coach for some help.

She suggested I get pencil grips for my class.  After searching online for just the right ones, I found these pencil grips.

These amazing pencil grips are from The Pencil Grip, Inc.  You can find them here.  I bought a class set of the "Training" Crossover Grip.  Oh my goodness gracious......I couldn't believe the difference it made in just a few short days.  Once I put these pencil grips on my students' pencils and taught them how to properly hold the pencil (courtesy of the pencil grip user guide) their grip started improving.

After I felt my students started mastering their grip with the Crossover Grip pencil grips, I then started moving my students to the "Transition" Pinch Grip pencil grips.  I had them continue to use them until they were ready to move on to the "Graduation" Pencil Grip.

When my students would use crayons or markers and I would notice poor pencil grip, all I had to say was "Hold your crayon like you hold your pencil," and their grip immediately switched.  By the end of the year, most of my students no longer needed a pencil grip at all!

Now, you may be wondering about how to handle the pencil grips if you use community supplies like I do.  At first, I removed the pencil grips when a new pencil was needed and would show my students how to remove it as I was doing it.  Then after a couple weeks my students were able to take the pencil grip off and place it on a new pencil independently.  They were very protective over their pencil grips and thought they were the coolest things ever!  I thought so too because they were finally mastering their pencil grip!

Have you ever had a class that just had a hard time mastering pencil grip?  Would like to win your own Pencil Grip 3 Step Training Kit?  Then enter the rafflecopter below.  A winner will be chosen on Saturday!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

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