Education resources for parents and teachers
Are you teaching the alphabet to your toddler? Check out these fun letter A activities for 2-year-olds! Shortly after she turned two, I began a Letter of the Week series with my younger daughter. After seeing her big sister and three older brothers do activities at the kitchen table, she was ready for her turn! I started with A, but not because it's the first letter of the alphabet. I began with all the letters in ... Read More
In this, the last post in our Quick Tips for Struggling Readers series, I want to share the most important thing you can do for a child who struggles with reading. Read to him. Yes, it's that easy! Too often, we think that reading aloud to older kids is a poor use of our time. Shouldn't we spend every valuable minute having them read? After all, they're the ones who need the practice. Let me share five ... Read More
Looking for some simple ways to help your preschooler master counting and one to one correspondence? You're in the right place! (This post contains affiliate links.) We're almost at the end of our Getting Ready for Kindergarten series! Let's talk math - specifically, counting. Sometimes we confuse counting by rote with one-to-one correspondence. What's the difference? Let me give you an example. My ... Read More
Are your students struggling to understand new words as they read? Today I'm sharing a free printable vocabulary journal! I don't have to tell you that a having a large vocabulary is important. You've probably seen your students or your own kids unable to make sense of what they read - because they stumbled on some tough vocabulary. What's a teacher to do? It's important to build vocabulary from birth, and to ... Read More
Find a variety of hands-on shape and color activities in today's post! Colors and shapes are two of those things your child should know before he starts kindergarten. Thankfully, they're fun to teach! Even though I have taken a very laid-back approach to teaching my kids colors and shapes, my oldest four kids have learned them well by age 3 1/2. I'm doing the same sort of activities with my ... Read More
Have you ever read something and not remembered a word of it? Often when kids complete a reading assignment, they remember very little of what they read. This is especially true when reading nonfiction material such as a social studies article or textbook. If the material is confusing or uninteresting to them, it can be hard to retain it. Today I'd like to focus on a simple reading comprehension strategy to help ... Read More
Looking for fun syllable activities? You've hit the jackpot! Hamburger. Ham-bur-ger. Macaroni. Mac-a-ro-ni. Motorcycle. Mo-tor-cy-cle. Did you know that the ability to break words into syllables is an important part of phonological awareness? Phonological awareness. That's a big teacher-y word, but it's easy to define. Phonological awareness = the awareness of sounds within words 1. Jump. First, I used painter's ... Read More
Did you know that visualizing is one of the most important strategies to teach a struggling reader? Learn more in this post! (This post contains affiliate links.) This post is one of a 10-part series of quick tips for struggling readers. This Reading Mama and I are sharing things you can try right at home! Visualizing... and why it matters When strong readers read a poem, novel, or newspaper, a picture forms in ... Read More
Today I'm sharing a set of printable games that will help your child learn digraph sounds. Today I'm sharing a new set of single-player games. My Four loves these, and they're really helping him learn the sounds of common consonant digraphs! My little guy knows his letter sounds, but those tricky consonant digraphs (sh, ch, th) are another story. I began by creating a game to help him hear digraph sounds at the ... Read More
Is your child struggling to write his name independently? Try this simple strategy for kids who are close to entering kindergarten but still need some help writing their names. (This post contains affiliate links.) This Reading Mama and I have been sharing our top tips for getting little learners ready for kindergarten. So far we've talked about interactive read alouds and concepts of print. Today we'll talk ... Read More
