Image Map

Friday, September 26, 2014

This girl is on FIIRREE! (you can thank Alicia Keys)

It's finally here...my favorite time of year! 
FALL

Apple pickin', cool breezes, lattes in hand, and my neglected scarves are seeing the light of day. 

I'm sooo excited for an apple orchard field trip. 
I actually get to go on my son's first field trip to Rocky Brook Orchard
What a wonderful experience for both of us. 

Want to know another great thing about FALL [other than apples, Halloween, and all thing associated with cooler weather]?

October is officially FIRE SAFETY month.
Ok, well actually it's Fire Prevention WEEK, but I like to make sure my kiddos spend a good bit of time on the subject since it's uber important to their well-being. 

So, here's the jist:
Fire Prevention WEEK is the 2nd week of October (Oct. 5-11 this year) and while most fire departments are VERRYY willing to host field trips and/or do classroom demonstrations, I'm a big advocate for incorporating fire safety into everything we do in the classroom (at least for the first half of October). 

In my last post, I mentioned that, in the past, I've used several fire-safety themed resources from TPT sellers which have been AMAZING! But due to my limited funds and time restrictions, I had to come up with some "rough draft" letter and sight word recognition activities as well as some math games. They were super ROUGH, ya'll. I mean, I was a bit worried that if any other teachers asked for copies of these activities, I'd have to admit that I didn't have any written instructions or aligned standards. 

Lucky for me, my kiddos LOVED the games and activities I created to supplement those awesome resources I found on TPT and I vowed to come back to them and clean them up so I could share them. 

And that's just what I did...

( Click on image to purchase from TPT)

I've gone over these ELA and Math activities with a fine-tooth comb to make sure they're as clear as water to anyone who wants to use them. 


I'll give you a brief run-down of what you'll find in this HOT (get it?) pack:

Here's a real quick independent activity for students to do individually while you get the games distributed.
Students use the word bank to cut & paste vocabulary words to the picture. (Color & B/W options)

I've always have a few artists in my ranks, so I like to give those friends the opportunity to let their inner Picasso out. Well, within reason. There are still standards to address.
Each student is responsible for giving his/her dalmatian black spots and then using 1:1 correspondence to count the dots in order to tell his/her dalmatian apart from other dalmatians in the class. 
** I do let those budding artists add flare to their puppies, because who am I to restrict their creative sides. **

Want a number recognition and 1:1 touch correspondence game?
Here it is...


Individually or in a game setting, students use 1:1 correspondence to count the number of black dots on each fire hydrant card and then determine if they have the matching number on their 9-square flame game board. If they do, the player(s) covers the number with a water chip. Covering all nine spaces wins!

8 different 9-square flame game boards

31 dotted fire hydrant game cards for 1:1 touch counting
(I do 31 to reinforce calendar numbers)

100 water chip pieces to cover up numbers on flame boards.
 You may want to make more than 1 copy depending on how many students are playing.

As we're talking about fire safety, I do use a lot of idioms with my kiddos...
"I'm on fire!" is one my friends have REAALLY loved saying in the past. 
So what do you do when your bunch of 20 lovelies won't stop saying "I'm on fire!" when you praise them? You roll with it and make it a part of their learning!!! 

Ta-da!
I present On Fire for...



3 different playing mats
Letters, Letter Sounds, and Sight Words

4 sets of cards
Capital letters, lowercase letters, DOLCH Pre-Primer sight words, and DOLCH Primer sight words

These games can be played individually, in partners, or in a group.
Students select letter or sight word cards to identify. Using 1 of the 3 playing mats (On Fire for Letters/Letter Sounds/Sight Words), correctly identified cards are placed on the left side (I’m on FIRE for…) while incorrectly identified cards are place on the right side (I need to keep up the FIGHT) for future practice.

I really like the idea of students self assessing and creating two stacks of cards: 1 stack for secured knowledge and 1 stack for areas of needed practice. 

I'm feeling much better about these activities now than I was this time last year. 
I hope you're prepared for Fire Safety Month Week too. 

No comments:

Post a Comment