We teach little ones to be kind to animals and to not throw rubbish, but can children REALLY help save our world? I’m talking here about our ability to create a long and sustainable future for both the planet and ourselves. Since this blog is focused on early learners it will be no surprise that […]
10 Activities and You Tube Songs to Explore Emotions
Helping little ones understand their own feelings and the emotions of others takes time and consistency. Effort spent in this area helps children learn tactics to control their own behaviours which is a great help to their social development. I have listed here over 10 activities and 10 You Tube songs you might like to […]
DIY Tools to Create the Alphabet
I love learning stations that get little ones playing around with letter formation. This activity combines play dough (yay) and letter shapes or symbols. Instead of providing the full alphabet only the trickier letters have been added along with the shapes necessary to create the rest of the alphabet in lower case. This way children […]
Halloween Spooky Sounds Poster
It’s October and that means…. HALLOWEEN! I will admit that being Australian meant I was quite oblivious to the enormity of Halloween until I moved overseas and was ‘enlightened’. After 20 years abroad working in international schools in Asia and watching the amazing lengths Americans (and others) went to in celebrating this event I admit […]
Let’s Unearth CVC Words
There are many wonderful (and super fun) ways for our little ones to practice putting letters together into CVC words. This activity is for budding archeologists and explorers who must not only uncover letters, but guess what each word might be in advance. One of the benefits of guessing, and hopefully writing, CVC words is […]
No Cook Orange Play Dough
There’s not much need for a post as the No Cook Orange Play Dough infographic is pretty self-explanatory. But I guess I’d better write something! I absolutely LOVE play dough. There’s just something satisfying about all that squishing, molding and pounding. No wonder it’s such a great tool for kids whether for fun or learning […]
CVC Transport Mats for Play Dough and Driving!
Kids LOVE play dough. Kids LOVE transport toys. So why not create a learning activity that can use both? That was my thinking when I was mulling over a new activity for learning CVCs (3-letter words such as dog and cat). Since I was focused on transport I decided I’d use ‘go’ and ‘stop’ signs to […]
Interactive Bulletin Boards to Promote Literacy: 3 Little Pigs
Children LOVE visual aids when learning about fairy tales. Have you tried an interactive bulletin board? It’s a great way to extend learning beyond simple re-telling and to see stories in a new light. You can also use felt boards. This process can help Create a deeper understanding of the story Challenge children to think […]
Creating Night Noises: Virtual Book Club for Kids
I love sharing Mem Fox books with my students and for this hands-on, experimental activity we used her book Night Noises. In this story Lily Laceby and her dog, Butch Aggie, are resting at home by the fire on a cold, stormy evening. A series of noises from outside have Butch Aggie worried but Lily […]
Why I Love my Sound Box for Early Learners
When I started teaching music in my early childhood classes, one of my first projects was to create a Sound Box… a box full of sounds. It sits innocuously in one corner of my room until it’s ‘play’ time or ‘let’s experiment’ time and then it springs to life: loud sounds, soft sounds, whirry, shaky, […]