Handwriting SUPER Heroes!!

Let's face it...no one likes messy handwriting.  This little pack has been in the works for over a year and I finally finished it this summer.  Woohoo!
I like it because these are simple pages that can be finished without too much time spent.  Plus, there's an element of fun in each one instead of just copying and copying and copying.  

Here's the little incentives that my students get when they do a GREAT job.
These are saved for students who may have not been doing their best, but they finally TRY really hard and get it!  Or, for someone who doesn't rush through and works hard.  And, yes, those students who usually always have neat handwriting get these from time to time.  This just mixes things up and lets them use a different writing tool.

I needed some really simple posters without pictures and words to show my kiddos where the letters sit on the line, which letters are tall and which ones are small, and the ones that hang.  I also use these to talk about lines and curves and the different strokes made to form each letter.

I came up with these fun little poems to recite each day (or every day or so...) when we start our handwriting time.

This is probably our favorite guided handwriting page we do as a class.  This is the page we do on Monday.  First, we start out with letter strokes using a pencil.  We talk about how we need to learn how to make these strokes correctly so we can write letters, words, sentences, stories, and EVEN to draw pictures!  They really begin to see how letters are made up of lines, curves, diagonals, and circles.  
Then, we do the whole page TOGETHER.  I do not put this in a center because I need to see if my kids are making the letters correctly.  The first (and maybe the next) time we do this we talk about how we are going to use the colors in rainbow order.  My kids are already familiar with rainbow order because we build rainbow for behavior.  SCORE!
If your kids aren't familiar you just tell them which color to start with and so forth.  They learn it QUICKLY!
Here's how the rest of the lesson would go:
Me: I say, "marker at the top" then I say "ready?"
Kids: say, "spaghetti".
Me: I model the FIRST stroke and say this (for M) "straight line down"
Kids: they say and trace the straight line down
Me: I say, "hop to the top" and I show how to go back to the top
Kids: they say, "hop to the top" and do it
Me: I say, "down up down" modeling how to form the letter
Kids: they say, "down up down" tracing the rest of the letter.
Me: I say, "say M"
Kids: "M"
Me: I say, "say /m/"
Kids: "/m/"
We do the same exact thing as above for EACH uppercase letter.

Then, for lowercase it's the same exact routine except we say, "straight line down, bump, bump."
We say M and /m/ after EACH letter.  This reinforces the name of the letter and the sound.
 At the bottom we talk about the pictures that begin with Mm and the get to choose any color to trace the lowercase m. 
My kids love this time.  After saying the letter phrases 6 times for each letter they "get it".  

Here's another fun game.  Students spin the letter spinner and the color spinner using a paper clip.  Then, write either upper or lower case letter using the  matching color.  I suggest laminating first, then using a vis a vis marker to write on and wipe off the letter you are working on.

Another game we play is Practice Makes Perfect.  You can use the spinner you see below to write on the letter you are using OR you can throw letters in a pocket cube like I did.  

My kids love this game because they get to use 3 tools for writing...pencil, crayon, and marker.  This is another semi-guided paper we do.  I walk around and observe.  I love it, because I can hear my kids saying the "phrases" we practice for each letter.

I just kinda make up my own phrases for forming each letter.  This helps them understand which stroke to make...straight line down, diagonal line, bumps, or circle around.  Plus, it's just more fun!

What do you do for handwriting?  

Hopefully this post inspires your handwriting time with your own kiddos.

Happy Handwriting!

Dog's Colorful Day Centers and Activities

This post is long overdue!  But, we had so much fun with the centers that I couldn't resist posting them a month later.  I love introducing and practicing colors by reading Dog's Colorful Day.  It's simple text is perfect for beginning of kindergarten and the kids always love the story.  I love it as well, so I just had to make a unit of centers on it.  

You can find the unit HERE.

If you don't own the book Dog's Colorful Day you can purchase it 

HERE.

I like to practice beginning sounds this way to get kids used to the idea of a letter and sound that matches a picture.

 I like my kids up and moving so these write the room activities are perfect.

 For this one, students had to choose a color object from the story and color a dot to match.

 I love hanging things from my ceiling that go with a center.  These giant numbers hung around the room and students had to "find" them and trace the match on their paper.

 This one, you just count the dots and trace the number.  We only go to 5 this early in the year as far as centers go so my kids can feel successful.

 Pick a bubble and trace the matching letter with the matching color.

 This one helped my students see a five frame and a number that go together.

My kids loved this!  They just scooped out the letter tiles and matched them up on the alphabet mat.

Tweezers are always nice for fine motor.  To play they had to roll the cube and grab that many poms to put on their dog.

You can purchase the kid-friendly tweezers here.

And, the pocket dice HERE.

To practice shapes we rolled and dotted.  Great for learning how to roll cubes and use bingo dotters correctly.

This was probably my kiddos' favorite one!  They practiced reading sight words by building hot dogs.  We added ketchup and mustard using red and yellow yarn.

We made this giant dog chart to practice retelling the story Dog's Colorful Day and then labeled each spot.

Another way we practiced retelling was making these story headbands with cute little dog ears.

And, another fun activity we did was make these textured spots on Dog.  I set up stations around the room for each color spot.  You can see a few of the stations below.  One station was painting the blue dot because in the story Dog's blue dot was paint.

This station was shaving cream and glue dyed pink to resemble ice cream from the story.

This one was yellow powdered tempera paint to resemble pollen.

You can find all of these cute activities HERE in my Dog's Colorful Day Math and Literacy Unit!