The Three Billy Goats Gruff mini-unit

Reading:


Characters
Setting
Retelling 
Sequencing
Sight Words


After reading the story, we recreated the setting and characters.  The river looks black, but it's really dark blue.  The kiddos got to draw their versions of the three goats and the troll and create the river and bridge. Then we made our characters into finger puppets and took turns retelling the story with friends.  Later, we use our setting and characters to solve math problems (see below).

 

 

Sight Word Game-Over the Troll Bridge!!

(bridge and playing cards below)

Object:  Cross the bridge before the troll gets you!!

In a bag place all the sight word cards, 3 trolls, and 3 billy goats.

Players take turns pulling a card.

If you get a sight word card, read it and place it on a plank.

If you don't know it, put it back in the bag and lose a turn.

Billy goats are lucky!  

If you pull a billy goat, he goes onto the next plank, and you take another card.

Look out for the Troll!!!  

If you pull a troll, he takes all your cards and puts them back into the bag!

Math:

Problem Solving

When we created our setting, we made sure that we had 8 planks on our bridge to use for the math problems.  Students use their goats, troll, and counters to solve the math problems on their bridge.

Billy Goats Problem Solving

3 Billy Goats Game High Frequency Word Cards


Copy of Sight Word Bridge 3 Billy Goats



Enjoy!!

Sight Word Slap Jacks

I'm always looking for new ways to practice sight words with my kids.  This game I was going to originally introduce with cards from 0-30, but I got the sight word cards cut out first!
 Partners take a deck of sight word cards and divide them between themselves.

 

I post a sight word on the board to be the 'jack.'  

The kids flip the cards one at a time and read the words.  When the 'jack' comes up, the first student to put his/her hand on it gets the pile.

 The partners then wait for the next 'jack' word and keep playing.

We had to have a little discussion about what happens if you lose all your cards before our time is up.  Instead of getting upset that you don't have any cards to flip, you wait for the 'jack' word like a tiger in a tree!    That really perked up the kids who were getting sad about losing all their cards.

Here are the words I use:
High Frequency Word Cards (3)

Sentences Workstation

Another great idea from a teammate!  Thanks, Vero!


These are sentences that are all mixed up.  I use mostly sight words and at least one word in the sentence that they have to use more brain power to decode.  


The kids put the words in the correct order, read, write, and illustrate!  Fun!  


They love the mystery!


Step 1:  Pick a set.

Step 2:  Unscramble

Step 3:  Read and record

Step 4:  Illustrate!

Enjoy!

Sight Words

Here's a quick sight word station idea.

Each 9 week set of sight words are color coded on the tongue depressor and clothespins.


You can see the one on the table has dots.  Each dot corresponds to a letter in the word so the kids know exactly where to clip on the clothespin. 

The kids love to stand them up!

Enjoy!

Eric Carle Week

A few weeks ago, we had a mini Eric Carle unit in our Kindergarten classrooms.  Our science focus was objects in the sky:  clouds, the sun and stars, the moon.  

The Grouchy Ladybug

We put words that begin with /g/ on one side and end with /g/ on the other.  

Draw Me A Star

We had a mini lesson about drawing a star using dry erase boards.


Then we cut triangles out of yellow and orange paper.  We counted each color and found the total!

Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me

We watched the video of the story.

Then we practiced making stars, and had a great following directions lesson!

Little Cloud

and

It Looked Like Spilt Milk

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We watched Eric Carle read the book (here) and later in the week we watched the animated version.

How Eric Carle made The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Then we created The Very Hungry Student book from a template found at Teaching Heart.

Enjoy!

Character Traits with Ruby and Joe

Don't Forget to enter our giveaway!

We've been learning about Character Traits in Gator Country!

Here's my well-loved copy!

Two of my favorite books to teach Character Traits with are Don't Laugh, Joe! and Ruby the Copycat.  

Joe is a fun loving little opossum, but his mother worries when he just won't learn to play dead!

We talked about his traits and what his actions were to prove those traits.

Link to book on Amazon.

When Ruby moves to a new school, she thinks she has to be like others to fit in and make friends!

We discussed the different reasons that people "copycat" and had to decide on Ruby's motives.  Was she being annoying or just trying to fit in?

Our character traits lessons tied into our class management this week also.  We had been having a bit more teasing than normal.  I asked them to think about what kinds of things we would write about them, if we put their picture in the middle of the poster.  


We didn't actually do this, but the kids really took the idea of it to heart.


What would you like for people to say about you??

Three Little Pigs Unit -Part 2

Here are some of the other Three Little Pig Activities that we did!

1.  We retold the story with finger prints on cards.  (This way, I got to hear each child's retelling abilities!)

2.  We analyzed the plot structure of the story!

Here's a close up of a couple of my favorite scenes!

Love this Shaggy Wolf!

Roar!  Into the pot of water!

Drooling wolf and wide eyed piggie!!

Fire Breath!

3.  Rhyming Pop-Up Books for the synonym, "hog."

How to make a Pop-Up Book tutorial coming soon!

Writing Prompts

1.  Draw a picture of what the story of The Three Little Pigs would be like underwater.  Write how it would change.

2.  What would you do if the wolf came to your house?

3.  What if the Big Bad Wolf was a Big Bad Owl?

Math

I got this idea from another blogger, but I couldn't find it to reference.  Let me know if you recognize it so I can reference it!  Thanks!

1.  We learned about AREA by filling in the three pigs houses with straw (spaghetti), sticks (fettucini), and bricks (red beans)!

I know I took pictures of the brick houses too, but the photos have VANISHED!!

2.  We added a new game to our stations called PigzUp!

Players flip over cards until 2 players have the same number.  

Players then must stack that number of pigs before the opponent can!  

This is great for fine motor skills too!

Check out Part 1 of the Three Little Pigs Unit!

Don't forget to enter our giveaway!