Thanksgiving Coloring Pages, Mazes, and More

Enjoy free resources you can add to your Thanksgiving collection!

Share with a colleague, leave one or two in your sub folder, maybe have a few available for those extra minutes at the end of an activity or for the student who finishes early. This can be a busy time of year both professionally and personally and having optional activities (from many different levels) can take a lot of stress off teaching around the holiday…

Let’s Play Memory Games!

Do your students need to practice a basic math skill? Do you want them to be more confident using that skill Would you like to send a game home so students can practice math with family members? While playing a Memory Game, students match up numbers with names, computation problems with their answers, fractions with their equivalents and much, much more! Print a set of cards and an answer key, zip both in a bag, and you have an easy to store game that’s an excellent way to spend a few minutes in class, review an important skill, or reward carefully completed work. When you create games …

Need Dice for a Game?

How is it possible I can buy dice and somehow they evaporate over time? I know it’s rare for a solid to sublimate into a gas, but every June I end up with far fewer dice than I had in September. And the ones I have can be in pretty bad shape. I hesitate to send dice home with math games because I know they don’t always come back to school. Many of my math games require dice so here’s my suggestion for you: use a six sided pencil! A student sharpens a pencil until it’s too short to sharpen. Do you …

FREEBIES: Life Cycle Mobiles

Are your students learning about the life cycle of a frog, bird, bug, whale, or cat? Are you collecting resources to meet NGSS 3-LS1-1? (Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.) With this FREE product, students cut apart squares that represent the stages in an animal’s life, glue them back-to-back with a piece of string between the images, and then suspend the images in a spiral from an embroidery hoop or a loop make from a folded piece of construction paper. Choose from blackline images, color images, or blank …

Any Skeletons in the Closet?

You might be surprised at what has been stored in bins, boxes, and closets from past science adoptions. It takes a bit of snooping and a willingness to sort through supplies that might be unfamiliar to you. I am amazed at the materials I have collected for my science class! The title of the post is a reference to an actual skeleton we found in a box. A bit of wire (unbent paper clip) and a cleaning and it was a great greeting when students came into our classroom! If you find supplies that may not be familiar to you, check with colleagues, the company online, …

Put Your Team on Display

It’s the first day of a school year or the first day with a new group of students. Routines aren’t set, classes like music or PE haven’t started, and you don’t want to spend every minute explaining expectations. What to do with this initial time that’s provides you with information about your students, gives them a chance to be creative, and begins the process of building a team in your classroom? Have your students make people to be posted on the wall. Maybe up high, above your bulletin board? You have a chance to talk to students as they decorate their person. You might have …

Trouble with Tattling?

Do you have students who aren’t clear about the difference between reporting and tattling? Is tattling driving you and your students crazy!! I searched for resources you could consider using in your classroom to help students understand the difference between being safe and getting a classmate in trouble. I also found forms and created a couple more that you could use or adapt for your classroom. I tried to make a primary form that doesn’t require words and a form from students who are able to describe the situation in writing. Let me know if you have suggestions for modifying …

It’s just the ABCs!

Are you putting the ABCs on the wall or maybe on student desk tags? If you’re putting it on the wall, find the middle of the wall, put up the letter “M”, and then add the rest of the alphabet A-L and N-Z. By starting in the middle of your wall with the middle letter in the alphabet, you won’t have to measure where to start the alphabet with the letter “A”. Do you need a simple alphabet to get you started? Here’s a one that’s FREE. I chose the Century Gothic font with black, blue, cian (light blue), green, pink, red, white, or …