Sliding Into 2023

Kindergartners love being surprised by each new character they meet during first semester. Here’s a flashy way to reveal the identity of each new Superkid. Ms. McNeil created a bulletin board with a shiny tri-fold that dazzles when opened to show the Superkid poster inside!

Keri Adelmeyer uses this colorful pocket chart to organize and manage independent work time. The top displays which students are in each of her three groups. Below she lists the tasks for the day under each group. The students know exactly where to go and what to do while she meets with her small groups.

Brittany Rae adds the Sound-Spelling Cards to her Sound Wall as new phonemes are introduced during Superkids core instruction. What a great alternative to the traditional Word Wall.

This idea is also from Brittany Rae’s class. Superkids activities for skill reinforcement from Ten-Minute Tuck-Ins and the Superkids Skill-Building Book are neatly stored by unit in these plastic storage carts. The activity baggies and drawers are labeled by unit for super easy access!

Lindsay Campbell uses these amazing activity tables in her classroom. The tables have a clear acrylic sheet on top. Practice Pages, ice cream paper, and other activity pages can be placed beneath the clear sheet. Students use dry-erase markers or crayons to complete the activities. Lindsay simply changes the tasks under the clear acrylic sheet to update the station.

There are many classroom uses for the glass vase fillers sold at craft and dollar-type stores. For example, if a student has made an error during the dictation and spelling Daily Routine, place a glass gem on the letter that needs to be corrected. What a great way to quietly provide corrective feedback!

Nadine Snyder created these ice cream themed craft sticks to help students check spacing between letters and words while they practice their handwriting. This easy-to-create tool encourages student self-monitoring as they work.

If you have a few leftover Student Books or Word Work Books, you can use them to make stick puppets. Students can use the puppets as they retell stories they have read about the Superkids. Simply laminate the cut-out characters and hot glue them to a large craft stick.

Edith Goetz created this fun game that can be played with the Big Book of Blending or Decoding. She places a sticky note with the word “start” at the beginning of the first row and another with the word “finish” at the end of the last row. Students take turns rolling a die and moving their game piece over the number of words rolled on the die. The student will then blend/read the word they landed on. When at the end of a row, students move to the next row moving from left to right. The first one to the finish wins.

This idea for independent practice with spelling words was spotted in Ms. Buening’s class. Kids write their words with a white crayon, then color over them with a water-based marker to make the words magically appear. The kids loved it!

Here is another use for those inexpensive glass gems! Students can use the gems as little magnifying glasses when they are asked to independently search within text for letters or specific words.

This Superkids teacher uses jumbo vase gems with the Big Book of Blending and Big Book of Decoding. When practicing blending and decoding, kids slide the gem over the word to ensure they are focusing on each phoneme. If a sound is not correct when reading, the teacher can place the gem on the phoneme she would like the student to revisit. For older students, the gems are used for students to identify words with similar sounds. We love this!

This activity is from Superkids teacher Chloe Marie Bee. Her class had an impromptu discussion about what the characters might want to be when they grow up. She decided to turn it into a project. Each student illustrated the character they wanted to focus on. They then wrote details about what the character likes and what career they think the character would choose.

Nichole Stephens Heinsler (with the help of Alf) planned a top-secret adventure! She writes, “We went outside looking for clues with binoculars Alf left for us. The clues had a challenge to identify if we heard /a/ at the beginning or middle of a word. They also had clues as to what we needed for our adventure. The students were surprised to find a real tent outside at the end of our trail. We ran inside and drew all about our adventure! Such a fun day with kiddos who were excited about learning.”

Andrea Daudy uses these fun journals to provide a meaningful activity for the students who finish early. She provides a box full of “Whole Class Journals” which are labeled with a topic. All students can write in the any of the journals, creating a collaborative collection of writing from the class. When not writing, classmates can enjoy their friends’ writing contributions.

The label on the front reads:

Whole Class Journal

Write about (topic).

Please share a paragraph or two about the topic. Please do your best and use your conventions. When we aren’t writing in the journal, we will be reading it.

Have fun!

Sirena Woyt celebrated the end of the school year the Superkids way. Each day leading up to the last day of school, she planned an activity tied to a character. The kids enjoyed the following activities:

• Fishing with Frits
• Wood-building projects with Doc
• Hot Rod’s scooter races
• Tent building with Alf
• Golly’s “smelly marker art”
• Puzzles and games with Ettabetta
• Cooking up “Dirt cups” with Cass
• Turkey picture coloring with Tic, Tac, and Toc
• Oswald’s odd animal crafts
• Icky’s informational videos about insects, igloos, India, and iguanas

Every fall the post about creating Superkids pumpkins gives our followers “pumpkin to talk about.” This year we had a school share that they auctioned off their pumpkins to parents and caregivers. The money from the pumpkin auction went toward the purchase of books for classroom libraries. How smart!

Somerset Academy Lone Mountain created this awesome mural of the Superkids’ bus painted in the hallway for all of the students to see. What a super way to reinforce the connections students make with the characters and stories.

Laura King created a full set of Superkids hand puppets! She even created Ben, Oswald’s little brother, for a kindergarten student who had requested a puppet for this cameo character.

First-grade teacher Karen Pitoniak had her daughter paint her fingernails to look like the Superkids because she loves the characters so much. As you can imagine, her students LOVED these. Now that is some Superkids spirit!