Portland, Maine USA September 2019 photo by Corey Templeton. Zooming past State Street and Longfellow Square on a summer evening.
Yellow lacquered walls, brilliant Turkish patterns, and graphic modern art set a brave backdrop of color in this young family's summerhouse. Designer Katie Ridder shares her recipe for concocting a recipe that's more calm that chaotic.
Patriotic themed free math printable worksheets for kids in preschool to kindergarten to Grade 5. Easy learning activities for 4th of July holiday.
I Spy with my little eye shapes! My kids love I Spy Games. Today we are sharing a fun I Spy Shapes printable game. Teaching a child about shapes is important for more than just
Roll a fairy tale ist eine Methode um die Kreativität der Schüler anzuregen und ihnen das Schreiben "schmackhafter" zu machen.
Are you looking for a fun age appropriate crafts for kids? Then you will love Fairy Tale Crafts. This unit is perfect for your fairy tale unit at any time.
These STEM activities are hands-on and allow kids to be creative and have fun, all while learning. STEM challenges are perfect for kids of all ages.
I'm here to share my favorite go-to fairy tale activities my preschool and pre-k students want to play again and again.
The Imagine That art classes worked on making themselves into Playing Cards today...the results were awesome!
My kids have always been fascinated with mythology. They play an animal guessing game and often have a mythical creatures category! Well, when we got out hands on this cute book Miss Turie's Magic Creatures,
I'm working a summer reading and math camp and I wanted to set up some fun camp-themed activities! I haven't gotten to all of the centers yet, but I thought I'd showcase just a few! S'more Fun: Vowel Sorting Activity So far my kinders LOVE this center. I printed 2 sheets of the marshmallows on card stock then laminated them. I used sticks and a hot glue gun to attach them to both sides of the stick. To make the vowel fire outs: Camping & Rolling: Sight Word Activity Camping Spelling & Writing Center: Building Words Sight Word Fishing Game Download Camp Kindergarten Packet in my TPT Store by Clicking HERE!
Fairy Tale STEM challenges created in collaboration with Mrs Mactivity! Design a raft for the Three Billy Goats Gruff, Grow a Bean for Jack
Do you need a new creative writing activity for your students? Motivate your students to think and write creatively with these fairy tale writing prompts. Fairy Tale Writing Prompts This set of fairy tale writing prompt cards include these twelve imagination-boosting writing prompts: Write a fairy tale with the princess as the villain. You find an enchanted object …
Create gorgeous Sunshine Lion Art with the kid this Summer! Use our Flow Drawing technique to teach kids how to draw with the freedom to explore shapes and lines.
This free camping math pack is a great addition to your family camping road trip!
It's time to embrace friluftsliv.
These 20 Earth Day activities include our favorite earth-friendly crafts, science experiments and projects from across the web.
We are having too much fun with Dollar Store Day Camp this year. So much fun that the kids are becoming obsessed with doing certain activities more than once. This post contains affiliate links. This week, we had an arts and crafts theme, and there was one particular craft the kids decided to do 3
Did you know that Dragons love tacos? I actually came across a kid yesterday that didn't know that, so if you also didn't know, you have to grab one (actually two) of my daughter's favorite books. "Dragons Love Tacos" and "Dragons Love Tacos 2" because they are perfect to read alongside these adorable taco mini
Bring the fun of camping in your school day with these fun camping preschool printables. Use the fun camping themed printables to learn math, counting, etc!
I have been doing a forest and camping theme this week, which has been SO fun. I created a new, quick download to target answering questions to go with it and I am excited to share with you... Camping with Questions! targets 8 different kinds of questioning: who, what, when, where, why, how, yes, and no. Here's what's included:
Make some s'more mix and add this Free Printable S'more Bag Topper! Perfect for your camping themed days or your reading campout!
4th of July craft project. American Flag key chain made with pony beads
Are you doing some Rs this summer? R is for reflect: Reflect over your past year. What went right? What should be tweaked? No matter how long you've taught, there is always something that needs to be polished a little. R is for relax: Take some me time this summer. Sleep in, read a good book, spend some quality time for friends and family or whatever is your favorite way to relax. You will be a better teacher next year if you take time to relax this summer. One year when I was doing some reflecting after a challenging year, I decided that I needed to make some changes. More and more demands were being placed upon us . . . new curriculum, training to go along with this, and data collection just to name a few. All of this without giving us more prep time to do these extra chores. It is very easy to let all of these extra things stress us out, damage our health, and take away our enthusiasm for our job. I decided that I needed to work smarter, utilize what work time I did have at school wisely. Can you relate? Do you need to do this, too? Do you have so much free time at school that you offer to help your friends with their work? I'm guessing that this isn't the case for you, if you are like most teachers. Do you have a buddy teacher that has a similar philosophy as you? Would you be willing to split some of your teacher chores with this buddy? I've done this different ways through the years. My all time favorite system was when I taught next door to a teacher who hated the paperwork end of teaching but loved being outside. Maybe it's because I'm too hyper, but for me, recess duty is my version of teacher torture. Standing there or walking around watching children play is too sedentary for me. From my very first year, I have hated recess duty. I've done it because it is required and children need the fresh air and exercise. But, I did not enjoy it. Then I began teaching with a teacher who was the yin to my yang. She hated all of the paperwork, lesson planning, copying, and other stuff like that I loved. Luckily, we had similar teaching styles. So, I planned 2 weeks at a time. Organized each week in a big rubbermaid tub. There were six folders in the tub. Monday - Friday folders had all of the things needed for lessons (books, worksheets, etc.) and the sixth folder had all the supplies needed for the centers. I taught with tub A and my buddy used tub B the first week, then we switched tubs the following week. It was perfect! She was perfectly happy doing recess duty every day. I was perfectly happy taking the extra time from not doing recess duty to plan for both of us. Here's the thing . . . I would have made those plans for myself anyway. The only extra work that was involved was to make the copies for her. How hard is it to make an extra class set of copies for a week's worth of work and organize them in a tub? Our principal was happy with our arrangement because he knew that with the extra time I had to plan, I was making better quality lesson plans. My buddy and I were happier and less stressed. Isn't that what every principal wants? So, this summer take the time to come up with a plan to work smarter. There are many ways you can do it. I was thinking about centers. They can be a wonderful addition or they can be a thorn in your side if your students don't understand the directions and are constantly interrupting your small group lesson with questions. Centers have worked both ways for me. One way to work smarter with centers is to have some centers that have the same format week after week. Not that your students will do the exact same lesson, but that the type of activity remains the same so they will know exactly what the expectations are when they go to that center. I have phonics skill books that can be used for this type of center. They are sold in packets with 4 books that will have enough lessons for an entire month. All you will need to do, as far as preparation, is make 4 mini-books/student each month. (Hint: This would be a great thing for a parent volunteer to do for you.) Students will complete 2 pages of their mini-book each day. Turn in the mini-book on Friday. The benefits are: Ask a parent volunteer to come in once a month to make all of the mini-books for entire month. Now you have one center planned and finished for an entire month. Cross one thing off your to do list! Easy to grade because it is all in one neatly stapled booklet. Students seem to lose one booklet less often than when they have to keep up with 4 or 5 individual pages. Less incomplete or missing work means less stress for you and happier students plus parents. Each mini-book is a review of important skills like vowels, digraphs, syllables, and word families that we don't always have time to go over during whole group or small group lessons. Save some of the booklets for their portfolios to show growth over time. Each booklet has a theme so you can use them to enrich your language arts, social studies, or science lessons. Below is a sneak peek of the Camping Book. There is a black and white version of each mini-book and a colored copy so you can also make this a self-checking center. Would you like to try this out? Click HERE to download the black and white version of my Camping mini-book. Click HERE to check Pencil Pals: Camping, Desert, Farm Zoo Click HERE to check out Pencil Pals: Ocean, Garden, Summer & School This one has a mini-book called School Time which is perfect for your Back to School lessons. Are you planning a camping theme for End of the Year, Summer School, or Back to School? This Camping color by code packet is a fun way to review the following skills: homophones plural nouns contractions synonyms antonyms abbreviations long vowels blends I have organized a Pinterest board with themes that you can use for units and classroom decor. Be sure to follow this board because I will be updating this board. Sources to make my blog post graphics can be found HERE. Click HERE to read my blog's disclosure statement.
Grab our FREE printable and see our snack idea to use with the book, A Camping Spree With Mr. Magee. A great Literacy Snack Camping Read Aloud!
These shark fine motor activities are fun for Shark Week or literacy centers. They help kids learn about the "sh" digraph and develop fine motor skills
Write The Room set includes: Write the Room Picture Cards Corresponding Word Wall Cards Corresponding Student Word List Differentiated Write the Room activities/recording sheets You may choose to differentiate for each student, put out a different recording sheet for each day of the week, or let students choose. My hope is to create as much flexibility as possible with this set to best serve you and your students. Be sure to check out my other Write the Room sets or save by purchasing them in a Bundle! Thanks for stopping by!
Hi all! I hope your school year is off to a great start. This project is how I began the year with my youngest students. First, I read them two short books about creativity and making art. Firs…
Elementary Matters helps teachers of grades K-3 make learning most effective by using brain researched ideas, while maintaining fun and organization.
The end of the year is within reach (2 more weeks) and we finally got to let loose a little bit now that testing is over. Can I get an amen?! Last week we learned all about camping and I can't wait to share our fun with you. Please know, this post does contain affiliate links which means that I earn a small amount when you make purchases from some of the links shared on this page. However, my promise to you is that I am only sharing my honest opinions and I will never promote something I do not believe in or love. We started by brainstorming background knowledge. I split my kids into groups and each had a different topic to discuss. We made an anchor chart and added to it each day as we learned something new. Although I am not an expert camper by any means, I was surprised to learn that the majority of my students had little to no experience with the great outdoors. We also read lots of camping and summer camp themed books. Here are few of my favorites. You can click each book image to be taken right to the book on Amazon. Their favorite part was when they got to bring in towels (aka "sleeping bags") and flashlights to read with. Seriously, they would have read all day long if I let them! On the last day I set up a tent and campfire and the kids took turns reading around the fire and inside the tent. Sidenote, the "campfire" was pretty much like a never ending STEM challenge. I must have built and rebuilt that darn thing 20 times. I used rolled brown paper bags for the logs (and a lot of tape!), construction paper flames, mini glass gems as rocks and to weigh it down, and a shallow pan to put it in. When I create it again next year I am going to try to cover the logs in wood grain contact paper. I also had to tape some of the logs and flames in place so it didn't tip over (can we say real life Jenga?). We made special snacks two of the days. The first day we made campfires using mini marshmallows as rocks, small and large pretzel sticks as the logs/twigs, and gummy peach candies as the flames of the fire. I also saw online where people used candy corn flames and potato stick twigs but I couldn't find those so we worked with what we had. I gave the same ingredients to each child and let them use their imagination to build their campfires. I love how different they each came out! One little one even had marshmallows roasting over her fire. We also practiced How To Writing and made s'mores. We wrote down our ingredients and the steps to make their treats. They then followed their directions and enjoyed the snacks. Instead of regular marshmallows, I gave each child a spoonful of marshmallow fluff to spread. While it was a little messy (one kid got fluff on his head, don't ask hah), it worked well since we don't have a microwave in the classroom to melt regular ones. To tie in art we made Handprint Campfires. First they ripped brown construction paper into logs for their fire. Then, I painted their hands with yellow, orange, and red paint and they stuck it to their paper. You should have heard the giggles from the ticklish paintbrush :) While it all looks like fun and games, I swear we did real work too! Students each picked their own animals to research and used classroom books and online sites like Pebble Go to find facts. After they wrote a paragraph, they created talking animals using the ChatterPix Kids app on our iPads. If you have never used this app before it is AMAZING! Kids took pictures of their animal (or screenshots from an online search), added a mouth, and read their paragraph aloud. The iPad app then makes it look like the animal is talking saying their story. They are also able to save their clip and upload it to our class Seesaw site. Here is one of my little ones' stories. In writing, I found adorable camping themed napkins from Oriental Trading and stapled blank paper inside. The napkin becomes the book cover. My kids used the napkin books as inspiration for their camping themed stories. So cute! In math we used mini marshmallows as manipulatives for addition practice and solved camping themed word problems which can be found here. For added decorations (and a movement activity), I printed pictures of woodland animals from online. I laminated them and hung them around the room. My kids went on a "Nature Walk" to see how many wild animals they could find. They loved it! They recorded everything they found on a clipboard and blank lined paper. Well, that about sums up our week! We had so much fun and I am glad I could share some new ideas with you. If you are looking for more ideas, I have an entire Pinterest board for camping themed classroom ideas. Enjoy! Have you had a camping themed unit in your classroom before? To save these ideas for later, be sure to use the pin below :)
I printed these onto A4 and cut them in half to make A5 cards. I laminated everything and used velcro dots to hold the animal pictures together. farm1 farm1a farm2 farm2a farm3 farm3a
There is almost nothing as pulling a funny face to a child. Now you can encourage the laughter with these 6 kids funny face crafts. With some help kids of all ages can create these fun crafts. laug…
Bring the fun of camping to your home, studio, or classroom through imagination and movement - try these camping yoga poses for kids!
Cute farm animals and their babies activity for learning baby animal names with a matching baby animals to their mothers interactive game.
Cute groundhog day craft perfect for teaching preschoolers or kindergarteners about groundhog day. Great kids craft for school or home.
?Cute farm worksheets for preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten. Preschool farm activities free to work on math and literacy with a farm theme!
This barn and farm animals printable can be used in a variety of ways during the farm theme. Perfect for toddlers and preschoolers!
