Curating resources & sharing stories to empower teacher & student ownership, wonder, and daring.
Author: McKenzie Ross
I'm just a mom with a teaching license, raising my kids, and writing for this blog! Someday I hope to be back teaching when they are older, but for now, I'm here and loving it!
Hey seniors! It’s that time of the year again. The time when Christmas break is over and you’re heading into your last days of school before graduation. Anytime between now and the spring, senioritis is going to hit. It happens to everyone! As someone who has been through senioritis twice, once in high school, once in college, here are my tips for you to make it through your last months as a student!
Take breaks. Work hard and get those assignments done, but also, take breaks! It will help you be more productive in the long run. Plus, you deserve a break!
Make lists and prioritize what needs to be done.
Fill those lists with exciting to-do’s as well! Such as “pick up senior packet” or “Finish last paper.”
Grab a friend to do homework with, study, and check off those to-do lists with! It can be easier to stay motivated if you’re both working towards a common goal.
Remember that you didn’t come this far to only come this far. The end is near, you can make it!
You’re a great student and have the potential to go so far, so keep going! We believe in you!
The past month I’ve been writing articles on picture books for winter holidays beyond Christmas. I realized that a Christmas book list was always on my mind come December, but I was being one-track-minded and not recognizing that there are plenty of people in the nation and the world that celebrate many other holidays during the winter season.
It was fun to put these different book lists together and learn more about each holiday. I’ve been able to teach my own children more about different holidays as well! Here is the full list of each holiday I covered.
I am a day late on Three Kings’ Day, I apologize! I was hoping to get this article up on January 6th, the day the holiday is celebrated. However, a mental health day was much needed, so therefore this post is a day late. However, I still feel it is an important one and should not be put off another year! So here it is! Picture books to read for Three Kings Day.
Celebrate Christmas and Three Kings’ Day with Pablo and Carlitos
The Story of the Three Wise Kings
Hurray for Three Kings’ Day!
What other books do you like to read to your class about Three Kings’ Day? Is this a holiday that is represented or celebrated in your classroom?
Let’s talk interview tips! A lot of you students out there are most likely going through some sort of interview process over the next year, whether it’s for a job, getting into a college program, or something else. Here are our best tips for you!
Research the company or program before the interview. Specifically, search for their mission statement. Having a decent knowledge of the company can give you an advantage in the interview. It can also help if they pose the question, “do you have any questions for us?”
Wear professionally appropriate clothes.
When asked about your biggest weaknesses, don’t do the cliche “turn your weakness into a positive” by saying something along the lines of “I care too much.” Interviewers know this trick and are often turned off by it. Instead, own your weaknesses and let them know it’s something you’re working on.
Be personal and approachable.
On the way to the interview, turn on your favorite song, and jam out! It’s good to let loose for a little bit before going in, it can help you stay calmer and be yourself.
Follow up the interview with a thank you card or email.
We would love to hear your tips on interviews! What do you do before, during, and after to prep? Good luck with all of the applying and interviewing you’ll be doing over the course of the year, we believe in you!
Please keep in mind that this review is not sponsored or endorsed in any way, these are all my own thoughts and opinions.
Overall: This is a great parenting book! I feel like Suzy and I are old friends in another life, we are so similar! So that did sway my opinion in ways. However, I loved that she began the book with a preface that she didn’t really like parenting books, so she wrote one of her own! And did it beautifully by the way. The overall feel of her book is that parenting is hard and comes with a lot of challenges, but these challenges are manageable and she has tips to share to get us all through them.
Things that particularly stood out to me:
*The pictures she includes of her family and kids, which make the whole book feel more relatable. It’s not as much a “preachy” book full of “I-know-more-than-you” type of wording, it’s full of her real-life experiences and how she managed as a mom.
*She advertises it as an “activity” book as well because she includes 50+ activities to do with kids. I was worried this wouldn’t be applicable or helpful for me because I could just follow her Instagram account. Or I didn’t want to read one big list of activities and be overwhelmed by different things to do with my kids, making it not actually helpful.
However, this wasn’t the case! They are strategically placed throughout the book where they made sense and lined out exactly what you need, how to do it, and even a picture to show the setup! For example, after a whole chapter on taby’s (not quite a baby anymore, not quite a toddler yet), she finished the chapter with a section of taby activities.
They aren’t activities you will be doing right at that moment, obviously. But it does make it easier to flip through quickly and pull up an activity to do with your kids, and they are especially easy to find since there are pictures of where the activities are!
*There is a whole chapter on tantrums that completely changed the dynamic of our home. It was so good!
*A lot of her ideas were just little steps to get you through parenting. There wasn’t anything huge you needed to understand or accomplish, she just teaches simple ideas like, “teach your child to use a code word when they are struggling to avoid tantrums.”
As far as cons go, I honestly could not find any. It is organized well, the activities are doable as a parent, and the whole book feels very relatable. The only minuscule thing I might be able to think of is that it’s very directed at parenting young kids, and won’t help as in-depth with parenting pre-teens/teenagers. However, it does really niche down the book to make it very applicable instead of having a broader perspective.
Susie Allison wrote a great book, one I would recommend to any parent in the early stages of parenting. I have gifted this book to many friends that all agree, it is a great parenting book!
This may be a little cliche, but I think doing a year of review at the end of a year is not only fun, but important to look back on the growth and experience that came.
2020 was quite the year for everyone, it will be a year read about in history books for years and years to come. As far as 2020 goes for the Honors Grad U blog, it was a great year! It started by writing a series on using MBTI in the classroom, one that I loved researching and has helped many to learn more about how knowing personality traits in yourself and your students can make a vast difference.
In March, a global pandemic was declared, and a lot of my posts started revolving around COVID-19 and virtual teaching. One of my most popular posts came from this period of time, a letter to our 2020 graduates and part two.
Into April/ May I started up Feature Friday, which was so eye-opening to me to interview so many educators across the globe and learn more about them, as well as learn from their experiences teaching.
School started in the fall in various different ways- in person, online, hybrid. Teachers were teaching in ways that have never even been attempted before! But also, students were learning in ways they’ve never had to learn before. They deserved a letter dedicated to them.
I started researching and writing about Enneagram in Education and how it can help us as students.
To end the year, I did a series of picture books for winter holidays beyond Christmas. This little research project has been very educational for me in learning more about different holiday celebrations and the history behind them.
It has been such a successful year of blogging and looking back I am grateful for those that made it that way. I’m ready to close this chapter called 2020 and excited to see what 2021 has in store for this site!
If you’re here you need some direction on how to start up sensory bins and other activities for the early childhood age! So before we begin, I want to share with you a whole page I’ve put together of multiple blog posts that can direct you and answer questions that you may have. Check it out here!
Adding in hands-on activities for your early childhood learners can be overwhelming at first, but don’t stress! I am here to help. What qualifies me? I was in the exact same position as you a few years ago. I had the desire to be the #teachermom that pulls out fun, educational activities for my kids, and even followed plenty of people on social media giving me all of the ideas for activities. BUT it seemed absolutely overwhelming to do so. Eventually, I got the hang of it, and now I am in a place where I can walk you through it! Here’s what I did.
I invested in materials. Typically, these materials are fairly inexpensive and you’ll probably find a lot of them around your home (rice, cooking utensils, paper, markers). But I found the most success when all of the materials were there and ready for me to pull out. I spent around $75 at Amazon, Walmart, and The Dollar Store combined. This is also partially because I didn’t want to share my kitchen materials with my kid’s activities, so I spent a good chunk on new spoons, cups, muffin tins, etc. Having all of the materials together and organized helped tremendously to help me feel like I could be a part of this crafty early childhood educator bandwagon of hands-on activities!
I lined out the purpose of these activities. Yes, I want my child to have these experiences and learning opportunities. But was I setting up activities for me to sit down and work with my kids one-on-one? Did I need the activities out to keep them entertained while I worked on something else? Yes to all of the above. However, it would take time to achieve the latter.
I decided to use the sensory bins and activities for one-on-one time and connection with my kids at first, and then eventually use them as something for them to do while I made dinner or worked. I wouldn’t be setting myself up for success by expecting my kids to play independently and keeping expectations of the activities.
I found the right social media accounts to follow. There are parents and educators out there that have done all of the dirty work for us! You don’t have to carefully create a new activity each time you feel your child needs entertainment or has a skill they need to practice. Others have already done it, and they are on social media! My favorites: Busy Toddler and Days with Gray.
These two stand out to me because they don’t post extravagant activities. It takes minimal set up time, simple materials, and are doable for any parent or educator to put together! Watch out for those social media accounts that are posting above and beyond activities that will make you feel inadequate to carry them out!
I made a schedule. This was a temporary thing that I didn’t have to do for long, but helped initially. It made it predictable for all of us and gave me a visual of what I could expect. I decided activities in the morning would be 1:1 and done with new activities that needed a lot of supervision. Afternoon activities, while I was cooking dinner, would be independent activities that I knew I could trust my kids alone with. It looked like this:
Week one: Activities in the morning after breakfast, before nap.
Monday: bubble foam Tuesday: rice scoop and transfer Wednesday: water painting on construction paper Thursday: Color mixing pour station Friday: contact paper art
Week two: morning activities for together time, afternoon activities for independent play
Monday morning: moon sand Tuesday afternoon: water painting on construction paper Wednesday morning: color mixing pour station Thursday afternoon: contact paper art Friday morning: dot sticker line-up/ color match
Week three: Start trying two activities a day!
Monday morning: moon sand Monday afternoon: sticky note shape match Tuesday morning: rice bin scoop and transfer Wednesday afternoon: water sensory bin Thursday morning: play dough Friday afternoon: dot sticker activity
This isn’t exactly but gives you an idea. Mornings were for working together and learning together. Afternoons were for independent play with materials I could trust my kids with. This schedule didn’t last forever, only about 3-4 weeks. But once I was in the rhythm and knew what to expect more, I didn’t need the schedule as much and slowly tapered off. Eventually pulling out activities became intuitive and I could tell when we needed one, what type it needed to be, and so forth.
Do what you feel comfortable with. Are you not into playdough or paint? THAT IS OKAY! You can still have success. Just because a teacher or mom on Instagram shows how “easy” and “doable” it is to let children play with slime doesn’t mean you have to do it too.
My first activities with my daughter were water sensory bins (because all it takes to clean up when it spills is a towel.) and “painting” with water on construction paper. Again, because cleaning up water is mounds easier than cleaning up rice.
Eventually, all of our water play led to me being more comfortable with dried corn in a sensory bin. Then rice. Then, I let my daughter paint… It was absolutely nerve-wracking, but guess what I learned? The paint can be cleaned up. I can clean it up, and my daughter can learn how to clean when she helps! “Everything can and will be cleaned up.” Now, years later, we paint at least once a week, and I can comfortably leave my 3.5-year-old alone at our kitchen table to play with play-dough. Rome wasn’t built in a day, friends.
Set you and your kids up for success. This is something that deserves a whole blog post, but I’m going to sum it up in two paragraphs for you. When setting up activities, think ahead. Are you working with paint? Keep a wet rag close by for messes. Maybe today is rice sensory bin day? Don’t put the bin near the fridge, because when it inevitably spills, it will roll under there and you won’t ever want to set up a rice sensory bin again. Also, set your kids up for success. No child was born knowing how to play properly in dried rice and corn, they need boundaries and rules! Keep it simple, but keep them there.
Don’t add too much rice, don’t give them access to too much paint, or too much water, etc. Use big blankets or dollar store table cloths and shower curtains to protect your floors. And know your exit plan. What will clean up look like? What will your child help with, and what will you take on? Read my whole list of sensory bin tips here.
I know, I know. This post can be just as overwhelming, if not more so than you were before. But take it in baby steps! Figure it out as you go! Your child isn’t looking for the perfectly curated bin with exactly the lessons and skills they need for their current age and stage.
Your child is looking for an opportunity to play. To spend time with you. To just be a kid. These finite details aren’t here to scare you away or add more to your plate, it’s just a reference guide for when you need help.
So let’s break it down to basics.
How do you start a rice sensory bin? Open a bag of rice. Pour contents into a large bin or bowl. Add in a cup and spoon. Sit on the floor with your child and enjoy.
It really is that simple. So, go play! Go have fun! And go let those kids explore!
