Ahhh… January in the primary classroom. Between the cabin fever, the post-holiday wiggles, and the wandering attention spans, it’s rough out there! But what if we stopped fighting these hurdles and actually worked with them instead? Wait, what?! Yes, teacher-friend! Let’s talk about how my Winter Color by Code and
If you’ve ever listened to a kindergartener blend sounds together and felt both proud and a little confused about what comes next, you’re not alone. Once students can hear, isolate, and blend sounds, the next big step in phonemic awareness is learning how to manipulate them, and that’s where phoneme
If you’ve ever wished for an easy way to combine phonics practice with an activity your students actually love doing, phonics word searches might just be your new favorite tool. Phonics word searches give students a fun way to connect spelling, reading, and word recognition, all while feeling like they’re
Blending is one of the most important early literacy skills students learn in kindergarten. Without it, they can’t smoothly move from recognizing individual sounds to reading whole words. For some kids, blending clicks quickly, but for others, it takes repeated practice and a variety of approaches before it finally sticks.
If you’ve ever sat down with a small group of students to teach phonics, you already know the struggle… every child is at a different place. Some are still working on letter recognition, others are confidently identifying beginning sounds, and a few are ready for blends and word families. Although
Teaching digraphs in the kindergarten classroom doesn’t have to be tricky — in fact, it can be downright fun! With the right mix of engaging digraph activities and thoughtfully designed digraph worksheets, you can help your young learners build strong reading foundations while keeping things playful and purposeful. In this
As a primary teacher, one of the biggest milestones we help students reach is learning to read. It’s one of the things I love the most about being a kindergarten teacher. Our sweet kids arrive to us with minimal knowledge of the alphabet, but in a few short months, they
Teaching young students to read is one of the most exciting things that primary teachers get to do. It’s pretty amazing to watch a student progress from letter identification, to letter sounds, to CVC words. Along the way, we work on other skills too – like rhyming. This is arguably
Teaching CVC words is a big part of the agenda in kindergarten. We’re working on learning new word families every day through hands-on learning centers, games, and more! If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a primary teacher, it’s that manipulatives and tools make all the difference! This is so
As kindergarten teachers, so much of our day is focused on phonemic awareness skills that will lay the foundation for reading. Our students must learn many foundational skills long before they are ready to read. Today, I want to take a closer look at part of this process and talk