Hi friends, You may have heard and may feel that it is good to give your child input and choices in what he or she learns. This is a great practice and often makes learning so much more fun. However, maybe you are sure where to start or how to include student choice into your lessons and education journey. A KWL chart is a wonderful way to encourage student input.
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What Can I do if My Child Can’t Write Letters or Numbers Yet?
Hi friends,
Is your child not writing recognizable letters or numbers, drawing recognizable shapes, or coloring inside the lines yet? Are you wondering what you can do to help your child improve in these areas, especially if your child isn’t interested in writing at the moment? You are not alone. So, today, I am going to give you some activity ideas that will do just that.
Hi friends, What do you use for organization in your homeschooling journey? Do you use folders, boxes, or plastic containers to keep your homeschooling materials organized? These items may have a place in your organization system. However, binders and binder covers can be important organization tools. 
Hi friends, How are you? Earlier this month, I wrote about fact families, an important beginning math skill. This week, I thought I would write about identifying nouns, an important beginning language arts skill. Once we start learning about letters, letter sounds, and simple words, often one of the next skills is to identify nouns. Nouns, as we know, are people, places, and things. It might seem simple to us, because we know it. Yet, for students just starting out, it may not be quite so easy. It may take practice and a variety of activities to get the idea of what constitutes a noun and what doesn’t. I have used a variety of ways to teach and reinforce noun identification. The first way that I will tell you about to teach, reinforce, and practice the skill of identifying nouns is to make it fun. You can make up simple silly stories leaving out the nouns and having students come up with nouns to complete the stories. (Yes, there was a product that was out when I was growing up that was very much like this.) Another way to teach, reinforce, and practice the skill of identifying nouns is to have word sorts. For a simple sort, have just noun and verb sorts. Don’t make the words too difficult at first. Have simple nouns like, “man, boy, cow, book, car” or simple verbs like “jump, run, clap, read, eat”. Believe it or not, some words that may seem like simple nouns or verbs may be a little confusing. For example, when I was writing the examples above, I originally had toy as a simple noun. However, if a student has ever been told, “Don’t toy with me” he or she may wonder why it is a verb in this case and a noun when it refers to something with which to play. I also had hide down for a simple verb, but a student who has heard of animal hide, may not understand why it is a noun in that case and a verb when playing and trying not to be found. You may decide to use the words that may be a little tricky, however, I do feel that it is worth considering before you teach them. This may be especially true when teaching the skill to those whose first language is not English. A third way to teach, reinforce, and practice nouns is to have students do activities in which they color in words a certain color based on the type of speech. I actually created an activity where nouns are colored in blue. It seems to be one that people enjoy. Now, it is your turn. How do you teach, reinforce, and practice the identification of nouns? Please, comment below. I look forward to your ideas. If you are finding value in what I write, please share it with your friends and family. Also, please consider joining the email list to get content sent straight to your inbox. Thank you. P.S.- Did you know that DUO Inspirations creates educational materials? If you are interested in having me create an activity for you, please contact me. Also, some are given free, especially if you are on the email list. Thank you. 
Hi friends,
How are you today? Do you have planned work to give the students who finish early or to give the class to do when you are not in the class? There will always be times when you will not be there to guide the students or will be busy with other students. So, it is good to have enrichment or review materials for students to do in every topic or skill you teach. Sometimes, it takes time to gather enrichment and review materials for every topic and skill you teach. However, it is easier when you have someone who will create these materials for you. DUO Inspirations is such a resource. If you need an enrichment activity or review materials in any particular topic or skill, please contact me. In the meantime, please, let me tell you about one of the activities that I enjoy. It is something that almost any grade can do. The activity is taking a word with quite a few letters in it or a short phrase and asking the students to make smaller words they can make out of the letters in that word or phrase. It is better if you can use a vocabulary word or topic phrase that goes with the subject you teach. Creating words out of letters of a larger word or small phrase is an important skill. It helps students to notice the letters in a word. This helps in spelling as well as reading. Here is an example I did out of the letters in the word education. There are other words. However, I thought one hundred was a nice round number. 
If you notice, most of the words are smaller words. That reinforces the fact that it can be done with success with most grade levels. Also, as you can see many of the words have prefixes or suffixes. So, this is makes a wonderful activity to review root words, prefixes, and suffixes.
I usually tell students that they cannot use slang, bad words, or proper nouns. However, you can use whatever guidelines you wish. I hope you and your students enjoy this activity. Another good idea for doing an activity like this is asking students their strategy to finding words. One of my strategies is to choose endings and look for any other words that have the same ending, such as ten and den or can and tan. Now, it is your turn. Have you ever done this activity? What are your guidelines? Do you and your students enjoy it? Also, if you find value in my posts, please feel free to share with your friends and also sign up to receive the Education Blog by DUO Inspirations in your inbox. Thank you. |
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