Need Wonder activities for your classroom or home school Wonder teaching resources? We have Wonder lesson plans, Wonder worksheets, and more ideas for book projects, kindness activities for middle school, and diversity lessons to make a great study unit for students using both the novel by RJ Palacio and teaching with movies (including the popular precepts project!).

We wrapped up Friendship Week today. We did a lot of discussing what it means to do a friend and what are some fun/safe things you can do with your friend. I created this fun matching game to use in our sensory bin. I dyed some rice for the first time and it turned out perfect! It also reminded me of grass, so I found pictures of kids on the playground. On the cards I wrote words that describe what a good friend does, like share, help, kind, etc. Then, we picked a card, read the word, and discussed the word more. I added these fun "Buddy Builders" from Amazon and they were perfect "friends" for our park. This book is a great way to talk about the nice things our hands can do. Especially, if you have any kiddos who like to use their hands in an unsafe way ;) I also dyed noodles for the first time, too! We used those noodles to make friendship necklaces! We also used a bead kit for friendship bracelets :) Click on image to grab this bead kit! These peanut butter and jelly color matching cards were a huge hit! We played restaurant and worked together to serve the correct colors. I got these from The Homestead Teacher! Grab them HERE! We like to think of words that start with each letter. When we are out, we will see a letter and I always have to think of something that starts with that letter. It totally helps connect learning, so I made these "F is for friends!" page and we decorated the 'f' different supplies. For our play dough invitation, I printed off this cute friendship clip art set from Creative Clips! We put the friends in our play dough and pretended we were playing at the park! The last game we did was this fun math activity! We had to help the boy get to his friends by rolling our dice and counting each circle. It was a great way to practice some counting, number identification, and taking turns! Grab these activities HERE! *NOTE: the play dough friends are not included in this due to terms of use, but they are free for you to download HERE!

Looking for unique post-reading activities to inspire students and provide a sample of their analytical skills? Find high-interest strategies for secondary.

Blank books provide a great way to encourage kids to write. Here are 3 easy ways to assemble blank books for your writing center, literacy center, and beyond.

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.

Past, present, and future.

These 15 picture book activities go great with your preschooler's favorite stories. Great hands-on activities that help to further explore the books!

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

Switching literacy centers in and out every week is such a headache for teachers! This post shares 3rd grade literacy center ideas that work with any curriculum and last the entire school year! PLUS--you can grab some free printables at the end of this post! *This post contains affiliate links to Amazon for your convenience.

Making connections is a strategy that readers use to better understand the text they are reading. It's one of the most powerful strategies your readers have in their tool belts. Readers use their prior knowledge to make a text to self, text to text, or text to world connection to what they are reading. I have put together some lessons and activities for the elementary classroom that can be helpful in teaching this valuable reading strategy. The first thing you want to do is make sure students have a basic understanding of the word connection. You can start with this simple opening activity. Put four of the provided cards into a bag. Pull them out and show them to students. Ask them what the connection is between the objects in the bag. Have a conversation about how they are connected. Then talk about any connections they have to those objects. It's a very basic way of discussing what connections are. You can then relate that to making connections in a book. I included five sets of cards that you could use each day of the week or you could split the students into groups and have them discuss connections with their groups. I would model describing the connection on the card above, because students will have to describe their connections in writing during the unit. You could laminate this to use again. The posters I included cover the three different types of connections that readers can make. For the anchor chart, I also included sentence frames for students to refer to throughout the unit when describing their connections. Text to Self Connection Craft I would explicitly teach one type of connection each day at first. You can uses these crafts for students to record their connections each day. Lots of modeling will probably be needed. Text to Text Connection Craft Text to World Connection Craft Once students have learned the different types of connections, you can go into making them understand that you can make different types of connections within one text. Give each student the 3 strips for the different types of connections they can make to a text. You can then make them into a chain connecting these cards to the name of the text you read. Close your lesson by summarizing the connections made on the cards above. This is a great visual for students to understand how making connections works. I always like for my students to have these little hats to wear while practicing the strategy. They also can get these bookmarks and badges. Always use some sort of exit ticket to close your lesson. This is where you will get an additional assessment to guide your instruction for the next day, as well as your small strategy groups. I like to always include additional graphic organizers for additional lessons on making connections, as well as for small groups and centers. I made them for the three different types of connections. You can use these case files for your whole group lessons or during small group teacher table. After you have taught how these work, these are great for a literacy center! Finally, a fun Friday activity we love to do are Brown Bag Book Clubs! You fill the bag with popcorn and have students fill out the graphic organizer over a read aloud. They then get into groups to discuss their connections with their book club, as well as to review other strategies previously learned. I hope these making connections activities are helpful for your readers! You can find it HERE or by clicking any of the images in this post. If you own the Reading Comprehension Bundle, it has been added there, too, so be sure to download it in your My Purchases tab. Happy reading!

This post features literacy center ideas and printables for 4th-grade classrooms. It includes reading centers for fourth grade.

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.

Need some If You Give A Mouse A Cookie Activities? We've got tons of fun inspiration with maths games, crafts, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie printables, literacy activities and more.

Here you'll find over 100 Apple Activities for Preschool, Kindergarten, Toddlers and early elementary. Plus, Preschool Theme Apple Activities and Lesson Plans including Apple Crafts, Apple Printables, Apple activities for kids, Fall Preschool Activities for literacy, math, and Apple Playdough sensory play ideas that are fun and educational. Apple Worksheets

Get free printables for kids in preschool and kindergarten! Find hundreds of free printable activities for literacy, math, science and more!

Integrate art and literacy with no prep or background knowledge with step by step tutorials for art history and art around the world!

Here is a list of very easy at home activities that you can practice throughout the day to strengthen and improve auditory processing in your child.

Geometric Art

Back to school is here, and what better way to celebrate the first week back than with a Name Celebration! I've put together a week full of fun *EASY* literacy activities that your students CAN do without a ton of one on one assistance from adults. Chrysanthemum is the perfect book is for the first

This making inference activity and lesson plan will help all of your readers succeed at making inferences and inferring as they independently read in your upper elementary and middle school classrooms. Making inference mentor text included.

Hi friends! Today I wanted to share some of my favourite alphabet centres with you! I'm hoping that it can become a reference for your weekly centre planning :) 1. ALPHABET PLAY DOUGH MATS Do your kids love play dough as much as mine do? I'm always looking for new play dough mats to add to the mix. I made these this summer and the letters are big enough to use with play dough or other loose parts like buttons or pom poms! Play dough is great for developing finger muscles which will help our kiddos with their writing as well! You can find these mats in my TPT store by clicking on the image below: 2. ALPHABET TRACING BOOKS Although I don't like having too many worksheet-type activities, I like having some dry erase activities to help kids who are just learning to print their letters. These printables are super simple and great for beginning writers! It gradually gets harder from top to bottom. Click on the image below to see these printables in my TPT store. 3. ALPHABET CONSTRUCTION My old school used to have these and my kids loved them there. Scholar's Choice was having a sale so I finally snagged them for our class! The kids love how tactile these are and the cards are super helpful for the kids who need the support. You can find this "Letter Construction" set on Amazon or the Scholar's Choice website. Here are the links if you are interested in checking them out! Amazon.ca Scholar's Choice 4. ALPHABET PUZZLE I'm usually not keen on printable puzzles (I like the real thing for puzzles) but the kids surprisingly ate this one up! The picture makes it self-correcting and it was a great opportunity for the SK's to be leaders and help their JK friends match and learn the letters :) You can find this puzzle by clicking on the image below: 5. ALPHABET Q-TIP PAINTING I shared this activity last year but I'm going to share it again because it's always a hit! The kids use paint and q-tips to trace the letters! This is another one that is great for developing fine motor skills. You can grab these sheets for free by clicking on the image below! 6. ALPHABET PATTERN BLOCKS I have SO many pattern blocks.. so I was super pumped when I found these alphabet pattern block mats! Best of all they are FREE! They are by Confessions of a Homeschooler and you can download them HERE. 7. ALPHABET TWEEZE & MAKE I found these letters at Dollarama. I set them out with some centimetre cubes and tweezers and had the kids make the letters! 8. ALPHABET ROLL & WRITE I put some magnetic letters into these insertable dice and had the kids roll and write the letter they got. Super easy, especially if you already have insertable dice and magnetic letters! 9. ALPHABET READ & SORT I wrote letters on these white beans, wrote letters on the muffin liners and then had the kids sort the beans into the matching muffin liners. Cheap and the small beans make it great fine motor practice for those little hands! 10. ALPHABET FIND & WRITE For this one, I put some letter beads in a bottle with black beans and had the kids find the letter beads and write the letters they found on a whiteboard. 11. ALPHABET PICK & WRITE {ON CHALKBOARD} I love these chalkboard from Handwriting Without Tears! I have the kids pick a tactile letter tile, trace the letter with their finger and then write the letter on the chalkboard. These chalkboards are great because they are double sided so they can flip it over and do another letter while that side dries! 12. ALPHABET MONSTER MUNCH This centre has been a hit every year! I got some tennis balls from the dollar store and then cut a slit in the middle with an exacto knife. Then I hot glued some googly eyes to make them "Tennis Ball Monsters". The kids squeeze the side of the mouth, say the name of the letter and feed the monster. 13. FIND ALL THE LETTERS! Bingo dabbers are always a hit so I made this centre to incorporate them! Here, students pick a letter out of the bin, say the letter, find it on their sheet and dab the letter. Then they put that letter back and find another until all the letters are dabbed. If this is too easy, I also set out the same activity but with pictures in the circles so that they pick a letter, identify the beginning sound and dab the letter that makes that sound. You can download both sheets for free by clicking on the image below: That's it for now! I hope to add to this post when I can :) I hope you are able to use some of these ideas! What is your favourite alphabet centre? SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave SaveSaveSaveSave SaveSave

Reading Response Activities for Wonder

Filler Activities for ELA (blog post) What can you do with five extra minutes in secondary ELA? Here are a few ideas to engage students until the bell.

Kids will have so much fun going through this 50-page worksheet pack for fall. It's full of cutting, counting, coloring and writing activities that will keep your students busy and excited for all things autumn!

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A great collection of fall literacy activities to work on ABC recognition, learning your name, writing, reading, singing and more.

"It was like herding cats!" That was my answer to my husband the other day when he asked how my day had gone. Seriously, the days I have first and second graders are just hard - fun, but exhausting. That is until I found the SECRET to STEM and the littles! Are you ready for

Read Acts 5:1-4verses 1-11 if you deem appropriate for your child's age.) Pinocchio Revisited: (Printable version now available at the end of the post!) Geppetto, a lonely carpenter with no children, decided that he wanted a boy. He carefully carved

Are you looking for a stress-free first week of ELA activities for high school classroom? Look no further! Keep reading for ideas, tips, and lesson plans for the first week (and beyond)! #backtoschoolactivities #elateacher #highschoolela

These worksheets for main idea and supporting details are a great way to build reading comprehension in young students. Grab the free sample.

Ready to build your STEM library with the best picture books? Start Here! Check out my Top 10 all time favorite read alouds for elementary STEM

Teach character traits in upper elementary through activities, full lesson plans, anchor charts, and small group work! Plus a freebie!

Do you do all of these 6 essentials of reading intervention? Each is a must-have for effective intervention and will make it so much easier...

Do you struggle with finding interesting ways to teach ESL listening skills? Maybe you have an activity or two already but you want to be able to mix it up and keep things interesting. By the end of…

Don't have time in your day to reach every student? My 10 Minute Reading Intervention resource can help you squeeze in lessons that are fast & effective!

Fantastically fun literacy games so kids can enjoy learning about the alphabet, phonics, letter recognition, rhyming activities, sight words and more.

Check out these 7 activities to use with the novel Charlotte's Web including spider web synonyms, how to draw a pig, spider web art, and more.

Best-selling author, Anna Llenas, is best known for her book about an adorable monster who, with the help of a friend, learns to name and navigate his feelings. Inspired by this read, we've compiled a list of 16 charming activities for you to choose from! From pre-made digital activities to hands-on crafts, all of our picks are perfect for sparking discussions that center around emotions! For inspiration on how to incorporate these lessons into your very own classroom or home-learning experience, read on.

Amazing things can happen with just one dot.

Try these 5 fun and easy ways to gamify your phonics activities that will get your students up and moving!