These gratitude activities will create a lasting impact on your students as they explore gratitude through writing, visualization, and more.
Build skills to learn how to write and have fun while doing it!
Use these free Writing Folders and freebies to give your writers support during their independent writing time. Find all our FREE Writing Printables HERE. If you are a subscriber to my newsletter, you can download all the printables that go with it for FREE! Not a subscriber? Simply subscribe HERE! NOTE: If you are already a ... Read More about Writing Folders – for K-5 Learners
If you have been following our blog, you might have seen our post about our favorite teacher hack, earlier finisher packets! If you missed it, don’t worry, I will sum it up real quick for you. Essentially, despite teaching different grade, Emmy and I realized we were both having the same Issue. Kid
Storytelling activities not only build imagination and creativity, but they can be a beneficial learning tool too! Great for the classroom.
Teachers got a challenge. They wanna help tiny kids get better at writing, but doing it fun way. Worksheets could help, but where to find the right ones? Gotta create some that are perfect for little hands to practice.We got you covered for developing pre-writing skills.
These FREE Printables and Unit Studies for Eric Carle's Books will help you expand on what your kids are learning through these beloved books.
Here is a fun tracing activity for preschoolers and toddlers! They are easy to print and a great way to prepare young kids for writing!
Journal writing with little learners is SO MUCH FUN (once they get the routine down)! It makes my teacher's heart overflow to see them drawing, writing, and sharing their ideas! I get to see them fall in love with writing and see themselves as writers! What a gift! In this post, I'm going to tell you all the details about how to implement journal writing in your classroom and get your kids excited about writing, too!
A writing template to help children when structuring text types.
These creative writing practice ideas support letter formation and automaticity in written work. OT ideas for working on writing skills.
Grab and Go Activities for Constitution Day Constitution Day, celebrated on September 17th each year, is an excellent opportunity to introduce young students to the U.S. Constitution and its significance in American History. If you're a teacher or a parent looking for engaging and kid-friendly activities to celebrate this special day, look no further! Our Print and Go Constitution Day craft and writing packet is designed specifically for K-2nd grade students. With this comprehensive set of activities, you can provide your students with hands-on learning experiences and promote their creativity. Click here to get your copy! By utilizing our Print and Go Constitution Day craft and writing packet, you can make Constitution Day a memorable and educational experience for your K-2nd grade students. The engaging booklets, hands-on craftivity, differentiated writing and drawing activities, and informative teacher resources will ensure that students not only learn about Constitution Day but also develop a deeper appreciation for the U.S. Constitution. With these materials, you can create a stunning bulletin board display to showcase your students' work and inspire others in your school. Make this Constitution Day a celebration of learning, creativity, and patriotism.
Prompting kids to dream about what they want to be when they grow up will help them to think about more than just the present and is...
Combining directed drawing and writing together provides an engaging literacy activity that targets core skills.
The most important activity students can do to develop scissor skills is to cut with scissors. Young learners should cut a variety of things-repeatedly-and perform cutting activities frequently! Teacher friends,...
These free pre-writing printables give kids practice with common strokes that are found in letters, and can be used in many different ways!
We had our first day of school with students Wednesday and I forgot how utterly exhausting and mind blowing that first day is! We did lots ...
I am always looking for fun ways to make writing more enjoyable. I have come across a few good ideas over on Pinterest and some of my favorite teacher sites. I found The Teacher Wife’s post o…
November STEM K-2 Challenges will engage all your students during the November month. Students plan, design, and engineer drums, corn mazes, rain sticks, and canoes. Your students will love going through the design process as they cover the Next Generation Science. This activity can also be used for STEAM Activities, STEM After School Programs, Summer Programs, Clubs, Maker Spaces, or at home. This is included in my K-2 STEM Challenges for the Entire Year. Other Products: STEM Entire Year Challenge Back to School STEM Challenge STEM Waterbottle Challenges Project Based Learning Bundle STEM Famous Landmarks Bundle Connecting STEM to a Great Book STEM Maze Challenges STEM Paper Airplane Challenges Also, follow me and be notified when new products are uploaded. New products are always 50% off for the first 24 hours they are posted. It pays to follow me! Follow me on Facebook and Instagram! Thank you so much, Lisa Taylor
Free, printable Prewriting Tracing Worksheets for preschoolers and young kids to practice learning to write. Prewriting skills activity pages.
Check out these top techniques for employing character building activities for students of all school ages!
Ready to rock teaching beginning of year writing in first grade? These early days of writing instruction must be targeted and on point. Click to learn more.
Mastering scissor skills is crucial for preschool development. Explore a wide range of creative and easy-to-implement activities designed to help your preschoolers boost their scissor skills.
Grab your lesson planner because I'm sharing tons of FUN, hands-on nocturnal animals activities you can do for a nocturnal animals theme (and a FREEBIE too)!
Do you and I run in the same circles? Doubt it. Although we do share at least one circle: teaching. Right? And if you and I ha...
Are you looking for a fun way to teach describing characters and character traits? Try this! Fold each side of a horizontal sheet of paper to the middle. Have the kids draw a picture of the character on the front. Put words to describe the outward appearance of the character on the outside. This can be things that are obvious from the text. Next, open the page up and write character traits and words to describe the character's emotions on the inside. These are things you have to infer about the character's traits based on the evidence from the text. It's pretty fun and these make a great display!
39 super fun sentence structure worksheets and activities and sentence building games to get kids excited about language arts!
This product includes the following: Mystery Sack Main Idea Activity: This works well for small groups or centers. You will need to cut out and laminate each of the 'details' and put them into a sack. Next, the students will look through each sack and try to figure out what is the main idea of the sack. There are 6 mystery sacks(each include 6 pictures) and a recording sheet for this activity. Circle Map Printables: 1 with the main idea filled out where the students add the details 1 blank so you can make your own that works best for your class 1 with the details filled out where the students guess the main idea 1 blank so you can make your own that works best for your class If you have any questions please do not hestitate to ask! Thanks, Kinder Garden
How to set up and organize a writing center in your pre-k, preschool, or kindergarten classroom. See pictures of my writing center and material suggestions.
Help kids learn to be kind and act as bucket fillers not bucket dippers with these ideas for bucket filler anchor charts, bulletin board displays, writing activities, books and videos, and printables.
There are a million things that we have to fit into our school day—and handwriting can feel like just one more thing that we don’t have time for! BUT it’s super important. Even in our digital age, students need to learn to form letters correctly! In this post, I’ll share 5 activities that I use to help my students improve their handwriting. Many of these can be done in the context of writing instruction (perfect for when your students aren’t applying their handwriting skills to their actual writing). I’m suggesting these activities in addition to your normal handwriting instruction. These activities don’t replace explicit instruction that shows students how to form letters. I recommend dedicating time daily or weekly for teaching handwriting, having students practice on paper and with sensory materials (i.e., shaving cream), etc. Activity #1: Highlight the lines on students’ writing paper. This is more of a strategy than an activity—but it can be super helpful! To help students who struggle to write within the lines, you can highlight the lines on their writing paper (for handwriting instruction AND any other writing activities they do). If handwriting is a big challenge for a student, you might want to begin with paper with two lines, and then move to paper with three lines. Baby steps! I definitely can’t take credit for this strategy. 🙂 I learned it from a wonderful occupational therapist who worked with one of my students. I wish I could give her a shout-out, but it’s been about 10 years now and I can’t recall her name! Activity #2: Have students sort letters by their attributes. Students need a “language” to help them think and talk about letter formation. It helps to use words like loop, dot, tail, stick, etc. I really don’t think it matters WHAT terms you use, as long as you are consistent with those terms. (If you have a handwriting curriculum that students use at multiple grade levels, definitely stick to the curriculum’s terminology for consistency.) To help students learn how letters are the same and different, you can have them sort letters by their attributes. Students might sort magnetic letters into groups of letters that have curves, straight lines, or both. I also like to have students sort letters by the lines they touch. For example, students might group letters by those that have tails below the bottom line, those that touch the top and bottom line, and those that touch the middle and bottom lines. Having the highlighted letter cards is especially helpful to getting students to focus on these lines! Activity #3: Play a “Handwriting Scavenger Hunt” game. This game is helpful when you want students to fix up their handwriting in the context of their writing! There are lots of different ways you can play the game. You give clues about a letter (or multiple letters), have students find it in their writing, and then have them fix up the letter if they see that it is formed incorrectly. The clues can range from simple to more complex. Here are some example clues: Find a lowercase a. Find a capital letter. Find a capital letter that is a vowel. Find a letter that has a tail below the line. Find a letter that touches the middle and bottom lines. Find the letter at the end of the word the. You might have noticed that many of these clues have more than one correct answer—this is helpful because you don’t always know which letters students have included in their writing. It helps to have visuals of the letters to discuss them with students (once the mystery letter(s) are revealed). Also, make sure to have students study the letter(s) carefully and fix them in their writing, if necessary! Activity #4: Play a “Mystery Letter Guessing Game.” This activity is somewhat similar to #3, but it can be done out of the context of writing instruction. Instead of having students search through their writing, simply place letter cards on the table (4-6 letters at a time). Choose one letter and give clues to help students guess it. They have to wait for 2 clues before making a guess. If you put the below letters on the table and choose the letter c, you might give the following clues: “This letter touches the bottom and middle lines.” “This letter has only curves, no straight lines.” You can swap out the letter cards and play multiple rounds of this! If you do want to incorporate students’ writing, after students have guessed the mystery letter, they can search for examples in their own writing and fix any letter formation mistakes. Activity #5: Play “Handwriting Inspector.” In this partner activity, students work with a partner to fix up their handwriting. After you provide instruction about how to (politely) give feedback, students swap papers. They look for examples of excellent handwriting, as well as areas for improvement. Students can also do this independently, in a “Fabulous and Fix It” activity where they work on improving their own handwriting. Conclusions The materials shown in this post all come from my Kindergarten, first grade, or second grade small group writing bundles. And handwriting is actually just one small part of these resources—they address all kinds of writing issues, including capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and content! You can read more about these materials by clicking on the images below. If you have other favorite handwriting activities that you love, feel free to share below. Happy teaching!!
Crossing the midline activities for kids. What on earth are those? Sometimes in the educational world we start speaking a slightly different language than 'normal' people. Not that teachers aren't normal ... though ... you do need to be a little insane to work with small children all day long, don't you? Anyways. I had
Harold and the Purple Crayon has always been one of my favorite books growing up. I love reading it to my children now. I found the cutest prewriting and tracing pack with a Harold and the Purple Crayon theme! Your kids will have so much fun using a purple crayon while they are working on these activities! I love giving my kids themed printables that tie into a specific book that we are reading in our homeschool.
A blog for primary teachers that offers ideas, inspiration, classroom resources and freebies!
