Today I’m doing something I’ve never done before… a product review. And the reason is because I believe you’ll find these activity plans from Jamie at Hands On: As We Grow hugely helpful and useful. I was not given the product for review, and there are no affiliate links here. I bought the weekly activity […]
End of Year Treasure Keepers
At the end of the school year we like children to have a keepsake to remind them of the year and their friends. One way of doing this is for the children to write little notes or draw pictures to give to each other. Even having small paper scraps with their friends’ names on them […]
Storytelling with Jack and Jill
Storytelling is deeply ingrained in all cultures and for young children it is a way of expressing what is flowing through their imaginations. Storytelling is also an excellent approach in developing early literacy skills such as understanding how stories are put together, expanding children’s vocabulary and how to use words to change or edit the […]
Mother’s Day Cards for Kids to Make
These Mother’s Day cards are great because you can make them as simple or as difficult as you like, depending on the fine motor skills of your little ones. What you’ll need The free downloadable Mother’s Day Card templates Red, white and pink paper (for the top piece) and card for the base piece Glue […]
Pre-Writing Skills: Essential for Early Learners
PLEASE NOTE: You can listen to this article in podcast format over here! Most research on early writing has focused on lower primary-aged children which means studies on younger children (from 2-5 years) are a little thin. One of the causes of this was the long-held philosophy that very young children would learn what they […]
Writing When You Only Have A Minute (with sentence sticks)
I really love these sentence sticks. They’re so quick to create and easy to use! If you’re new to my blog, each month I create a learning activity that can be done in only a few minutes – some take 60 seconds or less. This series of blog posts can be found here. Depending on […]
Easter Early Readers and Bookmarks
Easter is coming! This gives us another opportunity to naturally add a little reading and writing into our children’s lives. These 2 Easter early readers are made with dotted writing for early writers to trace and colour. Simply print and fold into 4 to make a book. There are also 3 different bookmarks in colour and […]
9 Healthier St. Patrick’s Day Treats
Looking around Pinterest (one of my favourite hobbies), we can find TONS of brilliant ideas for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. It’s still a few weeks off but it’s never too early to start planning! Readers found the post 10 Healthy Christmas Party Foods helpful in December so I thought I’d look around for healthier options for St. Patrick’s Day. […]
How to Make Awesomely Effective Literacy Bags
What is a literacy bag? A pack containing a terrific children’s book along with a combination of toys, games and activities that relate to the book and extend learning. Why use them? Teachers do use literacy bags in the classroom, but the most popular use is to send them home for a few days. Encouraging […]
Word Family Origami Pinwheel
A month ago I shared these free little math books with you. They came about because I was gathering ideas for a word family series and thought the little books were too cute not to share. Well… I’m still working on creating hands-on word family activities for kids and this week I decided that a […]