Springtime is my favorite season– the world is waking up after a cold winter, the trees blossom, and tulips and daffodils poke their sleepy heads out of the dirt. It is simply glorious! It feels like a breath of fresh air, and the sunshine brings so much joy.
Students can feel it, too. There’s a little extra excitement and happiness in the air, and it’s just so much fun! Bringing the feeling of a new season into your classroom is a great way to engage students and get them excited about learning. And as I’ve said countless times before, when fun and learning meet, magic happens.
To help you bring the magic of Spring into your classroom, I’ve created a Springtime Find & Count page you can print off and share with your class. The file includes both black and white and color versions for all printing needs.
This download is for classroom or personal use only. Do not resell, re-post, or claim as your own.
Spring Break season is upon us, the weather is starting to get warmer, and the end of the school year is creeping up. School breaks are essential for students and teachers alike. The break from the rigors of school work gives everyone a chance to rest, relax, and mentally get ready for the next chunk of the school year. While the breaks are nice, it sometimes leaves parents trying to find ways to keep their kids engaged and entertained. Below is a list of fun, engaging, and educational activities for kids of all ages!
Using sidewalk chalk, make an obstacle or challenge course on the sidewalk or driveway. Include different movements (spinning, jumping, hopping, etc.) to keep kids paying attention to what comes next!
Head to your local library and check out a few books to read together.
Create a “Spring Break Challenge”– kids must complete 8/10 tasks to receive their reward (that can be whatever you choose). Give them two tasks they must do– tasks that are essential life skills– then provide them a list of other options to pick from. Tasks can include things like write a letter then correctly address it and mail it, learn to sew a pillow, learn how to mow the lawn, make a treat for someone you know is lonely, do a sibling’s chore without being asked, make a meal for the family, and so on.
Take a walk around the neighborhood and take pictures of anything interesting you see. Go home and learn more about the things you took pictures of.
Have kids draw up plans for their dream backyard.
Have each child learn how to do one new thing, then have them teach another family member how to do it.
Using a muffin tin and water, freeze small plastic animals or figures. Have the kids imagine they are scientists on a rescue mission to save the animals. Let them experiment with different ways to melt the ice– using syringes, medicine droppers, scoops of water, and so on.
Go outside at different times of the day and observe the different lengths and positions of shadows. Learn why this changes throughout the day.
Let kids use their imaginations and creative thinking to create an obstacle course out of everyday things. Let them think through things as they come across problems.
For older kids, give them each $5, and send them around the store to purchase something for a family member. This gives them a chance to think of someone else, and helps them pay attention to costs of items compared to what they have available to them.
Breaks can feel overwhelming at times, but there are plenty of low cost or free activities to keep your kids engaged, entertained, and active during times away from school. Try some of these activities and let us know what you think!
Last week, I shared some fun ways to use Easter eggs in your classroom. Today I have one more idea you can use!
If you have students who are learning consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, this activity would be perfect for your kiddos. Using the downloadable file below, students can practice reading and recognizing various CVC words.
There are two pages to the file: the first is the student worksheet, and the second is the teacher page. Teachers, cut out the word strips on the second page, and put each strip into an Easter egg. Give each student a set of eggs with the word strips in them. As they open each egg, they can read the word strip, then glue it on the worksheet under the corresponding picture.
This download is for personal or classroom use only. Do not resell, repost, or claim as your own.
Continuing with fun Easter themed activities for your classroom, today we’ll use jelly beans as a learning tool. The best part of using jelly beans is that your students can eat them when they are done with them! A fun, engaging learning activity and a treat?! Sounds like my kind of fun!
This activity would be best for first or second grade on up. Give each student a small bag of jelly beans. Using the download below, have them sort their beans by color, count how many of each color they have, then create a graph showing their results.
Jelly bean math is a low-prep activity, which makes it very teacher friendly, and is fun, engaging, and educational, which makes it great for everyone involved!
Download the worksheets below and try it out with your class! Happy sorting and graphing!
**This download is free, and is for personal or classroom use only. Do not resell, repost, or claim as your own.**
Kids, especially younger ones, love hands-on activities. The movement feels like play time, and also helps build important neural pathways and connections. There are also benefits for increasing hand-eye coordination as students manipulate objects.
In the weeks leading up to Easter, I love to use plastic Easter eggs as manipulatives and learning tools. There are so many things you can do with them to make learning fun and engaging! The activities listed below are mostly geared toward preschool or kindergarten aged kiddos, but I’m sure older kids would enjoy them as well.
Put rice or beans into eggs to make music shakers. Be sure to tape the eggs closed so you don’t end up with rice or beans all over your classroom!
Add eggs to a sensory bin for students to find.
Use eggs as a measuring tool– how many eggs tall is each student? How many eggs wide is their desk? How many eggs would it take to measure from one side of the classroom to the other? *For older kids, you could then have them measure the egg then calculate the actual distance.
Have students do a color sort with the eggs. Make it more challenging by hiding eggs around the room for them to find first.
Hide eggs around the room. Divide the students into small groups and assign each group a color. Whichever team finds all of their eggs first wins the game.
Make a chart with each upper case letter of the alphabet on it. Then, write each lower case letter of the alphabet on small pieces of paper. Put the papers in the eggs, hide the eggs, and have students find them. As they find each egg, they must match it to the correct upper case letter.
Inside each egg, put a piece of paper containing whatever it is they are working on learning– simple math equations, sight words, spelling words, trivia questions, etc. Hide the eggs around the room or in a sensory bin.
Put students in small teams. Give each team a container of egg halves. Set a timer and see which team can make the tallest tower from their egg halves in the time given.
Students can use eggs to form letters or sight words.
Print off two sets of identical Easter egg pictures. Cut them out and have students play memory. You can also hide one set around the room and have them find each egg and find the match in the other set. (see photo below)
Using the printed eggs, write a math equation, sight word, spelling word, etc. Students can pick an egg and complete the task on the egg.
Easter egg mix & match– Print the downloadable file below, then color each egg one color on top, and a second color on the bottom. Give students the cards and a container of egg halves. They can make eggs to match each card. (see photos below)
These activities would be so much fun for younger grades– give them a try with your students and let us know how they go! Parents of young children, these would be fun for you to try at home, too!
You finish teaching a lesson and give instructions for the assignment. As usual, you ask if anyone has any questions, and you are met with radio silence. But because you’re a teacher, you know better than to believe that everyone in the class knows exactly what to do. You’ve learned that there are always questions– sometimes it’s because a student is too shy to ask in front of the whole class, and sometimes (or maybe most often), it’s because a student was not listening. They might have heard you talking, but they weren’t really truly paying attention. Repeating instructions 32 times gets exhausting!
Students often think that hearing is the same thing as listening, when in reality, they are two different things. We hear a lot of things throughout our day. We hear people talking, noisy halls, bells ringing, music playing, and so on. But until we actively hear, we generally don’t truly register what our ears are taking in. Actively hearing – or listening – requires our minds to focus on what is being said or heard so that our brain can make sense of it and understand it. We make a conscious choice to take in the noises and turn it into something more concrete.
In our classrooms, we can implement different strategies to help our students learn to listen rather than just hear.
After giving instructions, pick 2-3 students in the room, and call on each one individually and have them tell the class what the instructions were. Knowing they might be called on encourages them to listen more intently so that they can give an accurate answer.
Before students begin to work, ask them to turn to a neighbor and retell what the instructions were. They can help each other remember what is to be done. This also encourages students to effectively communicate with each other.
Write instructions on the board or display them through the projector– then if they weren’t listening, you don’t have to answer the same question several times, as they will have the instructions right in front of them.
As you give instructions, have them write down the instructions on their own paper. Writing things down helps to create a connection between what is written and remembered.
While it can be frustrating to have students not listen, it can be a great teaching opportunity, and there are strategies that can help students retrain their minds to be more active listeners. Not only is it a valuable skill to have within the classroom, students can learn that being an active listener is an excellent life skill to have in all areas of life– work, relationships, school, recreational time, and so on. Hearing is good, but listening is great.
As teachers, we try to make our classrooms an inviting place to be. We want our students to be excited about learning, and to be engaged in the content we are teaching. We want them to look forward to coming to school. But the reality is that not all of our students will be excited about school. Even still, we must give our best effort to make school as appealing as possible. We can do this through a myriad of ways. Rather than immediately jumping into the lesson for the day, teachers can take a few minutes at the start of class to warm students up and get them ready to learn.
One way to warm up students at the beginning of each class is through simple journal prompts. You don’t have to be a language arts teacher to incorporate journal writing into your curriculum– it can be used in any content area! Giving students a “question of the day” can help them get their minds ready to learn, focus, and participate. The question doesn’t even have to do with the content; it can be a silly, funny, or random question. Regardless of the kind of question it is, giving students a fun way to begin class can help ease them into learning and get them ready to focus.
You can even go beyond just having them write by having them share their answers with a neighbor, then have a few students share with the class. This can be a fun way for everyone to think about the question in different ways, which encourages critical thinking. It also gets students talking to each other, helping foster class communication and relationships.
Thinking of a question to ask every day can sometimes feel a bit daunting. In case you need some question ideas, I’ve compiled a list for you! You can download the list and print a copy to keep in your files, ready to be used any time you need a question suggestion.
**This download is for personal or classroom use only. Do not sell, repost, or claim as your own.**
