Easy and Fun Ways to Teach Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle to Students
Create a game where students sort everyday items into categories of reduce, reuse, or recycle. Use pictures or actual items to make it interactive. This helps reinforce their understanding of each concept and encourages critical thinking as they decide which category each item belongs to. Every Spring, the Dollar Tree has mini garbage cans that look like recycling bins. Grab them and save them for a sorting game with mini brands!
Preschool Activities to Teach Important Skills to Get Ready for Kindergarten
There are so many important skills for preschoolers to have to make the transition to Kindergarten smoother. Whether a child goes to daycare, preschool, or stays at home, there are many easy preschool activities that teach important skills to get ready for Kindergarten.
5 Tips For A Successful Back to School Night With Elementary Parents
This year was my 34th Back to School Night as a teacher! I tried many things over the years to make Back To School Night or Meet The Teacher Night successful. I want to share with you my five favorite Back To School Night activities and ideas that worked well in all different elementary school grades
Teaching Important Skills Through Play-Based Learning and Dramatic Play
When I left the elementary classroom to become the director of a daycare and preschool, I was in a different world! One of my first responsibilities was to adopt a new curriculum for the entire daycare. As we adopted the Creative Curriculum, I was introduced to play-based learning and dramatic play.
The Importance of Dramatic Play For Preschoolers
My dramatic play area is my favorite part of my classroom! I could spend hours setting it up and I love playing in it with my students. Dramatic play is a type of play where you give a child props or an “mini environment” to act out a role, for an example a doctor’s office. There are so many benefits of this type of play and as you watch them play, you will learn a lot about your students as well! So, what are these benefits ?
The Ultimate Trees Study for Preschool – Fun and Easy Ways to Cultivate Crucial Skills
One of my favorite preschool studies is the Trees Study. You can teach this study any time of the year with great success and fun ideas, but Fall lends itself to a lot of fun activities!
A Simple Idea To Teach Number Sense and Ten Frames To Young Learners
Teaching number sense to young children needs to be intentional and hands on if we are to reach all types of learners. In my Kindergarten class, I start teaching number sense and ten frames in the first few weeks of school which is the beginning of Fall.
5 Simple Ideas for Teaching Numbers in Preschool
Teaching number sense to early learners is one of the most important foundations you can give a preschooler or kindergartener in math. Number sense is more than just recognizing numbers. Number sense includes, knowledge of quantities, number order, sequencing and counting with a one to one correspondence and many others. It is not only important to teach young ones to count but to teach them what those numbers mean. Here are some definitions and ideas to teach these important skills.
What Is Visual Discrimination and Why Is It Important in PreK and Kindergarten?
My defining moment as an educator was in one of my first graduate courses. My professor gave us a decodable book she had created with symbols. As we started reading, we had to continue to look back to the first page to remember what letter of the alphabet was represented by which symbol. MY HEAD HURT and my stomach churned a little! This is what it must have been like for my then second graders who were trying to learn how to read! WOW !
Teaching Phonological Awareness Skills – Why Is Teaching Syllables Important and 7 Ways to Practice With Your Students
When readers understand how to break up a word in syllables, it makes it easier to read unknown words. When readers can read or “sound out” chunks , those chunks are easier to remember in our short term memory rather than remembering all the single phonemes in a word. Dividing words into chunks and blending the chunks together, speeds up the process of decoding which creates more fluent readers.