Candy Corn Pack Prep and Use

It's October and that means a whole slew of Halloween activities! It's my favorite time of year and I've created a number of Halloween packs that feature adorable artwork incorporated into various educational activities that can help strengthen early learning skills. Among my festive themed packs is one of my favorite creations, the Candy Corn PreK Pack which features some classic activities and introduces some new ones not seen in other packs. This pack hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves. I believe that at times, it's difficult to tell what the pack is like and what all is included in most typical listings, so I thought it'd be helpful to provide a bit more insight into what this pack includes and how I would normally set it up for use by my kiddos.

The Candy Corn PreK Pack is a 50 page pack - the largest size of individual pack I create. It includes 19 different activities. There are standard pencil and paper worksheets as well as manipulative activities. Many of the pages that can be used as standard worksheets can also be completed using a number of manipulatives to enhance other skills and add interest to them. The inclusion of activities requiring various skill levels means that you can use the activities year after year or address the needs of individual students. A number of activities can be printed on cardstock and laminated to use over and over again.

The activities included in this pack are: 

- Prewriting Practice

- Shape Tracing

- Matching

- Letter Matching

- Size Sequencing

- Letter Practice

- Case Identification

- Letter Trace/Fill in Missing

- Number Trace

- Count & Color

- Roll & Cover

- Alphabet Practice

- Counting/Adding/Subtracting with Manipulatives
- Which is different?

- Counting Practice

- Number Matching

- Scissors Practice

- Addition

- Number Clip Cards

When preparing the pack, I will peruse all the available activities and select the ones I think are appropriate for my child at the time. The simple worksheet pages are typically printed on regular printer paper, hole-punched, and compiled into a binder. Depending on the child, I may leave the worksheets in the binder so they can be worked on all in one place. Alternately, I may remove them from the binder and place them on a clipboard to be worked on. This is especially handy for children who have difficulty working around the binder rings. Often I will print the cover to use on the front of the binder so I know which pack we are working on. If I want to allow for multiple uses of these pages, I can laminate them or insert them into a sheet protector where they can be completed with a dry erase or wet erase marker. And don't forget, not all kids have the attention span to sit and do the whole workbook all at once. There is no need for it to be completed in one sitting or even in order. Pages can be removed a few at a time to work on depending on the area of focus you are working on that day or for that session.

Now, I'm going to highlight several of the activities so you can get a better idea of what is included. This will not be an exhaustive list and will not include images of everything, but it will be a more in depth look at what is included in the pack to provide more information, ideas, and images than you may see in a typical listing.

One of my favorite activities to include is prewriting practice. This activity is a great start for students that haven't quite learned to write their letters but are just starting to gain more control of their pencils and crayons. These pages typically include a variety of straight, slanted, curved, and wavy lines. They can be completed as a standard worksheet as the most basic approach. I like to incorporate different things like markers or crayons in addition to the standard use of a pencil. I also like to add variety by choosing coordinating or seasonal colors to go along with the pack (or let the kiddo choose the colors). There are a number of other ways to hone fine motor skills and add interest to these pages which I have detailed in another blog post HERE. As with other worksheet activities, it is certainly an option to laminate these pages to have the student complete them with a dry erase marker so they can be completed over and over, year after year, or by different students in a class.

The candy corn pack has a plentiful sampling of tracing activities to help little ones with pencil control and fine motor skills. Some activities involve tracing simple lines and curves like in the previously discussed prewriting practice. There is a tracing activity for shapes which helps reinforce naming common shapes in addition to the pencil work. Several letter tracing pages help with identifying and forming letters in addition to learning and reinforcing the knowledge of alphabetical order. Number tracing pages help reinforce numeral knowledge and number order. When compiling these pages for my kiddos, I usually would arrange pages like this in a binder and in an order starting with simple tracing and moving on to more structured tracing. I separate letter concepts from number concepts. This helps mix up the tracing so it doesn't become repetitive despite the multitude of tracing in this pack. As discussed with the prewriting, all of these pages can be used with pencils or crayons. They also can be laminated or placed in sheet protectors and completed with dry erase markers to allow for multiple uses from one printing.

Learning letters and early reading skills are a huge part of early learning concepts. The Candy Corn Pack has a lot of opportunities to promote letter knowledge, alphabet order, and word recognition. There are multiple letter tracing pages as mentioned above. Some pages are simple letter order tracing, letter tracing to fill in missing letters from the alphabet, and tracing key letters from this pack such as the letter 'c' and familiarization of words used in this pack "candy" and "corn" which may not be sight words, but the repetition of the words will help build reading vocabulary as students become more familiar with them. There are tracing pages and seek and find pages for identifying the difference between a capital 'C' and lower case 'c' as well as matching upper case letters with their corresponding lower case letters. All upper and lower case letters are presented in this pack with an emphasis on the letter 'c' because of the theme (candy corn). I usually place pages like these in the binder. Typically I will place the letter activities near each other opting to mix up the style of page. The seek and find pages can be completed with crayons or bingo daubers can be used to mix it up.

As long as we are learning letters, we also need to focus on numbers and early math skills. The Candy Corn Pack is chock full of number pages too! Some activities involve tracing numbers to build familiarity of how to write numerals and learn their order, counting, matching the numeral with the correct number of images, identifying number differences, and simple addition using both images and adding numbers rolled on a die or pair of dice. These pages can be printed on regular printer paper and included in a prepared workbook binder. Like the letter pages, I tend to group all the number focused skills together but I mix up the type of activity so there is variety to add interest. Similar to other activity pages, they can also be laminated or placed into sheet protectors and completed with dry or wet erase markers to extend their life and allow them to be used year after year.

Last but not least among the pages I typically print on regular copy paper, there are also some additional pages that promote more early learning skills. One of my favorites is Which One is Different? and I include several of these pages in many of my packs including this one. I like to include these pages in my prepared workbook binder. I also have a few scissors practice pages to help hone cutting skills with various angles and curves. The cutting practice sheets work best when cut into strips so students can cut the strips apart. The cutting pages are often printed and tucked into the binder pockets until ready to use.

And finally, we get to the part of the pack that may be more fun and interactive and involve activities that can be used year after year: manipulative activities. Granted, some of the other worksheet pages can be used with manipulatives (I plan to talk about this more in future blogs) but these activities can require some additional preparation. I do include manipulative activities in most of my packs (aside from "No Prep" packs). In a lot of cases, I print these activities on sturdy cardstock and laminate them before cutting them out. This helps them hold up better through multiple uses. Manipulative activities can be used as games or allow you to mix it up and provide some fun hands-on thinking. 

The Candy Corn Pack includes Clip Cards for counting but they also encourage fine motor skills as students are required to place a clip on the card to identify the correct numeral. 

Size sequencing cards provide several sizes of candy corn shapes so students can compare and place them in order by size. The activity in this pack has 9 candy corn shapes, so you can use all of them or just a few depending on the attention and level of the students doing the activity. 

My favorite of the manipulative activities is the candy corn math page - three activities are included counting, addition, and subtraction. The pack includes candy corn images to be used in the candy bag, but I like to have kiddos use either real candy corn candies or these adorable mini erasers (shown in the photograph).

I hope you've enjoyed this in-depth look at the Candy Corn Pack. It truly is one of my favorite packs, not only because I love Halloween and candy corn candy, but also because of all the wonderful activities. I pulled out all the stops when I created this pack, incorporating a number of activities I had not had in previous packs. And how can anyone resist the wonderful artwork created by Krista Wallden of Creative Clips. Her art and the art of all the other wonderful creators I use in my packs bring so much to my activity packs and they just wouldn't be the same without it.

Please check out my TeachersPayTeachers store for this pack and many other Halloween themed packs in addition to the whole collection of packs I have available. Let me know what you think, if you have other themes you'd like to see, or if you have any questions about my packs or the included activities.


Bonus! As of the writing of this post, my Fan Freebie which is available only to my Facebook Fans is an adorable pack of 3 Piece Number Cards featuring the coordinating artwork from this pack. The 3 piece cards are another form of manipulative activity that can be used for number identification and matching numerals with number words and coordinating 10-frames. So, check out my Facebook page and grab your freebie while it's available. Don't worry if you miss out, more freebies are always available through exclusive Facebook Fan freebies and through my TeachersPayTeachers store. Some of the seasonal Fan Freebies do cycle back, so there is a chance you may be able to grab it in the future.

Feeling Lucky?

After my Valentine's rundown, I thought I'd go ahead and share with everyone what I've got available for St. Patrick's Day, or as I like to call it, St. Paddy's. So, without further ado, let's see what I've got available if you are feeling the luck of the Irish... or just want to celebrate a bit.

See the complete set here on TpT!

Similar to Valentine's I have plenty of St. Paddy's goodies and more in the works. One pack in particular, I'm hoping to get completed for this year, but more about that later!

St. Patrick's PreK Unit - My first St. Patrick's installment is a great all around pack, featuring the awesome works of Laura Strickland with MyCuteGraphics. It's a fantastic set with 40 pages of activities like tracing, coloring, picture paths, word cards, and more. This set is my top selling St. Patrick's Day pack in my Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) store.

Leprechaun Pack - The Leprechaun pack is still growing! I have so many ideas for this pack. Featuring the adorable art of Krista Wallden with Creative Clips, the Leprechaun pack currently includes a preK pack with 40 pages of activities. One of those activities is shown in the picture - a set of memory or matching cards. The set includes colored images as well as shadows for helping little ones match images as well as their unique shapes. The Leprechaun PreK Pack is listed at "Part 1" in my TpT store because I have begun piecing together a second prek pack which will feature another 40 pages of unique activities. The two packs can be used independently or together. None of the activities repeat between the packs, so they are truly independent of each other. This year, I also added a coordinating set of 3-part color cards which are available for a limited time as a Fan Freebie on Facebook, so check out my Facebook page to grab yours while it's still available! Keep your eyes open for that second prek pack.

Pot o' Gold Pack - The Pot o' Gold pack is a different type of pack. I have a few others that are similar, like the Lots of Hearts Pack available for Valentine's. The pack started out as a sampler pack available in my TpT store. With this mini sampler, you get 8 pages of activities totally free so you can see what types of pages and activities are included in my packs. You can try them out, see how you and your kiddo or students like them, and grab more and bigger packs from my store. With the Pot o' Gold pack, the images are created by Krista Wallden of Creative Clips and they coordinate with the Leprechaun Pack, so while the text and overall color scheme are unique, the images tie them together and they can be used as parts of a single unit. Last year, I offered a set of 3-piece number cards as a Fan Freebie on my Facebook page. I absolutely love these cards because they help kiddos learn to recognize the numerals, number words, and introduce them to 10-frames. The cards were only available for a limited time, as are all my Facebook Fan Freebies, so it's important to check them out regularly and grab them when you can. I may offer them again for free in the future, or I may offer a bundle with several coordinating activities. For now though, you can grab the sampler absolutely free here.

Pot o' Gold Number Cards - currently unavailable,
but you may be able to grab them sometime in the future!

Lucky Owls Pack - I love using unique images to add to the traditional ones associated with holidays. These precious owls created by Pretty Grafik are too cute to pass up! They add a new twist to St. Patrick's Day in this adorable set. The Lucky Owls Pack features 30 pages of activities for preschool and is newly available in my TpT store for this year. You can grab yours here.


Now that we've talked about all the currently available packs and reached the end of my post, are you ready for something exciting? I've decided to give my readers a sneak peak at what I'm working on. I'm hoping to get the first installment out for St. Patrick's Day this year, so keep an eye out! My latest set is a math pack! Once again, I'm using Krista Wallden's adorable Creative Clips images for this pack, so they coordinate with the Leprechaun and Pot o' Gold sets. This pack has all unique activities, though, so you won't get duplicate pages if you use them together! The focus of this latest pack is all about math including activities like number tracing, matching, counting, patterning, etc. I am so excited about this pack! Current plans are for a 35 page pack and an activity pack.

Boisterous Boys Valentine Collection

A couple years ago, I compiled some images that included previews of some holiday sets. It's fun to see the whole spread all together. This year, I'm putting together a list of my Valentine's sets. I have a sizable collection of sets with more in the works so you can find a set for your own niche when it comes to that very pink holiday we often associate with flowers, hearts, and chocolates. So, without further ado, here is your intro to the currently available Valentine's sets, what's included, and where to get it:

Lots of Hearts Pack - The main set in this pack is a sampler that is available via my Teachers Pay Teachers store. This sampler is offered free so you can get an idea of what you'll find in my other packs. I was inspired by the simplicity of this freebie and have created some additional supplements which I offer as freebies here and there. Keep an eye out for these as they are offered randomly and usually for a limited amount of time. At some point, I may compile a collection of supplements that will likely be available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

 Love a Bug Pack - This adorable mini pack includes 20 pages of activities for toddler-Kinder. A great starter set with a modest selection of activities. And who can resist the adorable love buggies?

 Valentine Cupcakes Pack - Another mini pack full of delicious looking cupcakes on 20 pages of activities! Makes you hungry just looking at it. This set is fantastic if you need to be modest about printing. While color printing is ideal for most of my sets, this set was purposefully made to function just as well when printed in monochrome. 

Valentine's Hearts Pack - This awesome pack was one of my first creations with Boisterous Boys. There are 28 pages of activities offering a lot of variety for early learners. This set features some challenges which require kiddos to differentiate between colors as well as match letters, which is great for honing skills.




Valentine Letter Practice - This set of pages is unique compared to the majority of my packs. It's the newest in my Valentine collection. This pack includes 52 pages of letter practice. There is one page for each capital letter and one page for each lower case letter. The pages can be selected to go along with current letters being worked on during this time of year, or it can be used as an overall refresher. In addition to printing practice, these pages feature bold letters with little hearts that can act as a correspondence exercise with conversation hearts, other candies, stickers, or manipulatives. Another great feature of this pack? No prep! Just print and go!


Valentine Sweets Pack - If I'm being honest, this is quite possibly my absolute favorite Valentine Pack I've created so far. This pack is huge, with 50 pages of activities. There are so many options to choose from, from worksheets to interactive activities like clip cards. This set was actually featured in a previous post talking about how to prep and use clip cards as well as alternate ways to incorporate the activity pages other than the obvious uses.



Check out these and my other available packs in my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

Cow Appreciation Day! Giveaway Time!!!

Lately I've become inspired by random obscure holidays. It gives me the opportunity and inspiration to create unique packs with themes that may not be seen elsewhere. One of my main goals is to provide unique ideas and while I will create packs using common or traditional themes, I like to offer something different that wouldn't be seen elsewhere.

Last month, I created two unique packs for obscure holidays: Sunglasses Day and Camera Day. The packs themselves are not tied directly toward celebrating the holiday, but just use the theme itself. So, I have to offer in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store, my Sunglasses Pack and my Camera Pack. These packs are so cute and the Sunglasses Pack is perfectly appropriate as a spin on generic "summer" packs. The Camera Pack was actually the star in my last post about how I put together these packs for my kiddos (post found here).

So, this month, I have another adorable pack and this time, it's to celebrate Cow Appreciation Day! Some folks may be familiar with a certain chicken sandwich chain that celebrates the unique holiday sometime in mid-July (which landed on today's date this year), but it seems there are other places that date this "holiday" on alternate days in July. In any case, I decided I'd celebrate this holiday in a unique way by not only creating this adorable pack (because really, who can resist Krista Wallden's artwork?), but also by offering a giveaway of this mini pack!

This mini pack really packs a punch. With 20 pages of activities, it's smaller than my standard sized packs which typically range from 30-50 pages, but it is chock full of a wide variety of activities. Some of the pages focus on letter recognition and letter formation. There is also an observation exercise, counting practice, and simple addition. Manipulative activities in this pack include number puzzles and size sorting.

Back to the giveaway though. Check out my Facebook page to get details, but entries for the giveaway will available until tomorrow night (July 15th). Like and comment on the giveaway post and you are entered to win! The more comments, the more free packs will be given away!

Have fun and good luck!!!

Prep and Using Clip Cards with Valentine Sweets Clip Cards

I wasn't planning on doing another Valentine's related post, but I love my new Valentine Sweets Pack so much, that I had to get out the goodies and show you something. This set has a preK/preschool pack, tot pack, 3-piece number cards, and a tic-tac-toe game/busy bag. But, enough about the pack, what I'm going over today is clip cards like the set included in my preK pack.

Clip cards are pretty awesome. They are another manipulative type of activity, but they don't have to be. Number clip cards are the most common ones I've done, but they can also be made for other matching and association activities.

Prepping the clip cards is pretty basic. Print on card stock and cut out. You may wish to laminate for durability. With my holiday sets, I will print on card stock, but I save on the laminating. Each activity will likely only get used a few times, but not enough - in most cases - to be destroyed before the holiday has come and gone. I'd recommend laminating items that will be used by a lot of children or get heavy use, like year-round themed items.

The default of these cards is to use a clip, most popularly, spring-hinged clothes pins. They are great for helping to strengthen small hands for writing, so these cards are not only for honing counting and number identification (if using number clip cards), but also for fine motor development. Using binder clips will also suit this function. Paper clips can be used for fine motor development as well, but they won't help with strengthening hand muscles.

If you don't have clothes pins around, you can also use other small manipulatives which are also good for fine motor practice. Some ideas of things you can use are place markers (small plastic discs), foam shapes or table scatter, or even coins if you don't have any of the others readily available. Be creative with whatever you have on hand. It doesn't have to be cute or coordinate, it just has to act as a place marker. Here, my kiddo is using some adorable felt cupcakes I found that coordinate with my sweets pack! I originally picked them up for busy bag activities like the tic-tac-toe one, but they work great for this as well.

Even without card stock or small manipulative items, you can still get use out of these pages. Printing on regular paper is just as viable of an option. On paper, think of other things your child can use to mark the numbers. A few examples are shown here - stickers, stamps, dot marker/bingo dauber, or even a basic pencil or crayon. Don't let lack of supplies limit your use of this great activity. All you really need is printer, paper, and pencil. Everything else is just the cherry on the top. Mix it it up or keep it simple, it's up to you.

For storage, I have used a few different options. If I'm giving these as a busy bag activity, I'll usually include the clothes pins (enough for each card) and an instruction sheet. If I want to keep options open for other manipulative items (or just to store easier), I can put the cards in a bag or envelope by themselves.

So that's it for these clip cards! I hope I've given you some inspiration for use! If you've worked with them before, what are your favorite ways to use them?

If you want to check out the rest of my Valentine Sweets Pack, you can find it here: 

Find the preK pack here on TpT!

Valentine Patterns and Busy Bags

Lots of Hearts Valentine Pattern Busy Bags

My collection of packs this year.

So, I've been a bit preoccupied. After a hectic couple weeks compiling a handful of Valentine's packs, I then had to get my most recent fun pack together. More on fun packs in another post.

More to the point, tomorrow is the Valentine's party at my older kiddo's school, so we were prepping Valentine's for his class. Last year, all we did was sign the card for the class, but I wanted to do something more. As I was already doing busy bags for the fun pack, I decided to create one more, well 15 anyway. I put together a smaller version of the pattern busy bag I've done with previous sets, only this time, I made it to coordinate with my Lots of Hearts pack. This pack started out as just a sampler for my Teachers Pay Teachers store, but I've ended up adding multiple coordinating supplement sets (and still have plans for more). In any case, it was a perfect theme and I thought a mini version of the busy bag would be a fun and simple addition to the Valentines for my son's class so to work I went. Turned out to be a bigger project than I had planned, but I got it completed.

I made the set in the manner I had done a previous patterning busy bag. The intent is to improve observation and help develop one to one correspondence and help with pattern recognition. It's a simple enough activity and has the benefit of requiring little parent interaction or guidance (that would be the point of busy bags, after all, right?). I figured since my kiddo's class has been working on various patterns this year, it would be an appropriate activity.

The premise is pretty basic. Each card has a series of hearts in a particular pattern on it based on the color of the hearts and the student uses the manipulatives to repeat the pattern. The original printable busy bag pack contains 16 different patterns, 4 each of AB, AABB, ABB, and ABC patterns. Each of the individual ones I put together contains half of the patterns.

 Because I used half the available patterns for each set, there created two different sets. It made it easier to do it this way rather than mix them all up so that I could ensure consistency. Each set has 2 of each type of pattern. Only the colors used vary bag to bag.

I love to use foam shapes and similar items for these sets. Foam shapes are great for little hands and art projects. Conveniently, these hearts came in four colors which I used for the pattern pack. I did include a page in the printable file of the pack with individual images that can be cut apart and used to make the patterns. I do this in case parents don't have easy access to the foam shapes or other similar manipulatives, though I personally prefer them for these activities. I'm a big fan of incorporating different textures and small objects for kiddos to manipulate and handle. To a certain extent, they can help with fine motor skills, but that is not the focus of this patterning pack.

 So here it is, the collection of hearts and pattern sets. I also included an instruction card insert similar to those that I include with all my busy bags. It's a bit of a calling card, but it also helps to guide in the use of the busy bag. I like to think that it's obvious, but just in case an individual hasn't come across an activity like this, I don't want to take it for granted that they have.

And the finished set of bags. Each pattern set is individually bagged with coordinating hearts and instructions ready to go. I hope my kiddo's classmates love them! Of course, I won't hate if the parents of his classmates decide to look up my stuff, but that would more be the cherry on the top rather than the main intent. 

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you enjoy celebrating with your own kiddos!