Retelling Bracelets

Hi Everyone! I'm Kristen from Kristen's Kindergarten back with an easy way for your students to practice story or song retelling at home!

I love for my students to be able to share what they learned at school with their families.  Sometimes when my students are sharing with their families, they end up giving their family members some new knowledge!  

I have my students make a variety of retelling bracelets throughout the school year.  They are inexpensive to make; you just need pony beads and pipe cleaners and I stock up on both throughout the year when they go on sale at Michael's. 

There are a variety of retelling bracelets out there:

 

This is a bracelet we use to retell the life cycle of the Monarch Butterfly.

Clear bead = egg

Black Bead = caterpillar head

Yellow Beads = caterpillar body

Green Beads = chrysalis

Butterfly (or orange bead) = butterfly

 I also make them to retell the pumpkin cycle, the Little Red Hen, the water cycle, the gingerbread man, and many more!

 

There are MANY more ideas out there!  I get lots of them from Making Learning Fun.  (Just scroll down a bit to see them!)

Dr. Jean also has lots of them:

 

She's got one for Thanksgiving that will help your students retell the story of Thanksgiving too!!

I love that these bracelets are easy for my students to put together and even easier for them to take home to share their learning.

When we make bracelets, I usually place each color of bead in a separate container labeled with the quantity needed of that color and what it represents.  I set those containers up on a table and my students work cafeteria style down the containers, taking the beads that they need and placing them in the correct order on their pipe cleaner.
I meet them at the end to twist the ends together. 
We then either work on a song, poem, or retelling of a story and use the bracelets to help us.

I hope you'll give these bracelets a try! 

Click on my signature to come visit my blog for more great ideas!! :)