The Connett Connection

I use page protectors everyday as I home school my kids.  Page protectors help with messes, storage and helps make many pages reusable for less paper consumption. INK AND PAPER SAVER One of the most common uses for page protectors is using them to make games and worksheets reusable.  In the picture above, we were playing a place value game .  We placed the recording sheet inside a page protector, so we could play as many times as we wanted without having to print a new page each time! LESS MESS WITH PLAYDOUGH Another use for page protectors that has saved us a lot of time cleaning is using them for playdough mats.  My oldest uses sight word mats to practice her sight words and my four year old uses the alphabet mats to practice letter formation.  The playdough does not stick at all to the page protectors, and it makes for such an easy clean up! STORAGE AND PLANNING I also use page protectors to help me plan out my year and then use the pages ...

Looking for activities to go along with teaching the letter L?  Look below to see the activities we have done! These two activities are found in my Letter L Packet .  The first activities has letter cards that I print on card stock, cut apart and hide around the room.  My son will go find them and then sort them by capital and lowercase letters.  The second page is a printable where he must find all of the letter Ls.  He likes to use stickers to cover the letters but you can color the letters, use paint dobbers or cover with other types of manipulatives. L is for Leaf! -- We used capital letter L outlines to create this simple craft.  I cut out leaf shapes from construction paper and  the kids glued them onto their L any way they chose. Playdough is one of our favorite activities!  We used these letter outline mats as out playdough mats. Then, when we are done with the playdough, we look through magazines for our letter...

Looking for activities to go along with teaching the letter K?  Look below to see the activities we have done! This is one of our favorite alphabet activities!  We use these letter mats to build our letters with pouch tops! Playdough is another favorite around here!  He gets to choose the color he wants then he uses these letter mats to create his letters! Other Letter K Themed Ideas: Kangaroo Key Kickball Kindness King Kite Koala Chants and Songs:  Letter K Chant   Big K, Little K What begins with K? Kite, Key and Kangaroo All begin with K! Letter K Song K says /k/ K says /k/ Every letter makes a sound. K says /k/ Old King Cole Games Kickball  - Practice kicking balls around or attempt to play an actual kickball game.    Foods and Snacks for the Letter Kk: Kiwi Letter Kk Products: This alphabet packet contains 50 pages of activities, centers, and games that are perfect for lea...

Check out this post for activities all about the letter J! J is for Jaguar - Use these capital letter outlines to create a jaguar print letter J.  We simply colored the J yellow and then used a q-tip with black paint to make the rosettes. We used pouch tops to fill in our letter J mat!  These letter mats are one of our favorite activities!  We used juice to paint these lowercase letter j pictures.  The kids loved doing this different kind of art.  We used these letter pages as playdough mats.  My son loves using playdough so we try to incorporate it into each week of letter learning.  When we finish with the playdough, we use the same mats to sort capital and lowercase versions of the letter.    These stamping pages are a favorite activity around here!  They make a great fine motor activity and allows for hand-eye coordination practice. [These pages are found here ---> Alphabet Stamping Cente...

I have a struggling reader.  We have been doing a mixture of phonics and sight words, trying to find how she learns best.  It has been trial and error over the past year, but I think I have finally found a method to help my daughter with learning to read with a whole word approach with sight words.  We still learn phonics, right now working through word families to try and grasp CVC words, but right now, she is excelling in learning sight words, so I want to encourage any growth and excitement about reading that I can. I have begun to introduce 4 sight words a week.  I write all four words on the board on Monday then each day we focus on one word.  We start by me saying all four words.  I then have her repeat the words in order.  We do this two or three times each day.  Then we focus on one word and read sentences with that word in them.  I then have her find and circle every time she sees the focus sight word in the sentences. Here ...

Glitter seems to be a vital part of many preschool and young elementary classrooms, and if you are like me, you HATE cleaning up glitter.  I used to dread projects that used glitter as it would get EVERYWHERE.   I would find glitter for weeks... Well, after a few years of glitter wars, I figured out this trick to keep the mess to a complete minimum and the kids still get to have fun with create art with glitter. STEP 1:  Find a shallow container (this photo shows a paper cup, but anything you can easily mix in would work) and fill it with white school glue.  Pour in the glitter and mix it all together.  (In this photo, I put about a teaspoon of glue with a teaspoon of glitter). STEP 2:  Using a q-tip, spread the glitter/glue mixture over the desired area.  STEP 3:  Let dry!  It is that easy! As you can see, the glitter stays shiny.  Students can walk around with their art you do not have to fear the tiny sparkl...