Need some guidance for teaching preschool Spanish? You’re in the right place! Young children are the perfect age to soak up a new language. I'm currently raising my own three kids bilingually, and have taught classes to this age group as well. It's never too late to start, and 3-5 year olds are really fun to teach! In this post I've compiled my favorited strategies for you. To get started in learning Spanish together, you Can Do three things: 1. Outline some beginning topics. You can create your own list, with common preschool topics (think numbers, colors, greetings, etc.)Take a

These fun drama games and activity ideas are sure to bring hours of fun and laughter to the drama team or department. These games can be used as warm-ups,

Last summer I added Mo Willems' The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! to my classroom library. Of course, this addition was a no-brainer. Willems' books are always super popular, especially Pigeon books. Just as predicted, my students loved this book. It is the perfect length for the beginning of the year, when attention spans are extra short and students need a little break from all the procedural training they are receiving. Since I knew this book would be a hit, I decided to make it the centerpiece of back to school. I created some basic "Pigeon themed" math and literacy activities, as well as a simple craft. I used these activities intermittently during the first week and was able to glean some great info about my new students' basic math and literacy skills, as well as their fine motor skills and listening skills. One of the Pigeon themed activities was a number/number word/counting mini book. Students traced and wrote the numbers 1-10, as well as the number words 1-10. Then students illustrated a picture to go with each number. We broke this activity up over a couple of days. Students took part in a listening activity. Students had to complete a picture according to a series of questions/statements that I read aloud. (If you've every made a glyph with your students, this activity feels really similar.) Students also put together their first puzzler for the year. This puzzler focused on number representations. Students cut and glued the puzzler pieces to tell what number is represented in the box. By the end, students have a completed picture that they can color. I use various puzzlers throughout the year. This the Pigeon puzzler is a great introduction to how to complete a puzzler. Students loved making their simple, one-page craft Pigeons. All that was required was the Pigeon pattern (I used white card stock), scissors, and glue. The class Pigeons made a really quick and cute back to school bulletin board. In addition to these activities, students worked on counting/cardinality, geometry, place value, number bonds, handwriting, the alphabet, rhyming words, sight words, and more. The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! is a perfect springboard for a variety of skills. For a math freebie (from the printables featured above), click on the picture below. This freebie provides practice with ten frames, counting, and number identification. If you have not added, The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! to your classroom library, I highly recommend it. There are so many directions you can go with this book. More importantly, your students will love it and be totally engaged. What a great way to start the year, by reading a book that students truly enjoy. :) For more details about the all of the Pigeon inspired activities I used with my students, be sure to click on the picture below. Of course (like most), I'm not certain what this year's back to school days will look like. Whatever the setup, I know I'll be using The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! to help me kick off the year. Thanks for stopping by. School Is a Happy Place is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associated Program, an affiliate program that allows this site to earn advertising fees. Please know that all of the recommendations on this site are authentic and come from personal experience.

Add elements of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell to your preschool centers to integrate science and play while students explore their senses.

It's time to go back to school! With the back-to-school season upon us, it is time to start planning back-to-school activities for the first week of school.

Ideas to help you plan an epic Senior Sunrise that unites the class as they embark on their senior year!

FREE geography matching activity with the 7 continents of the world. Perfect for toddlers, preschoolers and kindergarten to introduce the continents.

Free printable preschool worksheets pdf for teachers and homeschoolers. Fun preschool worksheets for math, English, fine motor skills, and more!

Looking for ideas for your younger child's Halloween Class Party? Check out what we did- from Bingo to Paper Plate Spider Webs to an educational Boo Mix!

This moon sand recipe is so easy to make! With only two ingredients, you'll be playing with this soft and sensory sand within minutes. Moon Sand This moon sand recipe is so much fun. The texture is soft and crumbly, but it also molds really well into different shapes. The kids thought it was the best thing ever! I've tested different kinetic sand recipes before (like this kinetic sand, this moldable play sand and this foam sand), but this one was BY FAR the best. And with only 2 ingredients it's also super easy to make. We loved how the

Paper Bag Dramatics: A fun activity for Team Building and Developing Community. Here's an idea that can be used just about anywhere at any time. It encourages groups to solve problems, think creatively, and work as a team.

So, yesterday I showed you how I got my angle studies kicked off with my students–how I solidified understanding of “right angle”. We had lots left to accomplish–so I’ll try to share some of the different lessons and activities we did over the next days! Tip 1: If you can get your hands on thin […]

We are currently doing a short study of the human body. We recently finished up our unit on the Brain and Nerves, and here are some of the activities we did and resources we used.

When I start the new school year, I pick a book of the day for the first two weeks. I create a variety of activities to go with each book. I use a lot of books that focus on social and emotional learning, including kindness, friendship, and respect. But, I also add in some fun ... Read More about 8 Books for Back to School

Whether your kid is a preschooler or goes to middle school, he or she will enjoy these human body activities while learning about how the human body works. The anatomy of the human body is

Use letter activities like alphabet collages or letter mats to help kids learn letter recognition and to reinforce letter-sound associations. Here are over 200 material ideas that you can use for your

As soon as I started to plan out our Sensory Room, I knew I wanted to include a sensory wall. This DIY tactile sensory wall is just what I envisioned!

Fun, hands-on human body for kids project to learn about body systems, organs, bones, muscles, and more! Print playdough mats for activity.

ALL ABOUT EARTH Get ready for a month filled with so many fun activities to teach your kiddos all about our planet Earth . I teach this unit in April so it coincides with Earth Day. I’ve loaded up this blog post post with read aloud book ideas, free videos you can share with your students,

If your homeschool co-op is looking for class ideas The Best List of No Prep Homeschool Co-op Classes will help alleviate some stress

Have a chatty class? Do your talkative students get louder and louder during small groups until it feels like chaos? Do they talk when you'r...

Find out how I had fun practicing rounding with upper elementary students with hands-on rounding activities and games! Freebies included.

Fun and engaging ideas to get to know your students at the beginning of the school year. Build a strong classroom community with these free resources.

Looking for some new ways to get the attention of your class? Here are 25 Class Callbacks-Attention Grabbers ideas for you to try out!

Movement in the classroom is beneficial for many reasons. First and foremost, getting up to move in the classroom might help anxious students relieve stress.

These human body for kids activities allow children to learn about the heart, muscles, lungs, 5 senses, bones organs, cells, and so much more!

Check out all of these activities to help you plan unique and memorable events for your homeschool group or homeschool co-op.

Planning to tutor over the summer? Here are tips for quick and easy planning! Hi there! It's Sarah! I've been tutoring kiddos for the last year and have developed a routine that makes my planning easy and my session flow smoothly. All of the kiddos I tutor are grades K-2 and in need of a boost in their reading skills...fluency, comprehension, and phonics. Warm-up I like to start with some reading that is simple or familiar. I'll either have the kiddo re-read a text from the previous session or read fluency sentences. I have my kiddos keep a composition notebook with past passages to go back and re-read. I use lots of guided reader books to find the just right text for my kiddos to read. These are also great books to leave for kiddos to practice between sessions. Fluency sentence strips from The Moffatt Girls are a GREAT help to boost fluency and confidence! They are also super easy to leave for practice between sessions. Fluency Reading Practice My kiddos have all had good sight word recognition and really need fluency work. I switch between leveled readers and text passages. I usually have kiddos read the text themselves first. After reading, we go back through the text and find words that were tricky and read them. Next, I have the kiddo read through the text with me or by themselves if they are confident. Using a leveled reader Using fluency passages and recording words read per minute (the kiddos love to see their growth!) Find these fluency passages HERE! Using text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Comprehension After some fluency practice with the selected text, I move into comprehension work. In our district, kiddos need to do a written response comprehension question as part of their reading assessment. I have my kiddos practice a written response question with every text and in every session. Comprehension with level reader I use these question stems to develop questions based on the text. Grab the question stems HERE! Completed written response, kiddos write in their composition journal Comprehension with text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Here I use a reading passage with several comprehension tasks for a 2nd grade kiddo. Find these reading passage + comprehension packets HERE! Phonics After the reading and comprehension tasks are complete, I work on some phonics task with my kiddos. One of my favorite tasks is doing a word family word splash. I select a word from our text. I like how this tasks shows kiddos that if they can spell a work like bat, they can also spell cat, mat, sat, etc. Writing short sentences with words from the Word Family Splash Word building and sounding out Extras I like to use phonics poems as an additional fluency tool. The kiddos glue them into their composition notebook so they can go back and re-read between sessions, continuing to build fluency with familiar texts. These phonics poems are from Susan Jones. I use our Literacy Bags in between reading tasks. Literacy Bags break up the rigorous reading and fluency practice we do for much of the session. You can find Literacy Bags HERE! I'm working with a few Kindergartners who need sight word practice. I use the K version of our Differentiated Reading Fluency passages. In K, the passages start as reading letters, then sight words fluently. It perfect support for my K kiddos! You can grab these HERE! Additionally, our Print a Standard packs have been a great support for targeting specific skills students need to work on. Each pack contains tasks for one standard and has several activities for that standard, so there are a lot of opportunities to help the student learn, practice, and master standards based skills. You can grab Print a Standard packs for ELA AND MATH HERE! Connecting with students and parents on a more personal level is the best part of tutoring. I love giving kiddos instant feedback and celebrating their successes! I also love that I can give them more choices to foster a love of reading. In the picture above, I'm showing several text selections. The kiddos I'm working with is able to choose the book he'll read with me for the session. I also love being able to help parents foster learning at home. I've found most all of my parents did not really know about their kiddo's reading level or reading abilities. This makes it difficult for parents to find the best "just right" books for reading at home. After I work with a kiddo, I leave the text piece we worked on for that session (a passage or a book) so the kiddo can re-read it with parents. I leave their composition notebooks with phonics poems for the kiddos to go back a re-read. I also leave the fluency sentence strips for practice between sessions.

How to create a retell literacy center in kindergarten. Plus a list of 20 famous stories and retell props (with printables) to complete this center.

A lesson plan! A lesson plan! My kingdom for a lesson plan!

Are you looking for fun engineering activities for middle school students? Engineering activities are a great example of STEM activities for middle school students.

What better way to learn kindness than by practicing and experiencing it firsthand! Get ready to have a blast with your students - this is a fun one!! This download includes THREE interactive SEL activities to introduce kindness ideas, invite creative thinking, and provide “real-time” practice of the trait! This is such a fun way to get students talking, creating, and engaging... all while being kind to one another! Digital download gives detailed instructions on how to play each version of the activity as well as 15 "pair matches" to be used in the activity (or for other uses in your classroom!) Looking for other kindness activities for your students? See links below: Kindness Activity and the Impact of our Words Kindness Activity - Class "Snowball Fight" "Think Before You Speak" - Interactive SEL Activity

Rally your students with some school spirit!

Learn how to make pretend snow with only 2 simple ingredients. The perfect winter sensory play idea.

Check out these fun activities from Award Winning Author/Illustrator Jarett Lerner to do at home or in the classsroom. Includes comics, drawing, and more.

Find out why teachers should be using icebreaker activities for small groups all year long and not just at the beginning of the school year.

Too many classroom icebreakers require students to take big social risks with people they barely know. Or they don't really help students get to know each other. Or they are just plain cheesy.

Try this fun pollination STEM activity for students to make a craft stick model bee then simulate pollination using mac and cheese powder!

This quick and EASY frankenworms experiment demonstrates baking soda and vinegar chemical reaction with fun halloween activities for October.

Try these fun brain break ideas to help active kids stay focused and learn at their best like yoga, Go Noodle, and printable cards.

Grab your FREE hair salon scissor skills printable to use with your preschool and kindergarten students! Use at home and at school!