Happy Fall y'all blog hop

This hop is hosted by my friend Stephanie at Mrs. D's Corner!!!

I cannot believe that today is the first day of fall.  Where did the summer go?  I can't complain though.  It's been a beautiful September and it's still supposed to be beautiful this week.  

Because of the beautiful weather, the leaves really haven't started to change yet.  Even so, there are still signs of fall around.

After Halloween last year, I had my boys throw our pumpkins out into the back lot (we live in the country) and this is what happened.

A Pumpkin!

With no work on our part, we ended up with one small pumpkin.

It's just starting to turn orange.

I had never really examined a pumpkin plant before so we decided to do some investigating.

The first thing we noticed was that the pumpkin leaves were BIG.

And the stems are PRICKLY.

Who knew?

They were too prickly to pick so we decided to find some other leaves.   

We found a variety of leaves that were different sizes, shapes and colours.

We then decided to do some leaf rubbings.

We took the paper off our crayons.

We put one leaf at a time under white paper and rubbed the crayon across it.

This is great fine motor work. 

We got some stunning pictures.

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  I made a little word game freebie that is perfect for fall.

Head on over to my friend Dianna at Sassy, Savvy, Simple Teaching for more fall ideas and a freebie.

Work Station Wednesday - Marshmallows

This week's work stations are about marshmallows.  

Marshmallows are perfect for a camping or summer theme.

We combined marshmallows with our literacy work.

I also used the snap cubes that I talked about on Monday.

Our first activity involved putting the alphabet in the correct order.

I had some skewers in the cupboard and thought they would make perfect marshmallow sticks.

I attached a letter "marshmallow" to each snap cube and had the children thread them on the sticks.

Perfect fine motor work and they were easy to pick up.

Next we did some work on "missing letters".  The children had to find the marshmallow with the correct letter and place it on the card.  For some children I had cards with Velcro.

For other children I put the "marshmallows" on snap cubes so they were easier to manipulate.

 Next, we matched upper and lower case letters.

We then worked on word families.  Again I put the "marshmallows" on snap cubes and had the children put them on the sticks.

Once the children were finished, I had them read the words to me.

I put the word families on separate coloured snap cubes.  That way I could easily visually check to see if the children completed the task correctly.

The last game we played is a favorite.  Under one of the marshmallows is a picture of a piece of chocolate.  The children had to read the word first in order to look under the card.  The child who finds the chocolate is the winner.

I attached snap cubes to the corners of the cards so that the children could easily pick them up.

Testing Tuesday - Pre-Primer words and e-tran board

It's Tuesday again and time for another testing tip.

Last week was about letters.

This week I thought I would show you how I test my non-verbal students that use eye gaze.

This is a home made e-tran board.

  You can buy commercial ones but they can be expensive.  If you don't need a large one, you can make one quite easily.  I decided to make a simple one out of laminating pouches.

Once the laminating pouches were heated, I cut a square out of the middle.

I added Velcro to each of the corners and on the back of the words.  You can put Velcro wherever you need too.  Some children make better choices along the top, or along the bottom, or one side or the other.  Put Velcro where you need to or put Velcro along the whole square, if you are still trying out locations to determine the best spots.

Once you have your words where you want them, hold the board up in front of your face.  My son volunteered to be the model for this demonstration.  The hole in the middle is important so that the child can hear what you are asking.  The board needs to be clear so that you can see where they are looking.

Here is an example of what I would say to a child that is just beginning to scan and use eye gaze.

"I have 4 words here.  I want you to show me with your eyes the word I ask you for.  I'm going to point to each one first to make sure you look at each one before picking.  I want to look for the word "big"."

"Look at this one"

"Look at this one"

"Look at this one"

 "Look at this one"

"Now look at the word "big"."

Because the board is clear, I can easily see where the child is looking.

Depending on how experienced your child is with eye-gaze will depend on how you accept an answer.

More experienced users may be able to hold their eyes on a choice while other children may only quickly glance at their answer.

Some children may be able to confirm their answer with a "yes"/"no" if they have that skill.

For my children that have the ability to point and can handle a larger number of choices, I use a full page of words and a highlighter.  As they demonstrate knowledge of the word, I have them highlight the word.  The goal is to have the whole page highlighted.

I keep track of both types of assessment on my recording page.  I can easily see what words they know and what words we still need to work on.

You can grab me Pre-Primer pack here for free.  I comes with instructions for assessing non-verbal children.