Feed

Students start a new school year at Barwell Road Elementary School in Raleigh, N.C. They follow a year-round calendar, with a shorter summer vacation and longer breaks throughout the year. After millions of American schoolchildren fell behind during the Covid-19 pandemic, some states and school districts are looking at year-round school calendars as a way to recoup lost learning. Typically, year-round calendars don’t increase learning time but rather spread school days more equally across 12 months, with a shorter summer vacation and longer breaks throughout the year. That’s the approach in South Carolina, where one quarter of districts will use...

These free printable bat shape mats will be the perfect addition to your Halloween activities for preschoolers and kindergartners. They’d be great during your next bat theme, too. Or when you’re teaching the kids about nocturnal animals. Or just because your students are very interested in bats! As you can see, these bat shape playdough mats can be used at many points during the year. Plus, they’re super easy to prep. And you can use the bat shapes printable with a wide variety of materials. This way, your students will stay very engaged as they’re exploring two-dimensional shapes and practicing...

The folded paper decorated with messages, numbers and fortunes printed under the flaps can spark conversation at gatherings or be given as a birthday card. (Shutterstock)Making “fortune tellers” — a folded paper game children hold on their fingers and thumbs and practice counting and “telling fortunes” with — has been a time-treasured craft and play activity for generations across cultures. One of the earliest known paper-folding instruction books is Japanese, dated to 1797; German educators also encouraged paper folding in 19th-century kindergarten curricula. In English, “fortune tellers” are sometimes called salt cellars, chatterboxes or cootie catchers; in my own family...

Newly Updated 100+ page Dinosaur Packet! Our Dinosaur Unit is a multi-age packet for 3-8 year olds. It is now well over 100 pages and include a wide variety of activities including  games, worksheets, notebook pages (with tracing or fill-in-the-blanks), foldables and other activities for 3-8 year olds. I have added in over 40 new pages of notebook-style pages and worksheets with basic information about the Mesozoic Era, dinosaur information cards, herbivore vs carnivore worksheets, plus new activity pages like dinosaur dot-to-dot pages . There are now 4 PDFs. I split Dinosaur Packet Part 1 into two parts. The Dinosaur...

Thousands turn out in Santa Fe for expanded early votingSanta Fe County Clerk Katharine Clark reported (well, tweeted) 2,082 Santa Fe County voters turned out on Saturday for the first day of expanded early voting for the Nov. 8 general election. According to the clerk’s “real-time turnout tracking tool,” 8,389 early and absentee ballots have been cast so far—approximately 7.5% of the county’s total number of registered voters, based on September registration data (Here’s a list of all Santa Fe County early voting and election-day polling sites). The Santa Fe County Clerk’s office is also seeking feedback on residents’ voting experiences; take a short poll here. A...