It’s never too early to nurture a toddler. Shapes is the perfect toddler learning subject. When I’m busy teaching, I set up a “busy box” that I can take with me when I teach as well as great picture books and other activities. A Shapes Busy Box ExampleWhen we are going out and about, I try
There is stage each of my kids has enjoyed, between two and three, when they truly loved Pete the Cat’s I Love My White Shoes! Since it is so fun to sing the song and toddlers are just starting to recognize colors, it’s a perfect stage for beginning color recognition and color matching. Toddler Color
On September 11, 2001, I got up early because that was the only time my apartment of six was quiet. I read the entire New York Times and headed up to my early Economics class. When I got there, I learned of the attacks in New York. It’s hard to consider how to teach of
As we do personal family history research, we find fascinating stories of pioneering. I don’t mean covered wagon pioneers today. Merriam-Webster defines pioneer as follows:: a person who helps create or develop new ideas, methods, etc. : someone who is one of the first people to move to and live in a new areaI love how the
When we go on a road trip, I try to add in mini-lessons as we go. One thing I love to revisit is clouds. A cloudy sky with a peek of blue is such a gorgeous site as we drive on the highway! Learning about the water cycle is a perfect compliment to such a
When I think of summer, I think of reading. I love to encourage free reading all summer long, and finding reading programs with book-ish rewards only adds to the fun.
What do you do for your students for Valentine’s Day? Here is a fun way to give a STEM Valentine’s Day card to your students or children — crack a code! My STEM Challenge class loved trying to figure the codes out. My preschooler enjoyed matching the symbols to the letters (although she could not
My son and I enjoy playing Scrabble and other word-building games. But while we are playing, I needed to find a way to keep my 2-year-old happy, without her grabbing our tiles! To keep her busy, I created some word templates for her to enjoy building words too. ABC Letters Tiles are fun for all letter
I’ve fallen in love with word links (also called word ladders, word golf, or doublets): games that change just one letter at a time to get to a completely different word. The game of word links were created by Lewis Carroll in 1877. My son, although a very strong reader, did struggle with vocabulary as a first
I’ve been creating units for kindergarten using picture books to introduce the poetic concepts of rhythm, rhyme, and metaphor. Today I thought I’d write about another picture book that would help in teaching older children about metaphors in poetry: Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski.
It’s so hard to get back in to the groove after a vacation. The last thing we wanted to do was head back to homeschool. But this week, we turned to old routines and found ways to learn from our “extras”, and it turned out to be a fantastic, learning-packed week!
My fifth grader and I are working on basic conversation in Spanish, while my kindergartner and I are at the other end of the learning spectrum: we’re focusing on basics like learning the alphabet, the days of the week, and other calendar words. Our alphabet wall cards and the calendar tracking page (and cards) help
