New Years Activities - Help students make resolutions & more!

Another New Year is here - bringing along more fresh starts and more opportunities to make New Year's resolutions! 
If you're like me, you find yourself making resolutions every year to become more prepared, organized, and ahead in your lesson planning. This year, I'm helping my kiddos think about goals and resolutions they want to make for the new year.
We're going to do that with this simple and easy to make New Years Flip Book. Students start out choosing a boy or girl character they'd like to represent them. There are 10 to pick from...5 boys and 5 girls.  Each character has a place for your student to write their name so that they can proudly own their goals and resolutions! The first resolution page encourages students to consider what they will eat in the new year. This is a great time to have discussions on healthy eating. My daughter made the sample below and decided she wants to eat more healthy grapes this year!  The next resolution page has students considering what books they would like to read. They might have a specific book they want to read...or maybe they have a certain number of books they'd like to read! Next, what are your kiddos going to play this year? Maybe they are going to try to play something new, like a new sport or activity. Or maybe they want to try to play with something they haven't played with in a long time. 

The next resolution page is my favorite! Who will your student help this year and how will they help that person? 

Where will your kiddos visit this year? Somewhere they've never been? Or maybe a favorite location? It might be a museum, a park, or even grandma's house! 

Finally, have your students make a short and quick reference list of 5 goals they have for the new year! You can get the New Year's Flip Book HERE.  You can get the New Year's Flip Book HERE. 

Another way to incorporate New Year's Resolutions is with an emergent reader that ties in both reading and writing practice! 

The emergent reader is 6 pages long. It includes simple sentences that were made with Kindergarten and First grade in mind. 

I tried to include as many high frequency words as I could into each page. 

Practice counting to ten on the fourth page! And check out what midnight looks like on a clock on page five! 

The last page is my favorite... It sneaks some writing practice into the reading activity! Students write three short and simple resolutions. 

This emergent reader is included with many other New Year's activities in a pack.  You can get that pack of New Year's Activities HERE. 

You can get these New Year's Activities HERE. 

I love that some of my kiddos are wanting to make reading more as one of their resolutions. I found these fun New Year's bookmarks from Let's Learn S'more that are FREE on Pinterest: This noise maker is always a big hit too...even older kids LOVE making noise! One last idea... This New Year's fireworks paint activity is always a simple but fun one!

Don't forget to PIN this post so that you can remember these activities for future planning! PIN ME

Thanks for letting me share these activities with you! I hope your littles love and enjoy them. I also hope they make your teacher life & prep just a tad bit easier!

-Til next time

    

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Bek

Bible Time: The Lost Coin Parable Emergent Reader

Not too long ago, I started a Bible emergent readers series. I was wanting a variety of Old and New Testament stories that could be simplified for a Kindergarten student to be able to read and understand. 
Much prayer was spent before making each Bible reader. My goal was to retell the Bible stories in a way that helps emerging readers understand God's Word while also meeting them where they're at and building their reading skills. My prayer was that God would help me simplify each story for these younger loves, without taking away from it. 
The Lost Coin is one of the parable stories that I created! I'm super excited to share it with you. Here is a pic of the cover of this emergent reader. I asked my 7th grade daughter to color sample pages of the book for me to post. She kept writing and re-writing my name as the 'Reader' trying to make it look like an adult had written it, ha!  I have created many Bible emergent readers that tell the story of various parables Jesus told. The ones that tell a parables all start out with "Jesus told some people a story." 

Each page crams as many sight words as possible into the sentences, while also trying to keep them as short and simple as possible. Students are also introduced to quotation marks. Since it's Jesus telling the story, the kids only have to focus on one character voice when reading them! 

This next page throws a little sneaky counting and number practice in! Shhh...don't tell!

Large, simple pictures help keep a little reader's focus on the text as they read. 

This particular emergent reader has 11 pages to it. You can shorten it by easily omitting 3-4 of the pages if you feel it is too long for your specific child's needs.

You could even go as far as turning this book into a mini play activity by having students pair up and take turns being the Narrater while the other acts out the story as it's read. It's not always easy to choose what sentence go into my Bible readers. Bible stories, and even just the words/names alone, can sometimes be difficult to put into a book for new readers. As you read, and use these books with your students, if you come across wording or parts of the story that you feel might need a little more attention, please know that I would love for you to reach out and let me know your thoughts! 

Have students keep these books in their book boxes at school or send them home and encourage students to read the story to their parents!

I hope your students love this emergent reader as they learn and grow in God's word! Get The Lost Coin Parable Emergent Reader HERE! The Lost Coin is also available in a bundle with my other Bible based readers in this: Bible Emergent Readers Bundle Get this Bible Emergent Readers Bundle HERE! Don't forget to PIN this post so that you can remember these readers for future planning!

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Thanks for letting me share these activities with you! I hope your littles love and enjoy them. I also hope they make your teacher life & prep just a tad bit easier!

-Til next time

    

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Bek

The 12 Days of Christmas Flip Book & Emergent Reader Activities

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...! This nursery rhyme and Christmas song is already being sung by the kids in my house. Christmas seems to be hitting us earlier this year. We've had record breaking temperatures and snow as early as Halloween. It seems to be inspiring people to put up trees and decorations a little earlier than normal. 

As you begin to compile activities for your Christmas lesson plans, there are two brand new 12 Days of Christmas activities in The Barefoot Teacher shop this season that you won't want to miss out on. 

This '12 Days of Christmas' flip book gives kids a chance to practice writing (and cutting & gluing) skills while practicing counting to 12. 

There are 12 pages, plus a cover included. There is one page for every verse of the song.

Here is a close up of just the cover that the kids will color and cut out:

Each page has a 'glue' tab at the top to show students exactly where to glue. Glue sticks are best for this. That way, if they make a mistake, it can easily be fixed! 

Here's a peek at the last 12 pages of the book:

When they are done, they can cut them out and glue them together at the top (don't forget, the tabs show where to glue on each page). And the complete project looks like this: It's great for helping the kids remember the order of the song. Even I often forget which number has maids milking or pipers piping, lol!  You can get the 12 Days of Christmas Flip Book HERE! The second activity goes right along with the flip book. It's a 14 pages emergent reader that comes in two versions, which I'll explain below. This book will fit right into your kids book boxes and is great for keeping at school for reading practice.  This reader is printed two to a page so that you can use the copy machine's double staple function when making your copies, and then use a slicer to slice the books apart. The first page students will read is set up to introduce all the objects given during that 12 days of Christmas.  Students can highlight number words and practice counting on each page!  I included two versions of this book. You can use: 'seven geese laying' OR 'seven geese a-laying' for your little readers. Get this 12 Days of Christmas Emergent Reader HERE. Don't forget to PIN this post so that you can remember these activities for future planning!

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Thanks for letting me share these activities with you! I hope your littles love and enjoy them. I also hope they make your teacher life & prep just a tad bit easier!

-Til next time

    

Read more »

Bek