I’m so incredibly happy to tell you that I am once again partnering with Astrobrights®Papers this year as a Bright Minds ambassador.   Astrobrights Papers are every teacher’s favorite paper source,  not only because they have the most amazing quality and colorful products, but also because they simply love teachers!  Once again, they are giving you an opportunity to nominate your favorite and brightest teacher for a dream classroom makeover valued at $5000!!!

DO YOU KNOW THE NEXT BRIGHTEST TEACHER?

You have an opportunity to nominate your favorite Brightest Teacher for dream classroom makeover, valued at $5000 sponsored by Astrobrights and designed with the help of our Bright Minds Teachers.

It’s so simple to nominate a deserving teacher that goes above and beyond everyday.   Just head over to Astrobrights by clicking HERE, but hurry!  The contest ends on March 26th, and you definitely don’t want to miss out!

EGG-CELLENT WORD WORK WITH ASTROBRIGHTS

One of the best parts of being a Bright Minds ambassador is being able to bring all of you engaging and fun ideas for your own classroom.  Since Easter is just around the corner, I thought I would show you how I use Astrobrights to make word work engaging for my students and easy for me.

This post includes affiliate links.  

It’s no secret that one of the reasons that I love Astrobrights papers so much is that is allows me to easily differentiate instruction in my classroom simply by using beautiful, bright colors.  It makes my life infinitely less complicated and brings engaging fun colors into my curriculum. That’s a win-win in my book.  So I’ve created a little freebie to show how it can be done!

By using different sets of skills on a variety of colored Astrobrights cardstock, I can easily offer my students the same engaging word work activity at their level of readiness.  This particular activity offers egg puzzle pieces with beginning letter sound skills, CVC, digraph and CVCe word matching.  There’s something for everyone!  And because these are puzzles, they are self-correcting!!!

In my own class, my groups this year are designated by three (and sometimes four) different colors.  Student assignment cards are also color coded and can change depending on different skills being taught each week.  For this activity, I created four sets of egg puzzles on four of my favorite Astrobrights cardstock.

My favorite Astrobrights colors used here:

• Fireball Fuchsia™
• Cosmic Orange™
• Terrestrial Teal™
• Vulcan Green™

Of course, you can use any of your own favorite colors or Astrobrights even has cardstock packs in a variety of colors for your convenience as well.

These sheets were then laminated and the eggs were cut out . . .

and then cut again on the puzzle lines to break them apart.

From here you just need to decide how you want your students to use them.  The great part of about these pieces being color coded is that students of varying levels and skills can still work together.  They just choose to work with their ‘color.’

One of my favorite ways to use these cards is by placing them in a sensory bin or table.  I am a big supporter of sensory bin activities and my students naturally gravitate to these activities.  Don’t have a sensory table?  You can simply use a low-sided plastic tote!  It works great.  My class likes to see who can make the most matches the fastest.  There’s nothing like a little friendly competitive banter to keep an activity interesting.

And let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to play in that!  This is just a super simple filler of poly filler pellets that you find in doll filling and some seasonal, fun erasers.

Another way to use these cards is to place a small piece of magnetic tape on the back of the pieces and place them on a magnetic surface . This is also a great fine motor activity as students have to work to maneuver the pieces and there is a bit of resistance in moving them around because of the magnets.

Are you ready to get your own set of these egg-cellent work work puzzles?  It’s simple.  All you have to do is click on the button below, enter your email address.  A verification note will be sent to your inbox.  Once your confirm your subscription with the note, the file is automatically downloaded to your computer.  Just check your computer’s ‘download’ file.  If you don’t see something from me in a few minutes, be sure to check your SPAM folder, just in case.  Also, school email addresses don’t always like receiving mail from me, so try and use a generic, yahoo or gmail type address if you can.  And don’t forget to enter Astrobrights’ Brightest Teacher contest before March 26th.  I can’t wait to see who wins