How to Avoid the Summer Slide! Summer is right around the corner! We all LOVE our summer vacation, but not the "Summer Slide!" The Summer Review Packets
Students can travel across the globe without leaving the classroom. Check out these fun geography lessons for any grade and curriculum.
Need some fun pantomime ideas and games? Look no further. Here you will find a list of pantomime activities. Building a sense of safety and trust when introducing Drama activities into your program is essential. The following pantomime games and exercises are ideal in establishing that trust between the players
Teach communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and more to set kids up for their future.
Kids will love this cooperative activity that builds teamwork, planning, communication, and fine motor skills.
FREE printable Symmetry drawing activity for preschool and kindergarten kids. A fun art and math activity in one! Kids will complete the symmetrical pictures by drawing the other half.
The Summer Olympic Games have begun! It's so fun watching people who are so amazingly talented and who love what they do! Since the games started, we've been watching them together as a family in the evenings and really enjoying it! So far my son loves the swimming and is mesmerized by the gymnastics. I think it's great for our kids to watch these athletes achieve their dreams. I also love that they get to hear some of the athletes' stories and learn that their lives haven't always been all that easy and that hard work and dedication can take you so far in life!
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.
Looking for a fun and enagaging way to teach linear measurement? Check out these monster themed measurement activities that make learning fun
Use STEM engineering activities in elementary school as a fun, engaging, and meaningful way to tackle the Next Generation Science Standards.
Learn how to make a kaleidoscope in this fun STEM/science activity and craft for kids. It’s such a fun way to explore light, reflections, and symmetry! Follow our Science for Kids Pinterest board! *This post was originally published 2/2/16 and has since been updated. Last week I made these super fun kaleidoscopes with my …
Teaching rocks for kids can be fun, interactive and even yummy with these creative ideas. These 15 activities and ideas are perfect for teaching science about rocks that includes the rock cycle, the types of rocks and more!
One of the simplest and coolest ways to see engineering in action is by making catapults for kids. It's a STEM activity you can play with!
Hi teacher friends, Ancient Civilizations has to be my favorite curriculum to teach. I find the ancient world fascinating, with all the different traditions, inventions, rituals, building structures, gods and goddesses. I could probably spend the whole year just focusing on Egypt alone, with its pyramids, their social hierarchy with pharaohs, and interesting
This simple buoyancy kids' science activity requires just a few common household supplies. Kids will love learning why things sink and float!
In patterning our life after the Savior's we should seek for opportunities to serve those around us. In Mosiah 2:17 it states, "...when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." As Relief Society sisters, we have tremendous opportunity to watch out for those around us that need that loving hand of help. When we feel impressed to help someone we need to listen to those promptings and act upon them. We can provide service to others individually or we can do this as a family. Teaching our children the importance of unselfishness, love, and sacrifice. One thing that we did with our kids a few months back was thirty days of service. Each day we did an act of service for thirty days. It was fun to see them serve others and discuss the happy feelings we each individually felt from doing so. Here are some ideas:
Help kids understand linear measurement with this batch of playful, hands-on STEM card challenges. They’re the perfect addition.
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.
Plenty of interactive ideas and activities to teach landforms for kids. Find videos, worksheets and even experiments to help.
STEM Project Design and & build a model of a water slide following specific rules. Test by pouring water to take a passenger down the chute. So fun!
Orienteering is a great activity to do as a family and teaches your kids map reading skills. There are also places you can easily give it a go. Read more.
Prefix activity ideas to arm your students with more than just context clues. Love all the different ideas in this prefix unit!
You kids will LOVE this Word Families Reading Activity using plastic spoons and disposable cups. Read, sort by word family, and a bit of fine motor fun too!
Want to learn and practice differet types of drama? Here's a list of 9 with an explanation of how to do each one. Great for drama class.
I decided to take on my own challenge of incorporating a STEM activity every day for a week. It turned out to be a huge success where both my students and I had a blast. Here were the various …
Enhance your child's ability to follow directions and describe the location of an object using positional or directional words.
If you are looking for activities to include in your school’s STEM Night, or if you are just looking to add some STEM activities into your PE program, view the ideas below from PE teacher Jennie Graves. There are 4 activities … Read More
by Jarrett Lerner I’ve been wanting to make an activity book for years now. Something that could help kids – and kids-at-heart! – explore and develop their creativity, and turn to as a source for r…
Easy at home science experiments using simple materials: salt and water experiment, egg in salt water, salt and ice. No-prep quick STEM activities kids love.
Writing your name in binary code on a bracelet or necklace makes great STEM fun for kids! Plus more fun STEM learning activities for kids.
Mrs. Thompson’s Treasures is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program. This post may contain affiliate links. Do you remember those Highlights magazine hidden picture pages like these? I remember always having fun with those in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. I wanted to create something similar, […]
If I Were a Superhero Identify a few well-known superheroes with your students and brainstorm adjectives that describe these superheroes and their actions. After reviewing the list, ask students to identify people in their real lives that possess these characteristics. Ask students to complete this thinksheet and describe what kind…
18 easy and low to no cost coping skills...great ideas for overwhelmed kids and teens.
Looking for STEM Activities for your child? Here's your guide to 50+ STEM ideas to explore science, technology, engineering, and math.
Do you remember how to make a paper cup phone? Does yarn work for cup phones? Teach your child how to make a string phone with cups and test how far it works.
How to Avoid the Summer Slide! Summer is right around the corner! We all LOVE our summer vacation, but not the "Summer Slide!" The Summer Review Packets
Have you seen those floating ball toys where you blow into one end and the ball "magically" floats above in place? Here's a way to create your own!
Help those kids from getting the “summer slide” with this 100 page packet! Included is 50 pages of math and 50 pages of literacy including reading and comprehension, grammar, writing, and word work. This would also make a great addition for any beginning of the year work for 1st grade too! Click here to download. here …
Secret message coding bracelets are a unique form of wearable communication that allows individuals to encode and share messages through patterns of beads.
This is an easy, fun experiment to find out how strong different shapes are.
Try these preschool physics experiments and activities with your kids!
K-1 POETRY UNIT I love teaching poetry to kindergarten and first grade students! Even though I have this labeled as Unit 8 in my Writing Series , I actually teach poetry throughout the entire year. We follow the same routine and students look forward to our poetry week every month.
Build a marshmallow and toothpick tower for a fun and budget-friendly way to explore STEM with kids. Free printable.
Telling time past the hour can be challenging for primary kids but it doesn’t have to be a struggle for you or your students. Learn simple ways and effective strategies to make telling time easier for primary kids.
I LOVE saving figurative language until June - it's such a fun language unit ... and perfect for our "dreaming of summer brains". We finished up our EQAO testing mid week, and this onomatopoeia activity was the perfect break from testing. How fun is that??? Students chose two contrasting colours - one for the background and one for the word and border "bursting out of the page". They also needed newspaper (cut just a fraction smaller that the "bursting out of the page border" and glued the newspaper on top. They glued their word on top of that (we had brainstormed a lot of onomatopoeia words, but for some reason most of them chose SPLAT for their word). I also had them do a little shading under their letters for that little extra POP (see, I know some onomatopoeia words, too). ;) I had seen this awesome idea on Pinterest and followed it back to Artisan des Arts. Her examples are FANTASTIC!! We also wrote simile poems this week. I found a little template HERE for the students to use for their rough copies. When students were finished their templates, I had them write out their good copies, and illustrate a few lines with a small image. I hung these up, too ... LOVING our bulletin board switch up ... even this late in the school year!!! (I have two of these "smART class" bulletin boards side by side in the classroom. 15 more school days left ... I think I can ... I think I can ... Happy Friday!!!
Our Consonant and Vowel Toss and Sort activity is a fun and hands-on way to introduce young students to the two types of letters in the alphabet! This activity is part of our 30 Days of Reading Fun for Beginning Readers series.
