Homophone Fun... You Know... When Two Words Sound The Same?!

We did a homophone hallway hunt today.  We've been doing hunts in the room so much and the kiddos were THRILLED to be able to do one in the hallway!  I laughed my tail off explaining about the "Eye Tricked Ewe!" cards and they gave me some serious stink-eye every time they got tricked by one in the hallway!  Bwahaha!

 

After reviewing homophones for days, having them as spelling words this week, explaining the hunt we were doing today, etc... one of my girlies came up to me with this most puzzled look on her face and this was our conversation:

sweetie- "Um... Mrs. Bainbridge?  This is kind of hard."
me- "What are you having trouble with?"
sweetie- "Well, both of the words on the card sound the same when you say them."
me- "Yes, that's because they are homophones."
sweetie {as a lightbulb goes off}- "Ohhh!"

And then she got them all right!  :)

Tonight I'm hoping for a NOT snow day tomorrow... we're out of days... so do an un-snow dance for me... please!  This gal does not want to be going to school for one random Monday in June to make up a day!

Here's the hunt we did today!  You can click the pic or link for more info!

Rug + Word Cards + Ball = Fun (and EASY!) Game for Learning!

Here's my rug:

I love it.  We sit on it.  We learn on it... and it's definitely a huge part of my instruction.

This coming week it will become a REAL part of my instruction when we learn more about homophones.  I made 20 homophone cards and will put one on each square...

I'll be lining the kiddos up in two teams and having them throw a Koosh ball.  Whichever space it lands on, that student will have to use the word correctly in a sentence to earn a point.  Then it will be the next team's turn.

My brain is swimming with how I could use this more often... laying out spelling words, vocabulary words, words for students to identify prefixes or suffixes, compound words... and the best part is that all it takes is the ball, the rug, and to whip up some quick word cards!

I hope my kiddos are as excited as I am about this one!

On a side note- you still have one more day to enter the giveaway to win a copy of Maria Dismondy's book The Potato Chip Champ!  Click the pic to head over to that post and enter.

Did You Bring Your Clip-Stick and Stop Bye Four Homophone Fun!

Ya'll know how much I love my clip chart.  And if you don't know, you can learn aaaaalllll about how much I love it on this little blog of mine.

Well, a little thing happened this summer called "I Got a New Job"... you might have heard me talking about that... and, at said job, our kiddos will be changing classes during the day... and we were trying to think of a way for us to use a clip chart for our behavior management without the kiddos having to a.) remember where each teacher said they should be on the chart, b.) having to have 4 clip charts for the four groups of kids we'll each have during the day, or c.) worrying about Johnny Sweetheart being told to move his clip down by one teacher and then "forgetting" to tell his homeroom teacher and thus remaining UP on the chart.

So... the CLIP STICK was born!

My awesome colleague BK painted these for us... Hi BK!!!!!  You're the best!

And I added the words and painted over them with Modpodge.

Here's mine:

It's a yard stick!  Each of our classes have one with our own clips on it and one kid's job will be to take it to each class as they rotate through during the day!  I LOVE IT!!!!!

A few weeks ago I got this box in the mail:

And I opened it...

And at first, I saw this:

And this was hidden underneath:

And (just to continue the "And" pattern) I love it!

It's a quick and easy center set for students to practice differentiating between homophones.  It's a flip chart and each page has four clues that students have to match up a homophone for each clue.

It tells you at the top of each card which four tiles you need:

And then students would look through the tiles to find the four they need.  I really like that part- they are being exposed to SO many words as they look for the ones they need.  I love all of the visual discrimination that will be taking place, the reading and thinking and sorting... LOVE!

Here's the best part though- it's magnetic!  So, students plunk on the four word tiles and then flip the page up to see if they got the answers correct.

Let's find out how I did...

YES!  You can check out this amazing product on the Lakeshore website.


So, who doesn't love Lakeshore Learning?  Can I tell you that two summers ago the Mr. and I went to the Mall of America.  What a trooper he was to take a vacation to go shopping!  And we went to both Lakeshore stores that were nearby when we were there.  I had never been to their actual store before... it was AH-MAZING!

The best part of this is that they are having a BOGO half off sale right now!  So, when you buy one item, the next is half price!  Just click above to go to the link to start shopping and saving!