Build a Home - School Connection with Learning Games

Are you thinking about ways to build a connection with your class families this year?  With this crazy mix of teaching formats that schools will be using, you may need to be resourceful to develop a home-school connection with families that you might never get the chance to meet in real life. 

Just one more challenge for teachers to face... and conquer!... in this new school year!

Do you send games home for families to practice skills with their children? Games are a non-threatening enjoyable way for families to come together and support children's learning while they have fun together!

Here's a little freebie that might help you as you work on building open communication and a mutually supportive relationship with your students' families.

Click here to download these letters at my TpT store.

This resource includes tips for parents about playing games together. For your convenience, the download is provided in both Spanish and English, and has both portrait and landscape orientations in each language. 

One of the most important tips in the letter is "please let the teacher know if your child has a problem with a skill".  Without the usual ability to be constantly watching and making informed decisions, changing the course of instruction for individuals or even the whole class as needed, teachers will be depending more than ever on information from families! Open that avenue of communication!

Each letter is a separate JPEG, to make it easier to either send home digitally or post on your password-protected classroom website.

And if by chance your school is holding in-person Meet the Teacher or Back to School Night events, these make great hand-outs!

The directions are just a bit specific to my easy prep one-page games, which I have soooooo many of in my TpT store, but you can really use them with almost any game that you send home.

 

Click here to see my one-page games!  

Would you like to sample some free one-page games?  Here's Johnny Appleseed's Subtraction  and Pirate Addition Doubles Strategy Games, both of which are great for the upcoming September "events", Johnny Appleseed Day and Talk Like a Pirate Day.  You can simply send the link to your class families, or you can easily create a JPEG by using your snipping tool to take a "picture" of the page and send the game to them that way.

What will you be trying this year to increase communication with your students' families?

 

"Cool" Dice Games for Summer, and They're So Easy to Make!

Hello, Teaching Friends!

I was in Five Below the other day, looking through beach blanket holder-downers, lawn darts, flipflops, and all that type of thing, when I came across these plastic reusable ice cubes. Oh, my,  the ol' teacher brain started whirring!

Now, before I say anything else, let me just tell you that you couldn't pay me enough to ever put these plastic ice cubes filled with some kind of liquid into my drink. First of all, they're plastic, and the whole set cost $1. Ummmm, okay. Second, what IS that liquid, and how sure can I be that none of it is seeping out through some itty bitty pinhole and into my iced tea? This does not fit with the health choices of anyone who is paying top dollar for organic produce.  The option is yours, but I'll opt out, thanks.

On the other hand, as an easy-to-make and novel hands on center activity, I say YES!!!

All you need to do is...

1. Label all sides of each cube using a Sharpie or other permanent marker.

2. Pop them in the freezer.

3. Bring them out for some very cool fun!


Novelty keeps the fun in learning! Kids will love rolling these cool cubes so much that they'll want to keep playing games with them again and again. And again! 

I haven't had any problems at all with condensation on the cubes, plus they stay frozen for a good long time, even with all the handling.  It also takes quite a lot of playing for the labels to wear off, and they're easy enough to write on again quickly.

These examples are labeled for CVC words.

There are lots of other possibilities for programming these cubes. If you write numbers on them, your students can roll five dice and write all of the number models they can using only the numbers rolled. 

Also with number dice, you can use this fluency freebie. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Roll, read the summer sentences fluently, and color in a box. Just click to download.

Enjoy, ... and keep cool!

Happy Teaching!

A Day at the Beach - Generic Game Board Freebie!

Hi, Everybody!

It's a toasty day here in NJ, with predictions of the temperatures going higher for each of the next few days. It got my mind thinking about the beach. I was also thinking about you folks who are teaching summer school, or will be heading back to school while the beach weather is still here. How very hard it is to keep your little ones focused on learning when they really just want to feel the sand in their toes... and so do you!

So, putting those thoughts together, here's a little beach-themed generic game board for you.
You can use it with any skill that your little guys could use some extra practice on, from addition facts, to coins, to sight words,... Simply print the board and spinner and use your own flashcards. Click on the picture to download "A Day at the Beach" from Google Docs.

Happy Teaching!