Election Vocabulary Fun

It's about time, teachers, for some ELECTION VOCABULARY. Mark your ballot for Election Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, & Hitinkity Pitinkities.  

Campaign for these riddles with rhyming answers and soon your students will rally behind your efforts.  

If you are unfamiliar with Hink Pinks, et al., you are in for a treat.

Hink Pinks, et al., provide critical thinking exercise and vocabulary development disguised as fun. Students love them and beg for more.

Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

                                                                        --F.D.R.

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Freebie February Day 22

Here's your freebie for today!  I hope you enjoy it.

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Higher Order Thinking Skills Centers for Dec.

It's about time for some HOTS centers to exercise your students' critical thinking.

Christmas Confections Square Puzzlers are excellent for exercising your students’ problem solving skills. The challenge with these puzzles is to reconstruct the square so that all of the images match on every interior side.

3 Square Puzzlers are included. The 2x2 square is perfect for introducing the task. It is also most appropriate for K - 2nd grade students. The 3x3 square is quite challenging and can be used successfully with 2nd – 5th grade students, middle and high school students. In fact, it is plenty challenging for adults, as well. The 4x4 square is for experts only! This activity is perfect for fast finishers because they can't finish it quickly!

Corral some of that holiday excitement and add some learning to the Christmas season. Your students will love working on vocabulary, parts of speech, synonyms, rimes, making inferences, and interpreting data while having fun with Christmas Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, and Hitinkity Pitinkities.

Hink Pinks are riddles wherein the clues lead you to a 2 word answer. Each answer word must have just one syllable and the 2 words must rhyme. Hinky Pinkies are 2 word rhymes with 2 syllables in each word. Hinkity Pinkities are rhyming pairs with 3 syllables each. Rhyming answers with 4 syllables are Hitinkity Pitinkities.  

Here's how it works: 

Hink Pink clue: playthings for male children 

Hink Pink answer: boys' toys 

In this packet you will find 40 cards with Christmas themed clues and, of course, an answer sheet. They work well in a literacy center. Or, if you prefer, use them as a warm-up activity, sponge activity, or anchor activity. Solve several together to ensure your students' success. This activity is CCSS aligned.

Have you heard the big news?  TPT is having a site sale Dec. 1 & 2.  Using promo code TPTCYBER, you can get 28% off of everything in my store.

Valentine's Day Hink Pink FREEBIE

Ever since I attended my 1st state conference for Gifted and Talented Education early in my career, I have seen, heard and read about Hink Pinks.  These vocabulary building, problem solving, critical thinking riddles are staples in GATE.  Perhaps my connection with Hink Pinks, et al, is best explained by the fact that my students absolutely love them!  They loved them when I was in the classroom and when I became an enrichment resource teacher, my pull-out students literally begged for more of them.

If you are new to the land of Hink Pinks, here's how they work:

• Hink Pinks are riddles wherein the clues lead you to a 2 word answer.  Each answer word must have just 1 syllable and the 2 answer words must rhyme.
• Hinky Pinkies are riddles seeking answers with 2 syllables in each word.  The 2 words must rhyme.
• Hinkity Pinkities are rhyming answer word pairs with 3 syllables each.

Some teachers like to distribute Hink Pink clues on a work sheet, but I continually strive to eliminate worksheets from my teaching. About 20 years ago, I started putting the clues on 1/4 sheet cards. By doing so, I was able to create a resource that was ready to use year after year, saving me bunches of time and conserving paper big time!  

Armed with my Hink Pink, et al cards, I was able to use them as an anchor activity when students were arriving each morning. They also work well as a sponge activity and are great at a literacy center.  Now, working as a pull-out enrichment specialist, I use these cards as a warm-up activity. Without a doubt, G/T students are enthralled with these riddles.  But, I also found that "average" students were intrigued and set their caps to solve them. 

It's about time, teachers, to offer you my FREE set of Valentine's Day Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.  Here's a preview:

The answer to this Hink Pink is smart heart.

The answer to this Hinky Pinky is sandy candy.  

The answer to the Hinkity Pinkity below is valentine turpentine.

There are 24 cards in this FREE set.  Naturally, there is an answer key.  Did I mention that it is FREE?  You can retrieve your copy here.

I hope you enjoy Hink Pinks, et al as much as my students and I do.

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Back to School Time Savers -- Sponge Activities

No matter how carefully you plan your teaching day, there will inevitably be an awkward minute or two that needs filling.  It could be when you are waiting outside the music room for your "special," having arrived early because your class made it through the halls without having to stop for traffic or behavior control.  Maybe you find yourself with a few idle moments while waiting for all the classes to file into the auditorium for an assembly. Perhaps you lined up for lunch 2 minutes early.  For whatever reason and whenever it happens, do you have a plan for filling those moments?

Maximize those intervals with "sponge activities." You know, something that absorbs the time while doing what you have dedicated your life to -- exercising young brains.   

If you have been working on rhyming words, ask individuals to name a word that rhymes with ----. Give your class extra practice with counting and cardinality (per the CCSS) by asking them to count on or count backwards from an arbitrary number.  Reinforce whichever operation you are studying in math by tossing out some equations.  

Reinforcing concepts and facts is wonderful and worthwhile. But have you considered trying brain exercises?  

If you teach young children, a popular sponge activity is to clap and/or snap a pattern for your students to copy. Coincidentally, your charges have to be careful listeners to replicate your pattern. That's always a desirable goal.  

20 Questions and I Spy work well, especially if you are not in your classroom.  In our never ending pursuit of sight word recognition, you could institute "Spotlight Words."  To do this, turn out the lights, hand a large flashlight to one child, and ask him to shine the spotlight on a specific word wall word.  

If he spotlights the correct word, then he hands the flashlight to another student and directs her to find a different word wall word.  Play can continue as long as you wish.  This is my flashlight of choice.

Another sponge activity involves categories.  This can be related to content area subjects. For example, ask your students to name animals native to a rain forest, a desert, etc.  Other category ideas are foods you can eat raw, foods that start with "k," clothes you should NOT wear this time of year, a noun that names a place, verbs that describe what you are doing in P.E., a word with a suffix, an adjective, a 2 syllable word, a compound word, a country that starts with B, etc.  The longer you work with categories, the more fluent you become in flinging them at your students.  Simultaneously, your students will become more fluent in their thinking.

If you are a neophyte or simply trying to brush away the cobwebs from the summer, you may want to have some teaching aids handy.  My favorites and, more importantly, my students' favorites, are Hink Pinks, et al. and Triads.  Both of these word play activities can be made on cards that are handy to grab and/or carry in a pocket.  [BTW, I'm a big proponent of teacher tool belts for this.]  

Teacher tool belt

Imagine just pulling a card from your tool belt and instantly engaging your students' critical thinking.  

These are samples of Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.  Currently, there are 23 Hink Pink products in my TPT Store that are ready to print and cut apart.  Place a stack in your tool belt and you are well armed for any fallow moment.  If you are not familiar with Hink Pinks, you can read about them here.

These are Triads cards.

Again, they are print ready to make life easier for you.  There are 8 triads units in my TPT Store.  If you are not familiar with Triads, read about them here.  Either of these activities will cause the cogs to start turning in your kiddos' brains and that should be your goal every day.
   

What are your favorite sponge activities?  Please leave some comments and/or links below.













Until next time...

G/T and Enrichment Differentiation

Do you find it taxing, daunting even, to provide challenges for your gifted and talented students?  Is differentiation difficult?  Do enrichment opportunities elude you?

If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, then I have many gifts for you.

Because I am passionate about G/T, differentiation, and enrichment, I've been creating materials for these areas for more decades then I care to admit.  My experience with G/T and enrichment students ranges from teaching multi-age gifted students in a private school -- to creating district-wide programs for pull-out enrichment -- to providing differentiated instruction in my heterogeneous classroom -- to instructing university students in graduate level gifted education courses.

Among the materials I create are language arts curricula combined with critical thinking and problem solving.  One of the most popular categories is Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, and Hitinkity Pitinkities.  Kiddos love them because they are learning disguised as fun. Teachers can't get enough of them because they really make students think.

You can unwrap a FREE gift of these ridiculously fun and addictive word riddles by clicking here.  Currently, there are 3 more FREE Hink Pink, et al. products that you can grab by going here.  Try them; I think you'll like them.

What the Teacher Said

Having been a teacher for more than 30 years, I've said a lot.  But that's not what this post is about.  This post is about what teachers have said about my products.

My teaching passions are many, but chief among them are materials that promote critical thinking and problem solving.  My appetite for this was first whetted wwwaaaaayyyyy back in my second year of teaching when I attended a state conference on gifted education.  It was there that I was first introduced to the  critical thinking activity, Hink Pinks, and their cousins, Hinky Pinkies and Hinkity Pinkities.  

 My enthusiasm for Hink Pinks et al. has never waned.  Indeed, I have used them with every class from 1st grade to 5th. It takes a little more prompting to get 1st graders to combine syllable constraints with synonyms, but there is nothing more rewarding than seeing that "lightbulb moment" when a little one gets it.

You can see examples of my Hink Pinks et al. by going here.  Several of them are free! If you try them, I think you will like them. But, you don't have to take my word for it.  Here's what the teachers said:

If you would like to check out my Hink Pink et al. products, click here.  By the way, they are CCSS aligned.

Election Vocabulary

It's about time, teachers,  to work with election vocabulary.  

I love to sneak learning in with fun activities.  To that end, I cast my ballot for Election Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, and Hitinkity Pitinkities. With just a few days left until the national election, you have undoubtedly introduced vocabulary associated with it.  So now, you need to add the fun.  

If you are unfamiliar with Hink Pinks, they are riddles for which the answer must be a pair of rhyming words; each word having just 1 syllable (as do hink and pink).  Hinky Pinkies are riddles with rhyming word pair answers; each answer word having 2 syllables.  You guessed it, Hinkity Pinkities have 3 syllables and Hitinkity Pitinkities have 4 syllables.

Try these examples:

 

Skills involved in solving these riddles include: 

• vocabulary development
• parts of speech
• synonyms
• rimes
• Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

This product includes 24 cards with election themed clues and, of course, an answer key. The cards are copy ready; just print them on card stock (pink, of course), laminate, and cut them apart.  Now you are ready to place them at a center, use them as an anchor activity, grab a few for a sponge activity, and/or use them for whole group problem solving.  If your students have never tried Hink Pinks, et al, solve several together, modeling your thinking.

Were you able to solve the above examples? As you can testify, they are not quick and easy.  I recommend them for upper elementary and middle school.

And the answers are...

• vote tote
• tally rally
• President's residence
• politician opposition

Grab your copy of Election Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, & Hitinkity Pitinkities here.  They are only $2.50.

Remember to