End of Year Lollipop Holders EDITABLE FREEBIE

A few years ago I shared a picture of the lollipops and holders that I created for my students to send them off for the summer, telling them, 
"Have a sweet summer!  Love, Mrs. McKown"

Just recently, "The Mailbox" shared it on their Facebook page.  Ever since I have been receiving emails, requesting a copy of the flowers.  I hadn't shared the file before because I had listed my name right on the flower, but I just recreated the file to say, 

"Have a sweet summer!  Love, Your Teacher" 

You can choose to print them out as is.  Or since I left the file as editable, you can change the text so that it includes your name or your own clever saying!

Once printed, simply cut the flowers out, stick whatever brand of lollipop you choose in the center of the flower, and hand them out to your little sweeties!

In the picture of the final product, you can see that I used the "DUM DUM" brand of lollipops.  By reading comments posted through social media, I learned that a few people found this brand to be somewhat offensive.  To be quite honest, I never even thought of them that way before I read the comments and they are just great little lollipops to me!  I have used this brand of lollipops a lot, both at home and at school, and the kiddos really enjoy them and do not think twice about the name of them.

Summer Early Literacy Calendar FREEBIE

Oh my goodness...it is June!!  I just can not believe how fast these last few months have gone!

I still have a few more weeks, but soon the school year will be ending.  As I think back to the beginning of the year, I am so proud of the amazing progress my Kinderkids have made!  Now I start to worry about regression over the summer.  

My little ones truly need daily practice and reinforcement in order to maintain what they have learned.  Knowing that routines will soon be changing at home once school gets out, I want to provide my parents with some fast and fun early literacy activities they could easily slide into their daily routine.  So as I have in the past, I created a calendar for the summer months.  Each weekday, I listed a simple activity that could be done almost anywhere.  I tried to keep them somewhat quick so that parents can combine a day or two together in case they need to skip a day.

  The activities are pretty much the same as listed on the calendar I created last year.  They include reinforcement of:

~  rhyming

~  syllable segmentation

~  alphabetic knowledge

~  phoneme isolation (beginning, ending, and middle sounds)

~  sight words

~  early reading

Knowing that school districts across the country have different beginning and ending dates, I made two sets of calendars.  One for June-July of 2014 and the other for July-August of 2014.  The activities are the same for both sets.

I also wanted to add that since at the end of each school year, I send home all of the Student Readers the student has read.  There is an activity listed on the calendar that says, "Read your pack of student readers".  If you do not have these Student Readers, you could always supplement with a bunch of reading at the student's current reading level!  

As always, I would love to hear ways that you try to prevent the summer slide!!