I'm in summer mode and getting creative!!

OK I still have 7 days of school left (will it EVER end so I can go back to kindergarten??? LOL) however, 7 days or not,  I am  in full on summer mode and starting to get creative, especially since I am heading back to my true love... kindergarten. I am going to be making some really fun and simple center activities over the next couple weeks that I will be posting on my TPT store but for today, I remade and posted one of the most favorite activities of my kinders in the past. It is called "Feed the Monkey" and it is very simple! I could not find a graphic for the monkey that would work the way I needed it to so that is when having a son that is an artist comes in very handy LOL. SO he drew my monkey head for me (that sounds really odd LOL).

Anyway... this game is SO versatile and as I said it is one of the most favorite activities during reading and even math centers! Basically you just print the monkey and bananas on card stock, laminate them, and cut them out. Then you cut out the mouth of the monkey and attach a quart size plastic baggie to the back of the mouth, I used packing tape and it held up pretty well and was easy to replace if needed. Then if you use Vis-aVi markers you can write anything you want on the bananas and reuse them for other skills later. I have done simple letter/sound recognition, sight words, word families, etc for reading and for math I have done number recognition, counting the dots, and addition and subtraction problems. Then you put the bananas in a bag or basket and the students take turns pulling out a banana, they must successfully read or calculate (or whatever) what is on the banana and if they do they get to "feed" it to the monkey by putting it in the mouth! They LOVE it!!! My kids would ask to play this game every day!!

Here are the previews of the game pieces click on either one of the pictures to take you to the page in my store where you can purchase yours.
(or copy and paste this url  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FEED-THE-MONKEY-CENTER-ACTIVITY)