Daily Five Flow At this time of year I often find that the range of learning shrinks, making it easier to integrate word work into our daily five flow. During our flow the children move at their own pace through the five strands. The sisters (daily five) recommend that you keep it simple so that the children can focus on the skill. When the frameworks are familiar, the children are able to transition into the activity very quickly, focusing on the learning.  I usually introduce a new activity every couple of weeks in small groups with about half the class. Then during Daily five the children can become peer teachers. I like to use flexible materials that can help children with letter sound/name fluency, blending, building words and rhyme. I thought that you might find some of the frameworks we are doing right now useful. Here are a few: Go Fish Rhyming Game Playdoh Words Sight Word Jewels         ......

In the earlier years of my practice I had a commercial number line which was very colourful and pretty.  This fall I wanted to involve the children through a math investigation. I began with a number line to five using nature objects like seashells, beach stones and sticks but only to the number five. We collected the objects together then sorted and counted. My intention was to add number groupings five at a time as their numeracy grew but a cougar moved into our forest and I lost the opportunity for the children to gather nature loose parts. Fall 2016 Number Line As we needed numbers to twenty, creating a new number line was integrated into our daily math investigations using the loose parts in our counting jars.  Fall 2016 counting jars Our process looks like this: Step One: cut 6x6 cardboard from a box and use black sharpie to print the number- I made about 8 extra numbers collect loose parts in varying sizes ......