Summer Share and Prepare: Color the Room

Happy Thursday! I hope you are all getting out there and enjoying the summer fun! I'm still stuck on the couch so I envy your adventures!! One of the things that has kept me sane since the accident is being able to blog. I'm so grateful for all of the different linky parties that have popped up. They literally give me something to look forward to each day and help me stay busy by writing different posts. I'm sure I'd be beyond stir crazy by now without being able to link up for different blog hops!!

Today I am linking up with Marie from Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale for her Summer Share and Prepare link up! My sweet friend Jill from Chevron and Centers introduced me to this linky, and I'm so excited to participate!! 

This awesome linky is about sharing different products we use throughout the year that other teachers would benefit from. It's a great way to learn about the many other amazing products out there and to add to our Wish Lists!! This link up has all sorts of grade levels participating, so I'm sure you'll find something you can use!

I am sharing an activity I created this summer. In my room, my kinders LOVE all things Write the Room! They love getting to use the 'fancy clipboards'. They love getting to walk around the room without being told to sit back down. They love working together to locate all of the posters in the room, even the tricky ones. They look forward to Write the Room activities and love when I put new ones out. I love that Write the Room activities are ones they can complete independently and that these activities give them a chance to get up and move around the room.

Since many of my kinders have never had any sort of school experience, the beginning of the year can be a tricky and stressful time to teach them all the rules, routines, and procedures. I wanted to create an activity for the very beginning of the year that would help my kinders get used to the routine of Write the Room without actually having to write anything. In the beginning of the year I have many, many kiddos who can't form any type of letters let alone copy from a model. I wanted to create an activity that had all the fun of Write the Room without the stress of not being able to write anything.

Enter 'Color the Room'. I created this packet to be used at the very beginning of the school year. It follows the procedures of the different Write the Room activities I'll use throughout the year, but this packet doesn't require any form of writing. Instead, my kinders will search the room for posters that require them to color in something on their recording sheets. This packet helps them to not only learn how Write the Room works, but it also helps them with their fine motor skills and coloring inside the lines. Not to mention following directions independently.

I created two different types of Color the Room Activities in this packet, since there are many different versions of Write the Room with different directions for each. I wanted my kinders to get used to looking for different things when searching the room.

The first four activities in the pack require students to color the matching pictures on their recording sheets to match the color of the posters. For example, in 'Color the Numbers' students would color the number 1 pink and the number 2 purple. These activities teach the kiddos to look for the bigger pictures on the posters around the room.

The second set of four activities differs slightly from the first four activities. For these activities, students will need to search the room for the matching pictures on their recording sheets. However, instead of coloring the pictures to match the poster, these activities have students coloring the pictures to match the color of the FRAMES on each picture. This teaches my kinders to look for something different when completing their recording sheet. For example, with the 'Carnival Colors' activity, the students would color the picture of the roller coaster red because that is the color of the frame that surrounds it.

I am hoping that these activities will make it much easier for my kinders to understand the procedures of Write the Room and get them ready for the rest of the year. They can complete these recording sheets without having to do any sort of actual writing, while at the same time following all the same directions that Write the Room activities will have. I think my kinders are going to enjoy using these activities and I can't wait to try them out!!

I'm so tickled with how this packet came out that I am offering you a chance to win one for yourself!! Just enter using the Rafflecopter below! I will choose winners on Sunday morning! Good luck!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't want to wait? Click on the image below to head to my TPT store and buy one for yourself!

Don't forget to head back over to Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale to see who else has linked up! You're going to learn about a lot of really great products!! You can also link up and share something of your own, too!!

Don't forget! Spotlight Saturday is still up and running! You can link up with us to showcase your favorite product, resource, activity, or idea! This week I Spotlighted some Facebook freebies and an AMAZING blogger T-shirt deal from A+ Images, Inc.! I would LOVE for you to link up with us!!