Well my family has made our move, and I will certainly be sharing all about my new teaching experiences in Australia! However, since there are still a couple of weeks before that time, I have a post I want to share from Michigan. I had a personal goal this year of building perseverance in my […]
Archive | Social Studies
Teaching Perseverance
This year my district has asked every teacher to set a personal goal for their teaching, which can be measured in some way. The idea is that our performance needs to be tied to student data, and so we needed to come up with a plan to indicate that our teaching is contributing to measurable […]
Birthday Celebrations Without Food
I am very pleased to say that I have enjoyed a lovely start to the school year! I have so much to share! I am starting with one thing that has me VERY excited about this year – a new birthday celebration plan! In past years I have allowed students to bring in treats on […]
Mapping the Classroom
First, congratulations to all of the teachers and students who are now on summer break – myself included! My absence on the blog corresponds directly with the “end of the year craziness,” but now that I am on break I have more time to share ideas! This is a lesson/project I did with my kids […]
Student Timeline Project
One of our social studies objectives is for the kids to understand the passage of time, and how this is reflected through life events. We usually accomplish this both through daily calendar activities and investigations of timelines. One thing that has made a huge impact in terms of helping my students understand timelines is our […]
Teaching Them to Tie
I go back and forth on shoe tying. Some years I decide that shoe tying is not on my list of things to teach, and I toss it back into the parents’ court. Other years I decide that it might be worth my while to invest in helping my little ones become competent at tying. […]
Bilingual Classrooms – Guest Post from Lilypad Littles!
I am excited to welcome Ms. R from Lilypad Littles as a guest blogger! She is a bilingual kindergarten teacher who has offered to come and share some of her expertise! With so many teachers finding themselves in classrooms with students that are not native English speakers, I know these ideas will be helpful! In my […]
Names, Names, Names – The Name Story!
At this time of year in kindergarten we spend a lot of time working with our students’ names. Their name is the first gift their parents gave them, and each child has a strong attachment to his or her name. Names are a fantastic and necessary jumping off point for so much literacy work! I […]
Teaching Timelines with no Trouble!
Teaching timelines and how time impacts our lives has been part of the kindergarten curriculum for a while now. Timelines can be lots of fun, but they can also be a bit difficult for kindergartners to manage on their own. Timeline work often became homework, and much of the work became mom or dad’s. I […]
Games are Global
I am currently spending an amazing summer break with my family in Europe – Spain and France. As always when a teacher travels, I find myself constantly collecting ideas and stories to bring back to my classroom. I was delighted to fall upon this lovely scene early in our trip, in Bilbao, Spain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc2Lj4vChgA&feature=youtu.be For […]