Technology Tuesday

This week we are learning about the letter Mm.  I really love teaching phonics!  This week we will be watching and singing along to the Letter M song by Have Fun Teaching.  We will watch and sing along every day this week!  This is how one of my students learned the letters and sounds last year.  I had to figure out how he learned best and singing and dancing to a short video every day helped.

Here is the song that I am talking about:





We also begin our week by watching Olive and the Rhyme Rescue Crew.  This week's video is about letter M.



We only watch this at the beginning of the week and the kids LOVE this show.  Each video is about 10 minutes long and focuses on a different letter and sound along with a rhyme.

We also love watching StoryBots.  Here is their song for letter M.



The robots are cute!

At the end of the week, we do an activity by HooplaKidz to review the letter and sound.  This video which has you click the answer and provides feedback, is on, you guessed it, letter M!!!!




This is just some of the ways we use YouTube in the classroom.  It has really enhanced our phonics instruction.  I would love to hear about some of the awesome videos you have found to use in your classroom to enhance instruction.  Leave me a comment about it.  I'm always looking for new ideas.

YouTube Videos That Kindergarteners Will Love!

I have survived the first month of school!  We have been busy learning the letters of the alphabet, shapes, and numbers.  I think it's important to build a strong foundation for our learning.  Let's face it.  Many students enter kindergarten with fewer skills than what I feel they should know.  It takes a lot of exposure to fully grasp and retain information.  Our job as a kindergarten teacher, is to build the best learning foundation and get kids excited about learning.  YouTube is one of the ways that I get students learning and they don't even realize it.  I have found many great learning resources on YouTube.  Here are a few of the resources I have been using lately:

1.
 

We have been singing this alphabet song by Have Fun Teaching every day.  The kids are really excited about this video and they love to sing and dance along.  This video shows both upper and lowercase letters and goes through the sounds too.

2.


This song by Harry Kindergarten has helped us learn to count to 20 while getting our wiggles out.  There is also a section of the song that counts backwards from 20.  I don't think we will sing this song the entire year, but it has been a great starting point for improving our counting skills.  The students get to see the numbers as they count, so we are learning our teen numbers too.

3.



The Shape Song 2 by KidsTV123 has become our class favorite!!!  The kids ask for this song everyday!  It is very relaxing to sing and it is one that we sing when we need something calming.  It has taught us a lot of shape names and there is a section of the song that introduces some harder shapes.  I think we will know our shape names really well this year.

If you want to see more posts of how I use YouTube in the class, then leave me a comment and look out for some future posts.