The Connett Connection

So everyone has them.  They lurk in your bathrooms... the empty toilet paper rolls.  Most of the time these little gems end up in the garbage, but did you know they make great used in the classroom or home school with crafts and other activities?  In this post I will outline the ways we have used these paper tubes in our home school. Make centerpieces stand up with toilet paper rolls, like we did with this Thanksgiving turkey.  We used THIS TEMPLATE to decorate and make our turkey centerpiece. We used toilet paper rolls to make this Christmas tree topper.  We used THIS TEMPLATE to create these cute angel to top our Christmas tree! We took our toilet paper tolls and turned them into hearts to make heart stamping paintings for Valentine's Day. We used toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls to make trees for our rain forest habitat box we made when learning about the rain forest.  This project was on of my daughter's favorite activities! MORE WAYS TO

Summer is almost here.  Schools are letting out and kids will be outside more.  Chalk is one of those outside activities that can be fun and can be made to be educational.  Help students reinforce skills they learned in school with these fun outdoor chalk activities. Write numbers on the ground and have your child find that number of objects to place inside each square.  In this photo, my children chose to collect rocks.  They are hard to see against the concrete! Here, the kids looked for objects around the yard that started with each letter.  R is for rocks. G is for grass.  L is for leaf and when I went to snap this picture they were searching for flowers for the letter F. Instead of a worksheet, why not let them do it one the ground?  I made a simple ABC match for my daughter to match capital and lowercase letters. Here, I wrote my sons name on the concrete and had him attempt to trace over the letters.  He is still young, so not able to do this yet.  But he ab

Check out this post for activities all about the letter H! H is for hearts!  Do a variety of activities and art lessons all about hearts.  The above art activity is very simple!  I printed off the letter H outlines from these packets:  Capital Letter Packet and Lowercase Letter Packet .  I gave each child the choice of the H they wanted to decorate then gave them a variety of hearts to decorate with.  (For other activities and crafts with hearts, CLICK HERE )  I used these letter mats as playdough mats for us to practice building the letter H!  Place the mat inside a page protector and the playdough will not stick! When we are done with the playdough mats (above) we then use the same page to sort capital and lowercase letters. Other Letter H Themed Ideas: Healthy Living Hippopotamus Horses Houses/Homes Hunting Chants and Songs:  Letter H Chant Big H, Little h What begins with H? Hand, House and Horseshoe All begin with H! Letter H Song

Check out this post for activities all about the letter G! I introduced the letter G with this playdough mat .  My son loves using playdough to form the letter of the week! After using playdough, we then take the letter mat and look through magazines to find examples of the letter, sort capital and lowercase, then glue them to the right letter. We also use pouch tops to build the letter (capital and lowercase) on these letter mats .  If you do not have pouch tops, you can use mini erasers or small blocks to fill in the mat. G is for grapes! We used these lowercase letter outlines to make a bunch of grapes on a lowercase G.  I simply cut out purple circles for the kids to glue. G is for Gold and Glitter!   We used these capital letter outlines to cover them with gold glitter.  I mixed the glitter into the glue and gave the kids q-tips to spread it on their paper. Other Letter G Themed Ideas: Galaxy Giraffe Goats Gorillas Grapes Green, Gold

These sight word flip books are designed for teachers and home school parents to be able to piece together resources for their own sight word lists.  There are so many different lists of sight words and a variety of different sequences for teaching the sight words, that I know teachers and home school parents have a hard time finding one resource that includes all the words needed in the order needed.  These flip books seek to help teachers and parents find the words they need easily while not getting activities for words they do not need! These sight word flip books are designed to focus on a single sight word.  Each flip book contains six activities that help students practice sight word recognition, sight word spelling, sight word writing and sight word reading. Find and Color :  Students look for the sight word and color in the sight word. Trace and Write :  The first line, the students trace the sight word and in the next two lines, the student will write the

These sight word packets are designed for teachers and home school parents to be able to piece together resources for their own sight word lists.  There are so many different lists of sight words and a variety of different sequences for teaching the sight words, that I know teachers and home school parents have a hard time finding one resource that includes all the words needed in the order needed.  These packets seek to help teachers and parents find the words they need easily! Each sight word is represented by their own no prep activity packet.  Each packet contains 7 different no-prep for each sight word.  These activities are designed to practice sight word recognition, sight word spelling, sight word writing, sight word reading and sight word fluency. Each sight word packet will contain these color, write and spell pages. These color, draw, write and find pages are one of my daughter's favorites.  She loves word searches and these are perfect for engaging her.

I have made a series of games called Where's The _______?  Students will chant a poem and then guess which letter they believe the object is hidden behind. This game is great for students who are learning letter recognition and for those who are ready to learn letter sounds.  This game is available in capital and lower case letters. This game is perfect for the pocket chart and can be played with a large or small group or even one-on-one!  It is very easy to differentiate this game for students working on different letters.  It can also be used as a review game or a time filler. To see a video of this game in action, please click HERE or HERE ! This game is available in a variety of themes: Where's the Acorn :  Students must find the acorn behind the fall leaf. Where's the Cat:  Students must find the cat behind the pumpkin. (coming soon) Where's the Ladybug :  Students must find the ladybug behind the flower. Where's the Penguin :  Students