A Primary Teaching Blog
Celebrating the end of the year is a blast! If you follow me on instagram, Facebook, or blog, you know I am all about teaching my students kindness. I feel as though kindness, consideration of others, and overall care for each other has descended over the past years even since I was in elementary school (read more of my thoughts on anti-bully… Read More
a blog post about math activities Math centers can be pretty daunting, but if you have the right activities (and of course some good old classroom management) they really can be great! I’m all about EASE. I have no time for complicated centers that need to be changed every day 0r even every week! Here are a few simple activities… Read More
Earth Day is such a wonderful day to celebrate our EARTH! It is so very important to teach our students to love the spaces we inhabit (including the classroom, playground, and cafeteria- am I right??). This year I decided to make those sweet little melted crayon hearts. I wanted to share the quote “even broken crayons still color” to teach… Read More
I’m obsessed with Target Dollar Spot erasers. Aren’t we all? We walk in, get sucked in right away to the Dollar Spot, and what do we see? These sweet little baggies full of cute erasers. Do we know what do to with them? No. Do we care? No. I thought to myself, I probably have AT LEAST 3 baggies per… Read More
Let’s talk about search engines. How often do we search Youtube for videos or Google for images and hope nothing inappropriate pops up while you’re trying to share a quick something with your students on the fly? GUILTY. With technology being front and center these days and common core taking us deeper into research, we are in desperate need for a… Read More
Pink Tiara Cookies by Maria Dismondy is a great book that teaches the social skill of kindness. “Bullying” is a huge problem in schools (see why I don’t like using the word “bully” HERE). What happens when your best friend starts hanging out with someone else? Jealousy, that’s what! Kids are very good at excluding others. Dismondy does a great… Read More
This year I wanted to start our measurement unit out with a fun inquiry. I created a very simple, yet very effective measurement inquiry. It took about 10 minutes and the kids completely got where we were headed. This measurement inquiry is for the first grade common core standard 1.MD.A.1, ordering 3 objects by length. I asked each table (6… Read More
Is your elf here? Do you have an elf in the classroom? Will you be getting one this weekend? I hope your answer is YES YES YES. Because you need one {affiliate link}. Monday, she arrived in a cold box straight from the North Pole {aka my freezer}. We voted for a name after we read a note from Santa telling us we’d… Read More
Hi teacher friends! It’s Emily from Polka Dots Please. I’m super excited to be teaming up to share some fabulous books for teaching little ones about history! Here’s my recommended list of history read alouds for the primary classroom. This book teaches about segregation and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of Rosa Parks. Moments throughout Rosa’s… Read More
Every once in a while, I get a BRILLIANT idea. It always comes in the middle of my lesson. I literally say, “WAIT. Let’s try this…” Have you had those moments before? It happened to me today when I started teaching commands or as common core calls it “imperative sentences”. It all started with my little Clifford stuffed animal that I… Read More
