Alphabet Songs

A great resource for teaching letter names and sounds are the
Alphabet Songs and videos form Have Fun Teaching.  They are colorful, lively, and fast paced.  My kindergarteners LOVE them!!  Even this late in the year (8 more days), they ask to watch them--and they "sing" along
WARNING-You will find that the tunes get stuck in your head.  Check it out:

A Lucky Find!

I found a printout that had been left behind on the network printer at school and it led me to this wonderful site to help children with beginning of the year kindergarten skills.

Once the children mastered cutting on lines, I had them make a "skinny book" to help them practice following directions, cutting, sight words, and color words--phew!
You can download a copy here.  To make the book, the children color the pictures, cut on the dotted lines and staple. 
The children really seemed to enjoy making a book to take home.

Hot Dots!

When I was at ISTE at the end of June, the technology that I was asked the most questions about was my "Hot Dots" pen.  These pens have been around for a very long time, but they are still a good way for the children to practice skills independently. 
In a nutshell, when children select the correct answer on a card the green light flashes and a happy sound is heard; the wrong answer yields a red light and a cranky buzz.  The children always seem to like the "wrong" sounds better when they are first using the pens :) There are commercially available card sets, OR (my favorite) you can get extra "hot" and "cold" dots to make your own so that your children are practicing the skills that you know they need.
I did some quick (ha!) searching online and found the pens and dots are still available.  The best prices I found were at Amazon and Education Insights.

http://educationalinsightscatalog.com/hot_dotsreg_extra_dots-p-21819.html (dots $5.99)
http://www.amazon.com/Educational-Insights-Talking-Hot-Dots/dp/B000GZAD24  (pen $8.05)

Sqworl!

Thanks to Carmen from the making Learning Fun Yahoo group I have found out about a really useful website. Sqworl allows you to gather several websites together on one page. The front page is displayed, and when it is clicked on, the site opens in a new window. This will be very helpful for my kindergarteners--they will be able to make some choices about which sites to visit, without wandering around in cyberspace!
Check out the page I made of some of my favorite language arts websites!
http://sqworl.com/11x8ah