file folder Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Shark Games for Kids – File Folder Fish Hockey

June 27, 2016 By Deirdre

Shark games for kids are fun to play during Shark Week, as part of an ocean unit or just for fun! I made a shark game space that can be used for playing two different versions of fish hockey. Before playing our shark games for kids, you may want to create our pool noodle shark or make a Safari Ltd Coral Reef TOOBas our fish pucks. Let me walk you through how to create the shark games for kids game space and then how to play each of the shark games for kids.

Shark Game Space Construction

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Supplies

Flexible Plastic Cutting Board Mats
Under Bed Storage Box
File Folder (2)
Blue Construction Paper
White Construction Paper
Wiggle Eyes
Scissors
Glue stick
Tropical Fish

Creating the File Folder Sharks

We started by cutting an arch out of a folded piece of blue construction paper. The arch was cut with a pointed top. This gave us two blue arches.

The center area of the arch was traced onto a piece of white construction paper folded in half. After it was cut out, the two small white arches were cut in half. (That gave us four half arches.) Jagged lines were cut along the outside edges of the half arches. The jagged lines represent the teeth.

Four small blue arches were cut out of the scrap paper for the shark’s eyes. Four smaller white arches were cut out of the scraps of white paper. Then the all the shark’s facial elements were glued in place. The teeth were glued inside the blue hallow arches. The white eye sections were glued to blue eye arches. A wiggly eyes were glued onto each of layered eye sections.

Then each shark head with teeth and eye sections were glued onto the back inside section of a file folder.

Shark Games for Kids

After placing a shark head folder near both ends of the under the bed container, place the blue cutting mat on top of them. We had our folders lean back quite a bit so it would be easy for the fish to slide in.

Game One – Taking Turns

One player at a time tries to get their fish into the shark on side opposite to where they are sitting. They can have as many attempts as you decide is necessary to have them feel like they had a chance to successfully feed the shark. Then second player can try to get their fish in the shark opposite to them.

Game Two- Defend Your Shark

One player can try to slide their fish into the shark opposite to where they are sitting. A second player can use a fish of their own or maybe a Popsicle stick to try to keep them from getting the fish into the shark’s mouth. They can take turns trying to feed the shark.

Lorax Truffula Tree Sight Words Game

February 21, 2015 By Deirdre

We used this truffula tree game board to work on spelling words, but I think it could be used to work on any number of learning concepts. (The Lorax learning mat I shared earlier in the week worked that way too.) By creating file folder game boards without a specific skill displayed on them we can use them for lots of different activities.

Thoughts I Had While Putting This Game Together:

The trees displayed on this file folder game have black and yellow stripes on them.

We chose:

We moved up the tree by landing on each stripe.

You could:

You may have your children land on just the yellow or just the black stripes.

There is an open space on the right of the game board to display the concepts that you will be working on while playing this game.

We chose:

We used small halves of 3×5 index cards to write my son’s spelling and word wall words on. The words were written on the blank side of the cards and placed in a pile.

You could:

You may like the idea of using a whole index card or small pieces of paper to display the questions you want your children to answer or the words you want your children to spell. Colored index cards would be fun to use too.
A bowl or small box holding the cards could be placed in the open space to keep them neat and tidy. ( Our cards got kind of messy.)
A list of questions or words that will need to be read while playing the game could be placed on the right hand side of the folder.
Dice with dots, numbers or words could be rolled in the open space on the right side of the folder. Children could add the dots or numbers on the dice when they roll them. They could read the words written on small stickers placed on blank dice that end up face up when the dice are rolled.

Just about anything could be used as game markers for this file folder game.

We chose:

We chose to use some wooden peg people as our game pieces.

You could:

There are so many things that you could use as a game marker. Here is a list of things I think would be great game pieces:

Buttons
Small tiles
Paper clips
Fun erasers
Beans
Pom-poms

Here are some other wonderful sight words games:

Building Leaf Words

Scarecrow Sight Word Game

{Printable} Writing Sight Words on a Rainbow

Tape Spider Sight Word Game

Here are some sight words games from other learning blogs:

Sight Word Cup Crash

Sight Word Parking Lot

Sight Word Shake

Sight Word Connect Four

If you do try any of the above sight words activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

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Doctor Seuss Math Game- Lorax Adding

February 20, 2015 By Deirdre

$doctor seuss math game lorax adding with file folder$

The Lorax is one of our favorite Doctor Seuss books. One year for Doctor Seuss’ birthday (March 2nd) I made JDaniel a Lorax lunch. This year I made a fun file folder game with the Lorax for JDaniel. We used this game space to work on addition facts. It could be used to work on a wide variety of skills. I will walk you through how we used it for addition and then share with you other ways to use this Lorax folder work space.

$Doctor Seuss Math Game- Lorax Adding$

Addition Version of the Game

The Lorax is up in arms about the demise of the truffula trees. When it came to deciding what hands on manipulative to use for counting, I decided we had to use pom-poms. They look like the top of the truffula trees.

Each of the Lorax’s whiskers would be a work space used to display each of the numbers in the number sentence. The works spaces were made large so that manipulatives for large addition facts would fit in them.

$Doctor Seuss Math Game- Lorax Adding$

We used the homemade flashcards I made to review addition facts with JDaniel. (If you have store bought flashcards, that are horizontal they would work too.) We tried to center the cards so the plus sign was right under the Lorax’s nose and each of the numbers lined up under one of the whiskers. If you make a Doctor Seuss Lorax math game, you may decide to make a circle with a plus sign to place right on the Lorax’s nose. It might help your children visualize the fact.

Once the number sentence is displayed, one of us came up with the sum. My son was the one finding the sum, but we would have taken turns if he was just learning how to add.

Other Ways to this Doctor Seuss Themed Work Space

Find the Fact

Two people can play this game.One person displays the math fact on the Lorax and the other person searches through a stack of index card to find its match. The opposite of this can be done to. One person can select a card and read out the number fact. The second person can illustrate the fact with the pom-poms. One or both of the children can figure out the sum.

Speed Game

A timer can be set for two minutes. Then a child can try to display and count as many sums as they can. Why use the pom-poms when working on speed? The pom-poms can help children visualize a number sentence and sum.

Subtracting

Children can use the Doctor Seuss Lorax work space to work on subtraction facts. Children can take turns calling out and displaying subtraction facts or using flashcards.

$Doctor Seuss Math Game- Lorax Adding$

Here are some other Doctor Seuss Learning Activities We Have Done:

Fox in Sox Retelling Puppet

The Tooth Book Sensory Bin

Doctor Seuss Thing One and Thing Two Shape Craft

Cat in the Hat Math Mat (Free Printable)

If you do try any of the above Doctor Seuss activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page .

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Spelling Games- Thanksgiving Words

November 6, 2014 By Deirdre

Spelling games that make you use your brain to build words are challenging and fun. In this game we tried to come up with a lot of words using the letters found in the word Thanksgiving. While we searched our minds for words that we could build, we were using a variety of reading skills at the same time.

Spelling games that tap into reading skills use the following skills:

Once children discover a word they can build, they can look for other words that would be in that words family.

When you have found a particular ending sound like –ng, you can see if you can build words that have that same ending.

If you have built a word like think, you can add a letter to it like an “s” to build a new word.

After building a word, you can talk about what kind of words it is. (noun, verb, or adverb)

We found a ton of words that we could build using the letters in the word Thanksgiving. We found about sixty actually. Rather than list them all in this post I have Thanksgiving Words list that you can use all with our file folder game.

Spelling Games Assembly

A simple turkey was cut out and glued into a file folder. The folder really displays just the turkey’s head and tummy. Then feathers were cut out of different colors of construction paper. Each feather had one of the letters in the word Thanksgiving written on it.

The file folder turkey is really just a work space for children to use to build words on. You could easily play this spelling game with just the feathers or just the letters on index cards.

Spelling Games to Play

As children are creating words on their own or with a partner, you may want them to record them on a piece of paper. After creating all the words they can think of, you could words in Thanksgiving give them the list of words. They could build the words on the list or search to see if all their words are on the list.

The main goal of the spelling games in to interact with letters and words. As children do that, they build connections from skills that they already know to new ways to use them.

This activity would be fun to doing in a learning center, as a whole group, with partners or even at a Thanksgiving gathering. It might we fun have the children at a gathering do this activity with an aunt or uncle.

The list I have provided contains only some of the words you can make with the letters found in the word Thanksgiving. I have found list of almost 200 words.

Here are some other spelling games and activities:

Spelling Games- Skeleton Bone Words

Practicing Spelling Words on a Place Mat

Spelling Games with Mixed Up Words and Apples

8 Ice Cream File Folder Games for Learning

July 30, 2013 By Deirdre

JDaniel will start kindergarten in a few weeks. I decided to create 8 file folder ice cream games to review skills I thought he would be learning or reviewing at the beginning of school. On Friday I shared two of the ice cream file folder games in a post called Preschool Activities- Ice Cream Games. If you visited that post of Friday, I hope you won’t mind my sharing them again in this post.

Here are all eight of the ice cream games for learning that I made:

Math Activities

Number Matching

jdaniel4smom_icecream_folder_idea_counting_dots

Matching the number on the scoop to the correct cone required counting the dots on some of the cones. I love that my son self checked his answers to confirm that he was selecting the correct cone.

Button Count

Counting out the correct number of button to place on each scoop to match the number on the cone required number sense and eye had coordination. My son counted each set of buttons before placing them on the cone.

Addition Cones

We worked together to select the correct numbers for each addition sentence. My son put one scoop on a cone at a time. Then we added the correct number of buttons. Finally we worked out what number to add on top of the scoop by putting the bottom number in our heads and counting on with buttons.

Language Arts/ Reading

Letter Recognition

Matching the correct lowercase letter to the correct uppercase letter could have been tricky. I chose to focus on the beginning of the alphabet. Many of the letters at the beginning of the alphabet are confusing for kids. Letters like b, d, and g look similar to some children.

Building Sight Words

For this activity we had to read the word on the cone and search for the letters that we needed to build a word. Then we reread the sight words.

Sight Word Concentration

I selected four sight words and put them on two ice cream scoops. Then we turned them upside above the cones. My son had to search for the matches. Finding the matches wasn’t hard. There were only four words to look for. The hard part was reading the words. If a word couldn’t be read, it had to be put back and attempted again when it was selected.

Other Learning Activities

Color Words

For this game my son had to match the color word with its matching color scoop. I read the color words for my son and had him repeat them. I picked basic colors. It would be fun try some more unique colors.

Pattern Match

This final ice cream game for learning had my son matching the pattern on the cone with the same pattern on a scoop of ice cream. This was a wonderful activity for introducing vocabulary words like zig-zag, horizontal, vertical, and diagonal.

We had a wonderful time reviewing learning concepts with all 8 ice cream games for learning. My son really enjoyed them. I think I will be working on more with other themes.