Find fun lessons and ideas to captivate & motivate your young learners!
Find fun lessons and ideas to captivate & motivate your young learners!
Find fun lessons and ideas to captivate & motivate your young learners!
Looking for a fun way to bring math and apple crafts together this fall? These apple worm math crafts and centers are hands-on, easy to prep, and packed with skills. Students will love creating cereal worms to practice counting, patterns, and fine motor skills—and you’ll love how simple they are to set up for Apple Week or Johnny Appleseed Day.
Engaging apple-themed science experiments, STEM challenges, and crafts perfect for fall! This blog post features hands-on activities like building apple towers, designing apple boats, and exploring the parts of an apple through creative crafts. Students will love investigating why apples float, what keeps them from browning, and even making apple volcanoes. With both print and digital recording options, these activities are perfect for integrating technology into your fall curriculum.
Creating a kind, connected classroom starts with helping students understand how their actions affect others—and the bucket filler strategy is one of my favorite ways to do just that! In this post, I’m sharing my favorite bucket filler books, anchor charts, bulletin board ideas, classroom management tips, and reward ideas to build a positive classroom community where students feel valued, encouraged, and excited to lift each other up.
Teaching young students how to use scissors can be a challenge, especially at the start of the school year. In this post, I’m sharing simple tips for teaching scissor skills and glue skills that set students up for success, plus easy fall cutting activities that give practice with straight, wavy, and curved lines. Instead of cutting random strips of paper, children create meaningful fall crafts they can be proud of.
Engage your students with fun, hands-on fall activities that build number sense and meet key kindergarten standards. This post offers differentiated numbers-to-20 activities, from counting centers to play dough mats, perfect for small groups or individual practice. Plus, get a free printable “Write the Room” activity to help students practice counting, number writing, and comparing numbers in an exciting way!
Introduce your students to the power of “I think I can!” with this engaging growth mindset lesson inspired by The Little Engine That Could. After reading the story, students create their own train cars with personal goals, forming a colorful bulletin board that reminds them to believe in themselves, work hard, and never give up. Perfect for building perseverance, positive self-talk, and classroom community from day one!
Discover how to set up a fun, fall-themed escape room for kindergarten and first-grade students! This blog post shares step-by-step tips for creating an engaging escape room experience that builds teamwork, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills. Learn how to craft a captivating scenario, incorporate academic clues, and adapt the escape room for different classroom settings. Perfect for any elementary classroom!
This post offers practical tips and resources for setting up and using a sound wall effectively in your kindergarten or early elementary classroom. Learn how sound walls support phoneme-grapheme correspondence, enhance reading and spelling skills, and organize sounds by articulation. Discover space-saving options, lesson ideas, and the importance of professional development to maximize your sound wall’s impact.
Fun, editable name activities for preschool & kindergarten! These engaging ideas will help your students learn to recognize, spell, and write their names. Perfect for name writing practice, back-to-school centers, and helping students recognize their names.
Help young students understand what it means to belong to a classroom community with meaningful Our Class Is a Family activities. This post shares ideas for a class promise poster, bracelets with poems that help remind them of the bracelet’s meaning, an anchor chart, an editable class book with predictable text and student photos, a collaborative puzzle, and a coordinating bulletin board that help the class-family message stay with students.
Over 100 easy, fun, and hands-on science experiments and STEM activities tailored for preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade teachers. These seasonal and themed ideas use common household items, making them simple to set up and perfect for keeping students engaged. Say goodbye to the stress of planning and seamlessly integrate exciting science lessons into your curriculum. Explore now and make science a breeze for your young learners!
Ready to teach the alphabet in a way that’s truly effective—and backed by science? In this post, I’m sharing how I introduce letters and sounds using a speech-to-print approach that aligns with the science of reading. You’ll also find a free phonics lesson you can download and use right away with your students!