Start your engines for differentiated instruction and some new freebies.
I’ve been spending entirely way too much time with my little boys these last couple of weeks which is both a blessing and a curse. I love summers when we have picnics in our playset, beach days, marble races and muffin tin meals, because I have so much more time than when I’m teaching everyday. Very little real work tends to get done when you have to stop for, impromptu water fights, super hero races, obstacle course building and car races and car races and more car races. More and more car races has prompted me to create some new items that will appeal to my own little gear heads at home as my 4 year old gets ready to head off to pre-school and my 6 year old heads to kindergarten.
My son loves this activity, but, in no uncertain terms, told me that it needed a ‘parking lot’ for his cars so he could keep them organized and know where they are when he was looking for a certain letter. So I came up with this FREEBIE to park you own cars on. What he didn’t realize is that when he was parking his cars, he was really matching up lowercase letters to capital letters. I love it when they’re learning, and they don’t even know it.
You can get it by clicking either the picture above or below. It’s FREE! So what ‘cha waiting for?
Of course at the beginning of the year, you’ll have those little peeps that won’t even be able to recognize their letters nor write them. For those little ones and for any of them that need the practice in making their letters correctly, you’re going to want to take advantage of the fact that cars have WHEELS that allow them to move.
They allow kinesthetic learners do what they do best too . . . MOVE. If you use a little FROG brand painters tape on your floor you can practice writing your letters by ‘driving’ the cars over the letters.
It’s a guaranteed ‘ask for it again and again’ activity.
Don’t have room on your floor? How about downloading a set of these FABULOUS highway letter cards from Making Learning Fun to use at a table or desk. Click on the picture below to take you to the link.
Of course, if you take that same tape (it’s my favorite) and place a small piece with a letter written on the back, you can sort letters in your name, capital and lowercase letters or even short and tall letters.
For students who are beyond this activity and ready to start segmenting, there is a companion activity Say-Park-Write that is tiered for students working on CVC and CCVC/CVCC words.
And then there’s all the great MATH activities you can do!
I was surprised when my 6 year old found as much joy in sorting as my 4 year old did.
I also had them making patterns as well. Could you use this as an early in the year math station? ABSOLUTELY. It would be a great way to introduce stations to your students with an engaging activity. Plus, like my six year old, I think that you’ll find students who have already mastered simple patterns and sorting, looking for more complex ways of using this center.
Need your own ‘I can’ poster for it? Just grab a copy of mine by clicking on the poster picture below.
Of course, you can also count cars.
There’s a couple of ways you can do this in your classroom. To appeal to your kinesthetic learners, you might want to try this Write The Room activity – Race The Room For Numbers.
So this is what you can do when you’re inspired by the little people who spend the summer with you. Anyway, I have to go. There’s a car race starting in 3 minutes, and I get the really cool green race car to drive! Goodie!
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Marsha Moffit McGuire
With more than 20 years of teaching experience, it is my pleasure to bring you my most favorite ideas and activities to keep young learners engaged and loving learning.
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