Christmas Songs and What I Bought

Don't you love how excited the kids get when they read Christmas books and sing Christmas songs? 

During my first year of teaching kindergarten, at least one student would check out a Christmas book each time we went to the media center. So adorable! These days, my kids LOVE the little bitty Christmas carol book that I have in our classroom library. There are no pictures on the front. There are few pictures inside. However, it is filled with Christmas carols on tiny pages that the kids love to read and sing. 

I previously posted about how the kids are so drawn to that book each year. I wonder if they like it because it is a small book with small pages. Or ... do they like it because it is filled with Christmas songs that remind them of such a magical time of year? I am still not sure of the answer, but I have tapped into their excitement about Christmas and have changed the lyrics of a few of the favorite Christmas songs that tend to interest the kids year-round. 

Note to self...or anyone reading: I am not a musician, but I love to sing and I love that kids love to sing even in second grade. My goal is to match our content and standards to the tunes so that I can get through to my struggling learners and to just have fun with all of my buddies. I have come up with several “songs” over the years and decided to post a couple on TPT.

The first one is to the tune of "Jingle Bells"… one.of.the.best.songs.ever! It is called “ThePlural Noun Song,” which incorporates various spelling rules along with some examples of each rule. The kids LOVE it and sing it WITH GUSTO as if they are at a holiday sing-along {year-round}.

The stand-alone version of the flapbook

One of the interactive notebook versions

        

I have found that if I hang an anchor chart with the words to this song in the classroom, the students will start trying to sing it even if I haven’t taught it yet. Maybe I should turn every lesson into a song!

So...I added some literacy activities that include a few versions of a flapbook; one that stands alone and two different sizes for use in interactive notebooks. These can be used with each of the seven plural noun rules that are covered. (Only five rules are included in the song…I didn’t want the song to be too long.) 

There are also some graphing activities that require the students to say the singular form of the word and the plural form of the word. For example, if the student rolls the die and gets a 3, the student will say, “One baby, two babies,” or whatever words are listed in that column. He or she will then write the plural form of the word on the first line of the graph in that column. The first word to make it to the top line will be the “winner.” 

Voila! The students will have a graph made while practicing the rules to making singular nouns plural. I think that the speaking aspect and the repeated opportunities to write each plural word correctly is great for ELL students. Each graph focuses on a different rule so that the students may associate the examples of each rule more readily. I love the quote, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent.” I don’t know who gets the credit for that quote, but I really like that.

The color version of the first page with holiday flair. 

An example of one of the 7 different graphs.

An "I Can" chart to promote independence with the "Roll, Say, Graph" game. 

If you would like to check out The Plural Noun Song Pack on TPT, please click here. 

The second song that I posted is to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas!” The title is “I Wish I had a Thesaurus!” It is a fun song to sing at the end of a “caroling set.” 

I remember caroling door-to-door in our neighborhood as a child with a group of neighbors ranging from 5 years old to mature adult. Do you remember those days? We would sing maybe three songs at each house, then a round of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to top it all off. Of course, the host neighbor would offer cookies of some sort to the singing group as a parting gift.

So...I made up a version of that song which has lyrics that include information about what a thesaurus is and what types of things you can find in that resource. It is called, “I Wish I Had a Thesaurus!” If you are interested in that song as well, you can find it here.

Color version

For interactive notebooks

Our music teacher teaches the students about caroling and they have a sing-along in December. Maybe that is why my students sing these songs with gusto!                                                                                                              

At this point I don’t have any detailed activities to go with it, but the song is available in four formats, big book style (color and black and white), a one-pager, a half-page size, and a quarter-page size. They all have coordinating pages for examples to go with the song. What could be more awesome than having your child belt out a happy song about a thesaurus?!

Maybe..."Oh Dictionary!" to the tune of "Oh Christmas Tree!" Song and activities to come...stay tuned.

Exciting finds from the TPT SALE!

  I am linking up with Blog Hopping to let you know about the awesome things that I got at the big TPT sale.

So excited about the fun graphing activities in this pack from Anna Brantley!

This will be a good intervention tool for my RtI buddies.
 I love all of the neat subtraction activities by Susan Jones at TGIF!

These One Breath Boxes are fabulous! My students get so excited to do them. It cracks me up! These are fabulous quick fluency builders by D K Coleman.

Of course, my clipart "needs list is getting bigger, so I needed to get some from Krista Wallden who also had some great freebies this year. Thank you Krista!!!

Thank you for stopping by! I enjoyed getting to see all of the new purchases at the Blog Hoppin linky. This will make my wish list items and my cart items more "research-based." How is that for a buzz word?

Have a great week!

Carrie