Teaching Habitats to your primary students will be a breeze with my collection of resources to help make your life easier. There's even a freebie!
I’ve been doing a little computer “spring-cleaning” this past week and decided it was time to spruce up some of those older tried-and-true spring themed activities. Many of my kindergarten teacher friends have requested activities for addition facts to 10, so I started with the Robin’s Nest Addition activity. You can find this FREEBIE in my Teachers […]
An Interactive Way to Teach Kids Their Address as well as their state, country, continent, and planet! A fun introduction to geography for kids!
Discover 12 easy ways you can bring mindfulness into your classroom to improve student focus, attention, and emotional regulation.
Find a fantastic round-up of resources for teaching NBT for 1st and 2nd from around the web including ready-made activities.
Hi everyone! As a teacher using the Orton-Gillingham approach, I am constantly looking for phonics activities that my students will find fun and engaging. Using Orton-Gillingham methods does NOT mean the instruction has to be
Use these 7 continents worksheet pagges to teach elementary age about CONTINENTS for kids. Grab continents book printable!
12 new ideas for and free phonogram card drills and a free phonogram card poster to keep your Orton-Gillingham lessons fresh and engaging.
Take a closer look at engaging fluency practice with this free ocean fluency activity sample. Themed fluency practice activities can help fluency skills.
Teaching text features to your primary students should be fun and engaging for your students. See many activities and suggestions!
In our Spanish class, we will be learning some vocabulary words about food. Here’s the video to help you with pronunciation: Below you will find a link to download a few worksheets to help your child review the vocabulary words. Vocabulary Words Read and choose the foods you like Read and draw the correct picture [Read On]
You finished your O-G training, now what? Well you'll need help organizing teacher materials. Check out this post for tips to get organized!
Papercraft Matryoshka: nested paper pockets. The flip side is patterned, too! The printout looks like this. You guys are my guinea pigs. I'm learning how to create prints and patterns on the computer - early days, training wheels. These Russian Doll Pockets were the ideal project to try out some mixed ditsy prints on. This is a fun project to make whether you are entertaining a bored child over the summer break, or are getting an extreme headstart on festive decorations. Here are your free print-and-cut files: RussianDollPockets.pdf RussianDollPockets.svg To make the Russian Doll Pockets: 1. Cut out the template pieces, either by hand or by digital cutter. 2. Fold the pocket flaps to the back. Align the folds with the base of the matching Russian Doll. Glue the pocket flaps to the doll back. 3.With wrong sides facing, glue the doll backs to the doll fronts, matching corresponding doll sizes (of course). Finished. 4. Slip the dolls into the pockets and nest the dolls. Have fun!
(This post uses affiliate links.) Hi everyone! I'm back with some tips for using Orton-Gillingham materials. You've made a big investment and want to implement them well. You may
Learn about Russia for kids with Russian worksheet pages to color and learn facts about the flag, ballet, Red Square, and more!
Completed in 2014 in Takinoue, Japan. Images by Shinkenchiku Sha. In response to an international design-build competition, our team proposed a quintessentially Californian approach embracing many ideas still new to...
Learn all about making connections in a nonfiction text for your students. See tips to make teaching your Connections unit more engaging.
Teaching schwa-A vowels can feel tricky, but it really isn't! This article will help you discover some useful ways how to teach schwa
Teaching Habitats to your primary students will be a breeze with my collection of resources to help make your life easier. There's even a freebie!
Keeping Students Engaged Part 2: Scoot No comments Engagement Activities, Freebies, Student Engagement Welcome back to part two of my four part blog series on keeping students engaged! In this series, I am sharing a few structured engagement activities that can be used to practice new concepts, as well as review old ones! So, let's get started! Note: When I use the term structured engagement activity (see intro), I am referring to a learning activity that can be used and reused throughout the year with different skills and content. The content may change, but the activity and how it works does not. These structures allow students to be successful because they are familiar with them, and they don't get bored with them because the content is always different. With that said, on to Scoot! Scoot, oh how I love thee. I mean, it's versatile, it promotes individual engagement within a whole group setting, it gets the students moving, and it's fun (and learning should be fun). What is it? Scoot is an activity that encourages individual engagement within a whole group setting. It gets kids moving as they review previously learned concepts and skills, and as they practice new ones. It isn't subject specific, so it can be used with any skill within any content area. Seriously, I can't stress this enough: You can use it to practice and review ANY skill: time, two-digit addition and subtraction, contractions, parts of speech, and, well, anything! In this activity, question cards are placed at your students' desks. Students are tasked with answering the question at each desk, starting with their own desk first. On your cue, the students "scoot" from desk to desk, answering each question on a recording page. How to Play Scoot is not a difficult "game," but it will take one or two rounds for your students to feel completely comfortable with it. Here's how to play: You need a set of cards with questions/tasks printed on them as well as a recording page for students to write their answers on. Place a card at each desk. Your students will scoot their way around the room, one desk at a time, on your cue. They start at their own desk, before scooting to the next desk. Call out the word "Scoot," to cue students to move to the next desk. Repeat until they have made their way back to their own desk. Each time they scoot, they will write the answer to each question on their recording sheet. Since they won't all start at the first question, be sure to remind your students to be mindful of the card they are on so that they can make sure to record their answer in the correct space on their recording page. At the end of the activity, go over the questions/answers with your students so that there is some sort of closure to the activity (and you can address any mistakes, misconceptions, etc). Tip #1: I highly recommend that you establish a path of rotation before beginning your game. Keep this path of rotation the same each time you play so that students know what to expect. Tip #2: If you aren't afraid to be silly, have fun as you call out the word "scoot!" Sometimes, I whisper the word....don't worry, I have a microphone. Sometimes, I like to use weird voices, or speak with an accent. This isn't necessary, but it adds an element of fun and interest for the kids, and you're sure to get a chuckle or two out of them. Tips #3: Have your students signal when they are ready to move to the next desk. My students show their "unicorn horn" to let me know that they are ready to scoot. What's a unicorn horn, you ask? It just means that the students show me a thumbs up while resting their hand/fist on their forehead. Tip #4: Call out different words. Instead of calling out the word "Scoot" each time, you could call out "Jump," or "Slide," or "Lunge," or whatever. The possibilities are endless, so get creative! Materials The questions you set out can be from a set of task cards or a set of cards specifically designed to be used as a Scoot game, like these cards shown below. You can grab this set of two-digit addition and subtraction Scoot cards here for FREE! Sometimes, I even let my students write the Scoot questions. And, let me tell you, this is a big deal. WAIT-no, it's a huge deal. I created this recording page to use when the students create the questions. If you'd like to give this idea a try, be sure to grab this free recording page here. :) Tip #5: Whatever materials you decide to use, be cognizant of the time you have available to play the game. Think about the depth of the questions you put out. I like to use questions that can be answered relatively quickly because I don't want my students standing around and waiting too long for their classmates to finish up before everyone can scoot to the next desk. Tip #6: Worried about struggling students? Pair students up and allow them to help each other with the questions as they scoot from desk to desk. Final Note I hope you were able to take a tip or two away from this post, and I truly hope you stop by next week for part three in the series. ::PIN IT::: Missed Part 1? No problem! Click the link below to read all about I Spy. Part One (I Spy) And, visit these links to read the rest of the series: Part Three (Quiz-Quiz-Trade) Part Four (I Have, Who Has) Toodles! Share It:
My Kindergarten class (in our co-op) has been working hard on learning the letter sounds and now we have moved on to learning some digraphs. I found a cute idea on Pinterest about the H Brothers, so I ran with it, modified it, and created my own materials. I had a lot of fun putting [Read On]
This post includes 3 free printable Dr. Seuss activities and one craft activity. All activities go along with Dr. Seuss' "1 Fish 2 Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish" book and cover skills such as fine motor, counting, and color sorting. One of the printable activities uses do-a-dot markers, one use
**Like many parenting techniques (think co-sleeping, formula feeding, extended breastfeeding), sleep training seems to be quite polarizing with big fans for it and critics against it. I'm not recommending this for others or saying it's the only way, just sharing our experiences :) YES! The time has come, it's time to SLEEP. We've starting sleep training, for the third time! It's brutally hard as a parent to delve into the world of sleep training - I know from experiencing this twice already - but it's oh, so worth it. Chloé, let's do this girl. After seeing such enormous success sleep training Lily with the Babywise method, we were eager to do it with Oli, too. He took longer than she did to master his schedule but I think part of that was our fault. We were less consistent with him because we were worried about normalcy for Lily, so it was hard living on his schedule when it meant doing less with Lily (trips out of the house, etc). Though the initial sleep training isn't more than a couple of weeks, it was still hard to go full-on with Oli when we had Lily to think about. Plus when we sleep trained Lily it was in a larger condo where her bedroom was farther away... point being? Crying wasn't so hard to live through. With Oli, it felt like during the times when he'd need to cry-it-out, it was a pervasive cry all around us and it was hard to get through. I caved a lot and was less disciplined, which resulted in a harder time for all of us. To this day Oli isn't as great a sleeper as Lily and we often wonder if it's because with her we were so structured and hardcore with sleep training and much less so with Oli. We've started with Chloe and it's already amazing! Babywise is the kind of parenting method that you have to do full on or it doesn't tend to work, so it's been a week of sticking to a very strict schedule, but already she's adapted incredibly! Before we started, Chloe was staying up until about 1am every night and when she'd wake for her night feed (around 3 or 4am), it was a two hour affair. So she was never really sleeping longer than three hours. Now she follows the above schedule almost to the tee, and after her 11pm feed she sleeps right until 4am! The five hours in a row is bliss. She's also taking her first three naps really well - no crying when I put her down and she sleeps right until the two hours are up. Where we're having trouble is the 5-7pm nap (she usually cries straight through) and the "bedtime" and evening sleep from 8-11pm (she sleeps and fusses on and off). There has been some bad press about Babywise that I'd like to quickly clear up. I've read and heard of babies failing to thrive on this schedule, loosing weight, and mom's milk supply dwindling. It's important to know that the book never suggests following this schedule until mom's milk supply is well established and baby is over birth weight, and if baby ever seems hungry to first feed her before putting her back to sleep/cry-it-out. Babywise babies I know (those whose parents follow the book to the tee and did the scheduling full-on) are often very chubby, and actually gain weight on the schedule since they are eating and sleeping much more regularly than otherwise, making them very healthy. Babywise principles are well supported, but I suggest following them along with a strict schedule since my babies tend to need that frame to really grasp the naps and night sleeping. But if scheduling and crying it out isn't your thing (I don't blame you, it's not for everyone!), these can still be really helpful. Baby shouldn't be awake longer than 1-1.5 hours Baby should nap no less than 1.5 hours, ideally 2 hours Baby should eat every 2.5-3 hours and have a full feed Baby should nap often during the day but proper lengths of time Baby should have limited soothing tools so she learns on her own (motion, swings, nursing to sleep, etc) Also, since it's so early, we're using the sleep hierarchy as we aim for her to ultimately grasp the Babywise schedule, which is: Top priority: Baby sleeps when she should (naps, night) 2nd priority: Baby sleeps when she should, in her own bed (not in a swing, in your arms, etc) 3rd priority: Baby sleeps when she should, in her own bed, and falls asleep on her own (not fed to sleep, rocked to sleep, etc) Right now we're just focusing on the top/1st priority! We've loved this form of sleep training in the past because of the results, not because it was easy! It's quite challenging for the whole family at first - adjusting to baby's schedule for the initial training weeks (eventually the best part is that the baby is able to sleep anywhere!) and hearing her cry at times. But I'm ready to dive in. Because I'm ready to sleep through the night, myself ;) You can read about our past adventures in Babywise here and here I've read the book over and over again, but I still have to write out the baby's schedule every time we start or transition to a new schedule. Above is the schedule for a Babywise baby at first. It says 0-3months for simplicity, but I wouldn't recommend starting Babywise until your baby is at least 1 month old (and the book suggests waiting until breastfeeding is well underway, so that will change depending on the person). It's just helpful for me to have a visual. I made these to remind me, feel free to use them also. Below are the next steps for Babywise. You'll notice naps are always 2 hours but awake time gradually increases. The dream feed eventually is dropped and Babywise babies end up sleeping 12 hours at night very consistently. I've never met a family who did Babywise full-on and didn't see this result! It does take time and there are sacrifices to this type of strict scheduling, but guys, it works LIKE A BOSS. What have you done for sleep training in the past? There are so many books + methods out there!
FREE science emergent reader book about the human body systems. Great science activity for preschool and kindergarten.
Fun sensory bin ideas that you can try at home!
Spelling words with ch or tch. This generalization states that when you hear the /ch/ sound at the end of a syllable and it is immediately preceded by
#1 Rule of Thumb for choosing the right paint color (Keep reading and I’ll include #2, #3, #4, and #5) I’ll preface this blogpost by saying if you are someone who likes bright, bold col…
I came across these stunning renderings (hard to believe they’re not real), by Russian designer, Aleksey Uljanochkin recently. The proposed project is for a tiny home to be located a bit outside of Saint Petersburg. At approximately 484 square feet with an almost 200 sq. ft terrace, the barn-style design was created with year-round living in mind. I’m loving the combination of the monochromatic blacks, natural woods and textured materials which create a cozy modern vibe that doesn’t distract from it’s rural surroundings. The layout of the living room with panoramic windows on both sides, allows for the dweller to take in
We are learning a lot about US History. We are enjoying reading different books, watching videos and talking about the beginnings of our country. The next document our kids will be memorizing is a short form of the Bill of Rights. I had fun creating some materials to help them in this process. I typed [Read On]
Completed in 2014 in Takinoue, Japan. Images by Shinkenchiku Sha. In response to an international design-build competition, our team proposed a quintessentially Californian approach embracing many ideas still new to...
Find easy-prep teaching plants activities for on-the-go teachers who need resources that are fun and engaging for their primary students.
Check out an extensive list of informational ELA mentor texts to help ELA teachers whether teaching kindergarten, 2nd grade, or 3rd grade.
Find ideas for teaching Retelling & Recounting Stories including books, activities, no-prep resources, and more.
Tried my hand at making a chicken-in-a-nest hat. What do you think? Implication working?? See it here on Etsy.
