Butterflies!

This year my friend found three monarch butterflies and she shared one with me and my second grade kiddos. We watched and waited and we waited and watched and then finally he went to the top of his jar and hung in a j. 

We also made our own caterpillars.

I thought for sure that we would see him go into a chrysalis but we did not. We came into the classroom the next morning and this is what we saw

At first, his chrysalis appeared to be light green and kind of shiny. As the day went on we noticed little gold colored dots popping out on the upper portion of the chrysalis. My kiddos were amazed by that. 

We made our own chrysalis.

One morning, about 12 days later, we walked into the classroom and this is what we saw.

A beautiful monarch caterpillar!

We waited for his wings to dry. 

Later in the afternoon we said goodbye to our monarch friend and let him go.

Of course we had to make our own monarch butterflies!

After they water colored their butterflies, they cut them out and I made this bulletin board.

This is a great book to go along with your butterfly unit!

Fun and Engaging Ways to Teach Phonemes

I have been introducing sounds to my students for a lot of years and I love it! I love looking for ways to hook them in so they will remember the sound when they are reading independently and need to decode a word. I thought I would share some of my favorite ways to do it.

 Sometimes we make crowns to wear. We make the crowns on Monday and keep them at school until Friday. That way they can wear them everyday while we are learning about that sound. I give them a big oval with the sound on it. They cut out the oval and staple it to the middle of a sentence strip. Next, they cut out words from a sheet I give them. The sheet has words with that sound. They glue the words all over the sentence strip. Then I staple the crowns to fit onto their heads. They love them! They love having their friends read the words on their crowns.

As much as I can, I try to incorporate a song when we are learning a new sound. They love to sing and it helps them to remember what they have been taught. I find a lot of songs on YouTube that I use. We love Heidi's Songs! Kathy Griffin also has some great songs with video. Sometimes, I just can't find a song I like for the sound I'm teaching. Well, anyone that knows me knows that I can’t really sing. When you struggle to carry a tune, making up a song can be a challenge. I usually just try to find a very familiar tune and change the words. It works. So, this particular song I made up and used to introduce the 3 sounds of ed.



Using a mystery box can be a lot of fun! I make word cards and put them in the mystery box along with a card that has just the sound on it. First I have someone come up and pull out the sound. We talk about it and then I have students take turns coming up and picking a word out of the box. This is a favorite activity!

We do a lot of activities with word cards. We do word sorts. We use the cards and use fly swatters. I have each group lay the words out on their table. Then each student gets a fly swatter. When everyone is ready I tell them to find a word with the target sound. They love this activity!



This year, my students are loving Secret Stories Cracking the Reading Code by Katie Garner. Whenever I introduce a new sound they always ask, "What's the story?" They love to hear how eu and ew are very "prim and proper" little girls who DO NOT LIKE MICE! If they ever see one they will jump up high screaming
"eeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuu!" The boys always giggle at this story. 

There are many ways we can introduce phonemes. Some classes will prefer one way over another but with so many different learning style in one classroom I need a variety of ways to teach everyone. 

How do you introduce new phonemes in your classroom???

Nancy