The Connett Connection

So you have been saving those tops from applesauce or baby food pouches, because, lets face it, you are a teacher and you do not throw ANYTHING away if it MIGHT be useful... right?  So now you have a little collection started and you are wondering, "What in the world can I do with all these colorful pouch tops?!"  This post strives to give you several fun and engaging ideas to use these tops in your classroom. Counters These pouch tops make excellent counters for math, especially when learning to count or recognize numbers 1-20.  ( Counting Mats 1-10 and Counting Mats 11-20 ) Patterns Create patterns or use pattern cards to complete patterns with these pouch tops!  You can get a set of pattern cards for FREE here ---> Pouch Top Printables Building A Pyramid Build A Tower Color Sorting Give students different colored tops and have them sort the tops according to color.  You can let them group the tops on their own or give the...

This post focuses on weather themed crafts and activities for Pre-K and Kindergarten classrooms! This picture is called painting with rain.  We simply placed powdered tempera paint onto the plate and splattered water onto the plate.  Then, shake off the extra paint and you are left with what looks like rain splats on the plate! This was one if the favorite activities of my pre-k kids when I taught.  I had 3 different sized "puddles" and the students had to guess how many feet would fit in the puddle.  They then got to take off their shoes and test their guesses! This is a very simple craft where students create a blue college on a raindrop pattern ( found in this packet ). This particular student chose to color with a blue crayon and add scraps of blue paper and tissue paper on their rain drop.  Other craft supplies can include pom poms, markers, paint, dab it markers, stickers, etc. This activity, students dictated why they were ...

Spring is such a great time of year!  The cold grip of winter is lessening and the sun is beginning to shine more and the warmer weather is moving in.  I love spring time.  This post is to focus on different crafts and activities that are great for a spring time theme! This first picture is a rainbow.  We looked through magazines to find pages with solid colors on them, tore them into pieces and created our rainbow! This picture is called painting with rain.  We simply placed powdered tempera paint onto the plate and splattered water onto the plate.  Then, shake off the extra paint and you are left with what looks like rain splats on the plate! This was one if the favorite activities of my pre-k kids when I taught.  I had 3 different sized "puddles" and the students had to guess how many feet would fit in the puddle.  They then got to take off their shoes and test their guesses! This is another fun spring craft!  With thi...

I have been teaching my daughter about word families.  She is loving the activities I have made for her, especially these dice games.  There are several ways these dice games can be used.  I will high light my daughter's favorite games to use these with! In this set, you use the two dice to roll a word from a particular word family.  Then, you find the word in your answer sheet and color it in!  You can also color a graph with this dice game (an example seen below with a different type of dice). This is a two player version of the dice game.  One player rolls both dice and colors their word.  The second player then rolls the dice and colors their word in a different color.  The player with the most squares colored wins! With this sheet, the student will roll the dice and then color the square above the word.  You can have the student do this sheet two different ways.  One way is to have the student roll the dice a set num...

We had a very productive week last week, despite a 3 day sickness with the youngest and several doctor's visits. We continued our week with more transportation activities.  She drew this picture of a mom driving a car with her kid in the back seat.  They were going to spend the night at a friends's house... hence the suit case in the back.  She had a whole story to tell for her picture! We also continued our word family activities with our AG word family puzzles . We also did a transportation themed science activity called Sink the Boat ! We used a plastic container and tried to fill it with various objects to sink it! We used this recording sheet to predict how many of each item we thought we would need and then we tested our predictions. We found we needed 10 rocks to sink the boat, which was more than we predicted.  My daughter under predicted every category! We made this rainbow craft this week by finding colored pages from magazin...

This post shows a lot of letter E activities you can do with your child or students! E is for Eyes!  -- I printed a letter E outline .  I cut out pictures of eyes from magazines and had my kid glue them to the letter E page.  You child can cut the eyes out themselves if they are able.  Googly eyes and eye stickers are also an option. We can't complete a letter without doing a playdough mat !  This is our favorite letter activity of the week! My son is really into building things right now, so I challenged him to build a letter E!  He did great! E is for egg!  I cut out an egg shape and had my son look through magazines for the letter E and for things that start with the letter E. Other Letter E Themed Ideas: Eagles Ears Earth Easter Eels Elephants Emu Eskimos Chants and Songs:  Letter E Chant Big E, Little e What begins with E? Egg, Eagle and Elephant All begin with E! Letter E Song E says /e/ E say...

Another fun week for us!  We had a birthday this week!  The middle child turned 3.  He was so excited for his monster truck party! Here is the cake I made for him.   Another exciting event happened this week for my oldest.  She lost her very first tooth!  She now has her second loose tooth and is anticipating the next one! On Wednesday, my boys and I went to MOPS.  The above is a craft my oldest son made in class.  After he ate his lunch he really wanted to eat his fruit loops off his necklace, so not this necklace is no more! We did do a full week of school, but I just did not get a lot of pictures of what we did.  We continued working on word families and we began a transportation unit on Friday.  The above picture shows the number word chart I made for my daughter to help her learn to write number words.  She has been practicing this skill as well as writing two digit numbers in expanded form. MORE WAYS TO...

Check out this post for activities all about the letter D! D is for Dot!  I printed off a letter D outline on card stock and each of my kids used q-tips dipped in paint to put dots all over their letter D! This letter D activity is found in this letter D packet .  I let my son cover the letter Ds with these counters instead of color them like the directions said.  He enjoyed that so much more and we got the same results without the coloring issue! We try to do playdough mats with each letter.  These letter mats are perfect for making the letters! Other Letter D Themed Ideas: Daisies and Dandelions Deer Dinosaurs Dogs/Dalmatians Dolls Donuts Doves Ducks Chants and Songs:  Letter D Chant Big D, Little d What begins with D? Dog, Doll, Dandelion All begin with D! Letter D Song D says /d/ D says /d/ Every letter makes a sound. D says /d/ How Much is that Doggy in the Window Five Little Ducks Games: Doggy Do...

This post is full of activities, songs and snacks to go along with the letter C! C is for Cloud!  -- I printed a letter C outline on blue paper and had my kids shred cotton balls and glued them on their letter C! C is for Corn!  --->  Check out THIS POST to see what we did when we learned all about corn! C is for car! --->  These car counting mats were such fun with my little one.  He loved adding the counters! We introduced the letter C by going on a letter hunt!  I hid the letter C around the room and let him hunt them down! These alphabet mats were a great fine motor activities where we placed the pouch top caps on the mats to make the letter C!  We also did a lowercase C. We also went through our sticker collection and found stickers that started with C and placed them on a letter C outline . We also used these mats to sort capital and lowercase letter Cs.  We also used these mats as play do...