Valentine's Day Themed Lessons

Children love having 'themed' days in school and Valentine's Day offers a brilliant opportunity to link a wide range of subjects under one big theme. Here are some ideas that I have tried out in the past!

English: Creative Writing/Reading

I made out a big card for the class with the word 'love' on the front in a heart. I left it out on the morning of Valentine's Day and told the children that it had arrived in the post for them. First of all, we predicted what might be inside the card. We then opened it up and played a game of I Spy. We spied words with capital letters, words starting with ___, the word love, etc . We then read the card together. Following this, I covered the words on the card with blank sheets of paper. We had to match some words written on flashcards to the card, where they were missing/covered. We wrote a new card as if we were writing it to Mammy and Daddy, as a class (LEA). They children then created their own cards using our class card as an example (To ___, I love you. Love Mary.) 

English: Sight Word: Love

We learned this song during the week leading up to Valentine's day:

                        
We also used the word in our writing and read stories with the word in it.

Maths: Counting to 20 and Estimation
I gave the children out little bags of sweets and they had to estimate how many sweets were in the bag. We then counted them all together emphasising moving them to one side as they were counted. When we counted 20 sweets, I asked them to eat one and tell me how many they think they have left and then to check this number. I then got them to make me little groups of sweets: 3, 5, 10, 15, etc.

I handed out a template containing various heart shapes (see below). We looked at each heart on the IWB and talked about how many sweets they thought would fit into each heart size. We noted them beside the hearts on the IWB. They had to test how many sweets would fit into each heart after this and they wrote the number underneath the heart. We compared answers with estimates.

Art: Jim Dine Hearts:

I chose this activity as the children could complete it in a short time without much help, perfect for a mini theme based art lesson! We looked at some examples of Jim Dine's heart art and talked about the colours he used. We discussed words to describe the marks he used and the shapes of the colour blocks. They drew a big heart on a piece of paper. They coloured inside the heart with warm colours (using similar shapes) and outside the heart with cool colours. They then painted the pictures with a little olive oil to create a stained glass effect. I blotted them before leaving them to dry. When they had dried I added paper borders (using mounting paper that I had measured and cut into a border with a blade). I rolled them up and tied them with a ribbon. I attached a little heart shaped pink notelet to the ribbon on which they wrote a message (to their Mum or Dad).

Religion/History: The Story of St. Valentine
We looked at this video and talked about it afterwards. They each recreated a scene from the story on a piece of paper. I selected some pictures to display along with sentences about the story, on the wall.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sight word games!

I have had a request to share some ideas on how to teach Sunny Street sight words to Senior Infants and as a result, here is a little compilation of ones I like best. I have collected some of these ideas from various places over the years and come up with some myself, so apologies if I can't give credit to whoever came up with the activities originally! There are a mixture of activities here suitable for whole class teaching, literacy center activities, group activities and pair activities.

1. Tic Tac Toe: 
Go through sight words with the class to begin with. Then, with words on a word wall in the classroom and using a pointer/feather to point to each word, chant the rhyme: 'Tic, tac, toe, here we go, where we stop, no one knows' (point to a different word for each word of the rhyme). When you land on the final word, the class call out the word they have landed on. I like to use quiet voices, loud voices, fast, slow, deep and high voices to say the rhyme to keep it interesting. You can also ask individual children to name the word after a couple of rounds as a group. Ask children to be the teacher for another variation on the game.

2. Bingo:
Make out bingo cards for the class, (having about 6 different versions so they do not all have the same card). Pull the words out of a bag and get them to place counters on the correct words to make three in a row. 

3. Hide and Go Seek:
Hide a few words in different places in the room. Get the children to find and point to the word ___. 

4. Beat the Clock Flashcard Game: 
Get them to see how many words they can name in a minute.

5. Sight Word Songs:
Heidi's Songs on Youtube has some great songs with actions to teach sight words. Great transitional activities too. 

6. Stepping Stones:
Get the children in groups to play a leap frog kind of game where they have to be able to read the word before they can jump onto the flashcard.

7. Toss the Coin:
Using the same cards you used for bingo, get them to toss a counter and when it lands on a word, they must read it. Take in turns. 

8. Pick a Card:
Get them to play pick a card using small 3 inch long word cards, with a partner or with you on a one to one level when you are hearing their reading. See who can win the most cards. If they cannot read a word, it goes back into the bunch and they can try again later. 

9. Roll the Dice:
In pairs/with teacher, have all of the flashcards upside down, roll a die and count that many cards before you turn the one you land on over and read it. If you can read it, you can keep the card. If not, place it back where it was and play again.

10. Writing Words: 
Get children to practice writing words on sand, on whiteboards, on blackboards and with the look, see, cover, write, check strategy. Play beat the clock by getting them to see how many times they can write the word in a minute. See if they can beat their own record. Make the words out of playdough.

11. I'm Thinking of a Word: 
While looking at your word wall, tell them you are thinking of a word that starts with/ends with/has the vowel _ in it/rhymes with etc. Get them to name the word and point to it.

Hope these are useful! Let me know which you like best!

Consonant Digraphs

A lot of time is spent teaching various blends and digraphs in Senior Infants once they have solidified their knowledge of basic sounds and blending. I like to begin teaching digraphs with the consonant digraphs: 'sh', 'ch', 'th' and 'wh'. I find they pick these up quicker than others, as they can name words that start with these sounds quite easily. The sounds are often more useful to them in their reading too. Also, while I find they often confuse vowel digraphs with each other, they rarely have this problem with consonant digraphs.

As I have made and found so many resources connected with these sounds, throughout my time teaching in infants and in learning support, I have compiled a list of the various activities I used with the children. Keep in mind that I did not use every activity for every sound and some were only used when all 4 sounds were covered. The activities can be combined to form a lesson or alternatively some could be used in literacy centers!

1. Jolly Phonics:
As in most schools, I used the Jolly Phonics programme to teach the sounds sh, ch and th initially. You can find the video here. I played the video on many occasions for the children while they ate their lunch. I found playing these songs and other vocabulary building songs and stories (e.g. The British Council LearnEnglishKids website) to them, calmed them down before they went outside and it also meant they were learning at a time which can sometimes be wasted learning time. Surprisingly, they did not seem to mind the repetition!

2. Other songs:
 I also used this video to show them the various words that can be made using the sounds.

I made up the following posters using screen shots from this video:

3. Trace the snake:

I put the following pictures up on the IWB and got them to only shout out the sound if we landed on the particular one we were learning, while tracing the snake pattern in the air. I varied the speeds so that it was more exciting. These are edited resources of something I found online.

  4. PowerPoint:

You can download the PowerPoints I made and used by clicking on each digraph: th sh wh ch.

5. Worksheets:
I have downloaded, created and used various worksheets where the children must either circle/cut out/colour/sort the wh, sh, th or ch words.

6. Pictures of words:
I had the children draw pictures of a word containing the sound and their pictures were put up on the wall around the sound being covered that fortnight.

7. Sorting bowls:
I had 4 colourful party bowls in the middle of the table, each labelled with a sound (sh, th, ch, wh or any other sounds you want to include). They had to sort their selection of picture cards into the bowls in the center of the table according to the sound each began with.

8. Board game:

In groups they played a board game where if they landed on a consonant digraph they had to name a word that started (or ended) with the sound. They then could roll again and take another go.

9. Bingo: 
You can download several bingo cards I made up to test the children's recognition of the sounds here. You can also play the game with words in the boxes as opposed to just the sounds.

10. Storytime:
I read the children a story containing words starting with the sound in question and they had to put their hands on their heads when they heard a word containing the sound. Prim-ed do a series of poems featuring these sounds such as Theodore Thatcher and Walter the Whale. Oxford Reading Tree and similar companies also sell books which are quite simple and dedicate each book to a particular digraph. This is also a great opportunity to use a Big Book too!







I hope some of these ideas get your creative juices flowing! Let me know if you have any other ideas for the teaching of these sounds!