Daily Grammar fix-its

Grammar is one of those things that plagues the best of us, so I was so excited to see these "Daily Grammar Fix Its" from Amanda Nickerson on the Teachers pay Teachers site. This is a perfect idea to complement my competency bags!

She designed these wonderful pages and I only made one adjustment- simply to shrink them to 4 to a page so they fit into my bags. I love the idea of these. Each card starts with an improperly written sentence that the student needs to correct. Then there is a space for the correct sentence, and then a box to illustrate it. I laminated mine so that these can be used again and again, and I printed on both sides of the page to save space in the bag. Throw in a dry-erase marker and a wipe off cloth and it's finished!

Homophones- fun grammar lessons

I love seasonal items, and I especially love clearance items, so this project works well for both. First of all, if you don't have any leftover plastic Easter eggs left over from last weekend, RUN to your nearest store and pick up a few batches. Look for really cool shapes like these great turtles. I managed to pick mine up at 50% off this week, ,so I'm sure you will probably get them cheaper this week. Hurry, though. The stores don't hold on to these for long!

So this package of eggs was called the Spring garden collection, and mine came with 7 adorable turtles. (It also came with lady bugs and butterflies, and I already have plans for those too!) I was looking for a creative way to teach homophones- those tricky words that sound the same but are spelled different and mean different things. Let's face it, most adults don't get this right, so it's probably good to start this one pretty young.

Inside each turtle, I put pieces of paper, each with the same sounding words. (Like to, too and two). I also put the definitions for each one in the same egg.

Then I created a little turtle chart to match the strips. I made 7 of the little charts.

Cute and easy!

ABC Order Competency bag

This is a very simple concept bag and doesn't take long to create. I wanted to teach the topic of alphabetical order, and so I printed about 30 words that come from a 1-2nd grade word list and put them on scrapbook paper. I included an ABC desk list to help in case she gets stuck. I bought my desk list in a pack of 30 from the Dollar tree.

Sometimes simple is the best kind of project!

Compound Words

This seems like the easiest competency bag to make, and since it's mostly free, I will start here. The competency covered here is compound words. I used a stack of paint sample chips cut in half to write each of the words, then laminated each one. (And Walmart probably thinks I am doing some SERIOUS redecorating based on the number of paint samples I have picked up for these projects!)

Each word is one part of the compound word, like the words "Sea" and "Side" are written on two different cards. The task in this bag is simply for the child to match as many cards to it's mate(s). Several cards match to more than one word. I also included a chart that says, "How many compound words can you make?" and laminated it so that it becomes a dry/erase board. Also included in the bag is a dry erase marker and a piece of white felt for cleaning board.
Easy and covers a great concept. What do you think?