A list of ways for parents to prepare your child’s return to school in Middle Tennessee, get Back to School help and hints to ease into a new school year.
Top things that a parent can do to help develop communication with your child’s teacher
Being prepared for school is the number one thing that you can do for your child’s Education. Studies show that children do better in school, when there is an active involvement from the parents. There are number of ways that parents can do this:
First Impressions
Make sure to attend the Welcome Meeting at the beginning of the year-this is your first contact with your child’s new teacher and your first opportunity to let your child’s new teacher get to know you and your family.
Communications
Once School starts, maintain close communications with the teacher, make sure to find out from your child’s teacher, (every teacher will be different), the most convenient ways to communicate with them.
Volunteer
Teachers always need help. Let your child’s teacher know that you would like to volunteer in some capacity. Most of the time, depending on the teacher’s needs and your interest and availability you can find something, however minuscule, to help with.
Involvement
Become involved in your local PTO (parent-teacher organization). You will have added opportunities to communicate with teachers, and be better informed when you participate in the PTO’s activities and events.
This fun cork board is disguised as a school locker door! Simply open the door to expose the cork board – it’s a great way for your kid to keep things neat and tidy the homework desk.
Basic Items Required
1. 17″x12″ sheet of green craft foam 2. Cork bulletin board (ours was approximately 16″x11″) 3. ½ sheet of orange craft foam 4. ½ sheet purple craft foam 5. 2 large black craft foam circle 6. 1 medium green craft foam circle 7. 1 small purple craft foam circle 8. White craft glue 9. Black fine tip marker 10. Blue glitter glue 11. 1 self adhesive hook and loop circle 12. Shipping tape
How To make IT
1. Place bulletin board onto green foam sheet. You want to trim the foam to fit the bulletin board, leaving about ¼” overlap of foam. (See photo.)
2. Set the bulletin board aside for now. Cut 6 strips (8″ x ¼”) from orange felt. Glue three strips toward the top of the green foam, and three toward the bottom, spacing them about ½” apart, to create the locker slats. (See photo.)
3. Cut a strip of orange felt 3 ½” x ½” for the locker handle. Glue it to the right side of the green craft foam.
4. To make the combination lock, place one of the large black circles on the work surface and glue the medium green circle to the center of it. Next, glue the small purple circle to the center of the green circle.
5. Cut the remaining black foam circle in half. You will only need one of the halves, save the other one for a different project. Cut the half circle in half again. Next, trim about ¼” of the border off of both pieces. You will use the two border trims for the combination lock handle.
6. Cut a triangle from purple felt measuring 9″ x 9″ 4 ¼”.(See photo.)
7. Without using glue just yet, position the lock handle and the lock itself just below the orange locker handle. When you have it where you want it, glue it in place. Use a fine tip marker to add lines around the green circle of the combination lock. (See photo.)
8. Glue the purple triangle to the front of the locker so that the point of the triangle is pointing upward at about a 45 degree angle. Do NOT decorate with glitter glue yet.
9. Position the “locker” on top of the bulletin board. Use clear shipping tape to secure the left side of the locker to the left side of the bulletin board. Open the locker door and lay it to the left. Tape the inside of the locker door to the bulletin board. (See photo.)
10. Close the locker door and attach a self adhesive hook and loop circle to the right border of the bulletin board, around the middle, somewhere near your combination lock. Attach the other side of the hook and loop to the locker door. (See photo.)
11. Decorate the purple triangle with glitter glue. You can write your name or something more general such as “RA RA” or “GO TEAM.”
12. Place your completed project somewhere out of reach for at least 4-5 hours to allow the glitter glue to dry completely.
Fun Math Games For School Or Homeschool Education – Printable Board Games, Card Games And Game Sheets For Children. Educational Games Ready For The Classroom Or Home. Makes Math Fun and Easy. Kids, Teachers and Parents All Love These Fun Math Games.
Let’s face it, math can be fun but not all kids think it is. Kids are used to being entertained and expect everything that you want them to do, to be just as entertaining as their favorite pastimes.
“Making Math More Fun Printable Math Games”
gives you 4 e-books jam packed full of kids math games and fun math activities to make math exciting and easy to learn.
# Math Board Games – Printable Math Board Games
# Math Print and Play Games Sheets – Printable Games Sheets for 2 Players
# Math Card Games – Printable Math Card Games
# Math Games Ideas – Math Games for School or Home
These are electronic books (e-books) that are downloaded to your computer in a flash. Which means you can be reading them and playing all these games in as little as 5 minutes from now. Read more
In this video a nursery teacher is teaching children a rhyme ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’ and how to perform actions with it. Even you can try this way for teaching your child.
Materials Required: none
Activity Time: Ideally 15-30 minutes
Concepts Taught: Recall of Art mediums, projects, artists as well as listening, concentration and memorization skill
This is a great game for use as a reward or an engaging activity once assisgned work is completed. The first student, or teacher, says “Today in art class I made an “A”bstract painting like Jackson Polluck.” The next student repeats “Today in art class I made an “A”bstract painting like Jackson Polluck” and then adds “and a “B”rown “B”ear from a paper “B”ag.” This continues for each letter of the alphabet. The students are tasked to come up with a phrase for each letter that uses one or more words that begin with their letter. The phrase must reference specific art terminology and include at least a project and a medium or an artist. My 5-8th grade students beg me to play this game. We have competitions between tables to see who can get the furthest through the alphabet, in any given period of time, and be able to repeat their progress to the class.
Materials : Pieces of papers with letters on them that look like license plates.
Plain paper : Create a chart to tell students what number each letter represents (makeup numbers for each letter depending on your students’ level of proficiency).
Activity: Make a chart that tells a certain number for each letter of the alphabet. For example..
A=6
B=3
C=2
D=7
and so on. After that is done put out the pretend license plates and have them add up the total on the license plates. For example if a license plate was “bad”, that would be = 3 + 6 + 7 = 16
The kids have a lot of fun doing this and they learn a lot from it. They could work in pairs or by themselves.
Extensions: Many other games / activities could be developed from this. Examples are whose name is the most “valuable”? Who can create the most valuable word?
On the board draw three lines for writing on – the bottom line brown (the dirt), the middle line green (grass) and the top line blue (sky). Then when demonstrating how to draw a letter you can refer to the lines the letters touch and it keeps their attention easier than boring normal lines.
Title – Math Bingo
By – Debbie Haren
Subject – Math
Grade Level – 3 to 4
Take a blank bingo sheet and put < > and = signs in different squares of the card. Then make up equations to put on cards. Some ideas are 100____88(<) or 1002____102(>). Make sure you make about 30 of these cards with some of each equation anywhere. Then let the children playing decide what kind of bingo is needed to win that game. Some examples are postage stamp or all four corners or the whole board needs to be filled. The children will love this game and all the children playing get to look at the problem and figure out if it is < , > , or = to
1. Pick one student to come and sit in a chair facing the class.
2. Put a word (appropriate level) on board. Tell students not to say word outloud.
3. Explain to class the person in chair will call on them to give him/her a ONE-WORD clue in order to guess the (for example: Mystery word is SUN: yellow, sky, hot, etc.) Mystery Word. Student who gives the last clue that helps the person guess the Mystery Word is “it.”
I used this as a great filler in my Substituting days, but it is also a good vocab builder and thinking game for ESL learners.
Materials Required: tune of “Frere Jaques” Concepts Taught: learning the order and names of all 12 months
This an easy song to remember and will be stuck in your head for hours!!After we begin the song and they are instructed to clap on the current month once and continue singing.
Tune of Frere Jacques(Brother John)
JAN U ARY FEB RU ARY MARCH AP RIL
MAY AND JUNE JU LY AUG UST
SEP TEM BER OC TO BER NO VEM BER
DE CEM BER
The spaces are to initiate slight riffs
or just making the months fit the tune!
