Sensory bins are so beneficial for young children. They provide kids with a hands-on way to explore using their senses. They’re also a great opportunity to learn to play cooperatively, work on fine motor skills, develop their language skills, and more! In this post, I’ll be providing you with step by step instructions on how to dye sensory filler.
In this series, I will be showing you how I teach my students to read. Depending on what grade you teach, you may or may not be able to skip some of these sections. It all depends on your students’ prior knowledge. In September, I always do some assessments to see if my students know all their letters and letter sounds. I have created an assessment that you can do with your students if you’re unsure what their abilities are. Click here for a link to the resource. Once you know that your students have their letter sounds, you can start working on syllables.
I love Grimms toys as much as the next person, but they can get pricey really quick! I own their rainbow as well as some other wood toys. I really love how open ended they are. I’ve been looking for ways to make rainbow dyed toys at home. With some trial and error, I found the easiest method and I’m going to share it with you!
Teaching students how to read can be one of the most stressful things to do as a teacher. It isn’t always easy and there are a lot of factors that come into play. It’s important to remember that learning to read is a developmental process and kids progress at their own rate. I’ve reminded parents before that there is a big difference in development between a child born in January and one born in December. They may be in the same grade, but a child born in January has been alive for almost a full year longer than one born in December. That often puts things into perspective for them. And guess what? Those kids do catch up!
I recently bought an IKEA Flisat table and I am so glad I did. They are very popular, and for a good reason – they’re so versatile! I bought it to do sensory bins with Baby J (once she grows a bit more), but then I thought “why not make a light bin?” I successfully turned my Flisat into a light table for only $60, making it a much cheaper alternative to traditional ones. The best part? It can be taken out anytime so that both sides can be used for sensory play. In this post, I will be showing you how you can easily do it yourself.
For context, my school hours are 8:00-2:30. I would switch classes around 11:15 every day. The times I put in are approximate. I went by the cues of my students rather than the clock. Sometimes if the students were very engaged, I let things go longer. On the other hand, if things weren’t going well, I did not hesitate to cut activities short. I tried to keep the number of transitions from indoor to outdoor to a minimum, but unfortunately, with the way our school’s schedule is, there’s only so much I could do. We follow the same schedule as the rest of the school so the students have 2 outdoor recess blocks per day.
I never thought I would ever teach kindergarten full time. I’ve been teaching since 2013. I saw myself as a junior teacher until I got thrown into my first LTO in grade 2/3 and I absolutely fell in love with primary. Since then, I moved around through various positions, but Kindergarten terrified me! I loved doing coverage in kinder land, but I wasn’t interested in teaching it full time. This is my second year in Kindergarten and my professional views on how to teach it have changed a lot. I currently teach in a 50% French model, so I teach two classes for half a day. I’ve found a lot of schedules out there focus on a full day model with one class, so I will be providing ideas and things to consider on how to create an effective flow of the day when you have much less time with the students.
Home learning has been a weird time for all of us; teachers, students and parents. It seems daunting and overwhelming, but once you have a good system in place, it can run quite easily without too much work on your end.
Looking for some French resources to help you with Distance Learning? Check out this list of FREE activities appropriate for Kindergarten. Click on the title of each activity to get a direct link to the product!
COVID-19 has left us in very uncertain times. It got really intense, really quickly and as much as I’m happy that the Canadian government has taken it as seriously as they have, it has left a lot of uncertainty with work. Both myself and my husband are now home, which my cat is LOVING, but it feels weird. Weird not to see my friends and family. Weird not to be able to go out to stores and restaurants whenever I want. Weird to not be able to go to the gym and see my personal trainer. I’ve been with her for over 5 years and I this is the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other. I feel like I took all these for granted now that it’s been taken away from me. I imagine all of you are feeling the same way, as are our students and their parents.
