Engaging Games to Get Your Students Moving While Learning

Now more than ever, it's important to include some movement into learning. With schools limiting recess, free play, and even special area classes like PE, music, art, etc. This is one reason I developed my Fluency & Fitness resources a few years ago. I wanted to make learning more fun again! 

Fluency & Fitness allows students to work on essential reading and literacy skills, but then get a chance to move and exercise every few slides. Here's a sneak peek of some Fluency & Fitness in action in the classroom. 

These games can be used during your reading or math block, transitions, brain breaks, morning meeting, inside recess, etc. They only take about 2-3 minutes to play and are very helpful to give your students a fun way to review. Below is a preview from my Silent E Fluency & Fitness Bundle. This particular game has students turn CVC words into CVCe words. 

Students BEG to do these and don't even realize how much they're learning. Teachers love that not only are their kids having fun, but they don't have to lose any instructional time. This is the Money Fluency & Fitness Bundle.

I left these games so you can adapt them for your own classroom. You can choose to click through the slides manually or add a timer if you'd like to participate with your students. :) I like to click through so I can go slow as we are still practicing the skill, then a lot faster as they've mastered it. This Number Sense Fluency & Fitness is one my best sellers. You can find more Fluency & Fitness games here, including grade level bundles and my popular MEGA bundle!

Since teachers are loving Fluency & Fitness, I wanted to create something similar but with a team or small group aspect and Holiday themes. My new resources called Fluency Find It have students work in small groups. Students look at the screen and then find the answer on a worksheet at their table. They may find the matching letter, middle vowel sound, answer to the math problem, etc. That student continues playing until they see the "switch spots" slides, and then they go to the end of the line. Students may help each other with the answers if their friend needs help. I've played these games since October and really love watching how the students work together.

Each Holiday comes with 5 games that students should be fluent in for that time of the year. Here's a peek of the 1st grade St. Patrick's Day Fluency Find It in action. I have these games for Kindergarten and 1st grade, but will be working on the 2nd and 3rd grade sets soon. You can find all of my Fluency Find It game here. 

Cramming It All In & a FREEBIE {w/Tickled Pink in Primary}

Trying to squeeze as much learning into your day as possible and keep your students engaged can be hard. I think that we are putting so much pressure on students and increasing the expectations, that sometimes we forget that they are kids. 

I try to balance my schedule throughout the day, so we have some whole group learning, then small group or independent work, then back to whole group, and small group. This breaks up the learning a bit and gives students some time to interact with their friends. My schedule is the same every day so students know what to expect. They know when they'll get a chance to talk/share with their friends, and when it's time to listen to me.  I see my students checking out a picture schedule often to see what is coming next or how many things we have to get through until recess. LOL! Having a set schedule every day is easier for me to lesson plan because I can just quickly change out a skill, book title, etc. but overall I have a plan of what our day will always look like. You can grab these schedule card for FREE here. 

As a Kindergarten teacher, I think is important to let our little ones get a little bit of down time throughout the day. They still need to develop social skills and shouldn't be expected to just go, go, go all day long at the age of 5!  I have reading centers & math centers during my day so students can work on the skills I've taught, but do it by playing games/activities with their friends. Our reading centers are in the morning and our math centers are in the afternoon. Here's a picture of my reading center rotation chart. All of my supplies are right by the reading center (same for math), so students don't have to go all over the room looking for their tubs/materials. I also have 1 person in each group as the designated person to get out the tubs & clean it all up. This helps the transitions go smoother and not cause any arguing.

Inside each tub are a few activities for the students to do. I let them choose what to do, but once they've played the game once they have to switch to another activity. These low-prep Beginning Sounds activities are easy to prepare and great to throw in centers.

BINGO markers are definitely a favorite activity to do, so I created these Dot It! worksheets for reading & math centers. I love creating centers that can be used all year long, and all you have to do is simply change out the worksheets/cards. They kids already know how to play, so this makes lesson planning and explaining new centers a breeze!

Assessments are a necessary evil. It's something we all have to do, to see how our students are progressing, but it also takes time away from us teaching the rest of the class.  One way to constantly and quickly progress monitor my students on their letters is with this letter fluency sheet from my low-prep Alphabet Activities bundle. I can pull kids back and have them do this 1 minute assessment to see how many letters they know and if they know them quickly and fluently. As student's scores increase, I only have to do this with a few kids. In Kindergarten we don't do real grades or give homework that we keep grades on. I dread report card time because even if I mentally know how my students are doing and what they need help on, I still need to pull them all back 1 on 1 and give them a lot of formal assessments. This takes quite a bit of time! I don't have a classroom aide, but I try to do most of my assessing while the other students are at centers. I also like to use some of our center activities as assessments as well. I can sit with a group of kids as they are working on an alphabet game and I can take notes on which letters they are missing. This is more of an informal away to assess, but it doesn't interrupt the schedule of the day, and students are more relaxed and not feeling like they are getting quizzed by the teacher. :)

Fluency & Fitness is definitely a class favorite! These students below are working on naming their 3D shapes (shapes & real world images included), but then they have to do exercises every so often. They absolutely LOVE doing these and forget they are even learning. :) I love that I've found a way to make learning fun, help them get some energy out, yet not lose instructional time. There are over 40 bundles of Fluency & Fitness, so we can use these during math & reading, and all year depending on what skills we are learning.You can find this Shape Fluency & Fitness here.

It's tough trying to cram it all in, yet make learning fun. Sometimes we just have to trust our gut and do what we know is best for our kids.

Spring into...Fluency & Fitness {w/Tickled Pink in Primary}

It's supposed to be Spring, but here in Indiana it snowed this week! Good news though, we have a TON of goodies to giveaway! 

At this point in the year, students (and teachers)  start to get a bit antsy for school to end and the focus tends to decline. My Fluency & Fitness bundles are a great way to get students up and moving, yet keep them learning at the same time. Students absolutely LOVE these, and they even ask to do them!! I don't think they even realize it's learning, because they are having so much fun (teacher win!) 

I picked 2 of my best selling bundles for our giveaway. Below you can see a class doing the Fry's 1st 100 Sight Words Fluency & Fitness. This bundle is included in the K-2 giveaway. 

These students are mastering the math facts with the Multiplication Fluency & Fitness Bundle.This bundle is in the 3-5 giveaway. 

You can even print the slides into small flashcards and use them during center time.

I have created over 30 different Fluency & Fitness bundles and keep getting requests for more! These bundles are great for any time of the year to get kids up and moving, but especially now when students are needing to get their wiggles out more and more. 

Enter below to win all of these awesome products!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Why I'm Lucky to Teach {w/Tickled Pink in Primary}

As most of you know, I am no longer in the classroom and spend my days helping my husband run his business and/or creating resources to help save you busy teachers some time. Hopefully in return, letting you get a bit of your "after school life" back! Even though I am no longer teaching, I will always think of myself as a teacher. 

Anytime I'm around my nephews I always try to fit in some learning. Brady is not even 2 and already loves to look at books! Over Christmas he kept wanting to read books about "Ho" (aka Santa Claus). :)   Of course I have to try to get him to point out colors or find images in the books, so we can work on some early comprehension and vocabulary! 

                    

My nephew Colton is almost 5 and is genuinely a super smart kid (I don't just say that as his aunt). He has been reading simple books since he turned 4 and now is reading at a late 1st grade level. We skyped this past week and he asked if he could read me 2 books. I love seeing how excited he is about learning!! I'm going down to visit him next week and he knows I'll be brining him some books and other activities we can play. 

I taught for 8 years, with 7 of those being in Kindergarten. I LOVED Kindergarten and was incredibly sad when I got moved to 2nd grade for a year (due to seniority, BOO)! It is so amazing to see the growth that Kindergarteners make throughout the school year. They come to us not knowing letters or how to write, and end up leaving reading books and writing stories. The growth is incredible! Here are my Kinder babies on our field day my last year!! 

I love creating things for teachers and students on TPT because I not only get to share my love of teaching with others, but I get to find ways to bring FUN back into the classroom. I go back and volunteer often and just recently showed this 1st grade classroom how to play Fluency & Fitness. I loved being able to see their excitement of learning subtraction and then getting a bit of a break to get in some movement. When it was over, they asked to do another one! It makes my heart so happy to hear that! I always tried to make my classroom a very caring and fun environment so students wanted to be at school. We put so much pressure on them nowadays, but it's always important to remember that they are still kids!

Finally, I loved teaching because I felt like I could make an impact on student's lives. Many times, we see our students more than they see their parents. It's very important to build a  good relationship with your students and know the impact you have on them. My mother teaches 6th grade and actually has some of my past students from when I taught in my hometown. Recently, they had her send this picture to me asking me to come down and visit. That made me feel so good that years later they not only remembered me, but wanted to see me again. I drove down a few days ago and got to see about 15 of my old students. It was a lot of fun, but also made me realize that there's a reason we do what we do, no matter how stressful it is, or how much extra time we put in without getting paid. We are not in teaching for the money, but for the kids! 

 Why are you lucky to teach?

Technology Tips & Tricks with Tickled Pink in Primary

I'm excited to be showing you a few ways I use technology in my classroom! I think technology integrated into learning helps students stay much more engaged! I used to have a Promethean Board at my old school, and used it EVERY day! I loved how my students could interact with the board. 

One of my class's favorite brain breaks are my Fluency & Fitness bundles! To play you simply project your selected PDF onto a big screen and flip through the slides as fast or slow as you think your students can say the skill. When they see an exercise slide, they have to do that exercise until you click to the next screen. Teachers get to manually click to go to the next screen, therefore at the beginning of the year you can go slower, and once they master the skill, you can go faster! Feel free to sit on the exercise screen for awhile ;) I have many versions of Fluency & Fitness in my TPT store.

Here are examples of my CVC bundle and Number Sense bundle. 

    

Another game in my Number Sense bundle is 10 frames. Here's a short video of Fluency & Fitness in action!

Another way I corporate technology into my classroom is by letting my students use our iPad during center time. Here's an old picture of some of the games I have. I forgot to take a picture of how I've organized my apps. I created 2 folders on the homepage: Reading and Math. When it is reading time, the students know to click on the Reading folder, and they can play any of the games in that folder. The same goes for Math time.  Here's an example of a few of the games I have in the Reading Folder. 

They love the game Futaba. A picture pops up and the first player to find the word, gets a point. They can use this at the beginning of the year and hunt for the beginning sound in the word, and once they are readers, they can play it by searching for the word. 

 

This last tip is actually something one of my co-workers did. She has a friend that is a fireman, so for fire safety week in October, they Skyped with him. He was showing them the fire station, his equipment, etc. Then, the coolest thing happened...the sirens went off! He asked if they wanted to keep Skyping and follow him on their ride in the fire truck! When it was too loud to talk on Skype, they typed him questions and he'd respond. What a cool experience!!