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5 Homeschooling Favorites
- Gabrielle Fischer Posted On Sep 11, 2020
Back to school is looking different for everyone, whether you are fully online, in-person, or a little bit of both. Learning Resources has you covered, we picked some of our favorite products that can help you elevate your student’s learning. This list contains five products that can be used together or separately in the classroom! As you use these products, you and your little ones will continually find new ways to use them.
Translucent Geometric Shapes
Using our Translucent Geometric Shapes, there are different exercises from sorting and classifying, identifying the shape, building, fractions, geometry, and more! The different angles of certain pieces allow for introduction an introduction to right, obtuse, and acute angles. This comprehensive geometry set includes fourteen different shapes in seven colors! Relational shapes are perfect for combining small shapes to form larger shapes in multiple ways. This set also features circles in whole, half and quarter increments, which open engaging avenues for fraction exploration. Encourage students to classify and sort the shapes by attribute, such as number of sides, number of angles, straight sides, curved sides, and so on. Have your students
Shapes Don't Bug Me
In conjunction with our Translucent Geometric Shapes, the Shapes Don't Bug Me set is bound to be a classroom favorite. Pieces are relational and translucent, so the creative opportunities are endless! Crawling in the garden or buzzing through the park, bold buggy shapes bring geometry out of the dark! Become an artist of geometry with Shapes Don’t Bug Me while learning that math can be as fun as a summer day. The best part about these shapes, is that they can be sanitized in between uses.
Big Time Student Clock
The Big Time Student Clock is a great way to help kids grasp time skills. Besides the fact that it is super fun to play with, hands-on, and will get them excited about telling time, it will also help them learn how a clock works, where the numbers are, and what order they go in. Teaching time can also be done in everyday conversations, have your student move the clock handles to 12:30 and explain that lunch is at that time. Telling time can be fun and the Big Time Student Clock is ready to play!
Lights and Sounds Buzzers
Kids will light up when they reach for the Lights and Sounds Buzzers. The lights and sounds answer buzzers get little ones giggling and imitating these silly sounds just press to listen add buzzers to any lesson for some extra fun. These buttons are great for teaching patience while waiting for their turn. The buttons include the following sounds: a siren, game-show buzzer, laser and voice saying, "Charge".
Patterned Hand Pointers
These engaging hand pointers are the perfect way to liven up any lesson plan-and encourage students to get excited about learning. These pointers draw student attention and interest and provides positive behavioral intervention. Patterned Hand Pointers show up sharply against light-colored surfaces, but works equally as well on pocket charts, word walls and more!
Whatever You're Feeling Today is Okay! We’ve all been there… Our toddlers or preschoolers come to us crying about mean words spoken, cutting in line, or a friend not their sharing toys. Whatever injustice they are feeling, our first instinct is to tell our little ones that “it’s okay!” And it is okay. Odds are that the issue is not a too big that they can't get by with patching it up with a hug, a kiss, or a Popsicle!However telling our kids “it’s okay” doesn’t help them understand what they’re feeling and why they’re feeling that way. With a little guidance behind emotions we can help them identify and verbalize their feelings and also learn to cope with them. In fact, only saying “it’s okay” kind of brushes your child’s feelings under the rug and tells them that it’s time to let the issue go and move on, whether it feels resolved to your child or not.In fact, what we should be teaching our kids is that whatever they’re feeling in any moment is fine and a normal part of life! Feelings are feelings and your child is going to have them for the rest of their life, so best learn how to deal with them head on. The first step is learning to identify WHAT they’re feeling. Are they crying because they’re angry, frustrated, hurt, or sad?
To assist your child name the emotion they’re feeling, it’s helpful to understand what happened leading up to the feeling. Start by having your child take a few deep breaths to calm down. When they’re ready, ask your child to tell you what happened. Then help them name their feelings AND show that you understand the scenario with a reply that goes something like, “Oh, gosh! It sounds like Timmy pushed you in the sandbox and that made you angry!” Then, show some empathy yourself, “It would make me angry to be pushed, too.” And help your child learn to problem solve with a question like, “What do you think we should do about how we feel?”Learning Resources’ Soft Foam Emoji Cubes are a great way to help kids name and talk about their own emotions.
They will also learn to begin to recognize various emotions in others. Two cubes feature emoji faces displaying 12 different emotions. Begin by rolling one die and asking how your child thinks that emoji is feeling? Is it feeling sad, confused, embarrassed?Next roll one of the other colored die and read the question it lands on. “Share a memory of when you felt shy” or “One time I was frightened because…” are perfect conversation starters and will get your kiddo comfortable with talking about various emotions.A paper plate emotion spinner is another fun activity to help kids learn to identify their emotions.
Start by drawing 8 small circles around the edge of a paper plate.
If your child is able, let them draw a different emotion in each circle. You can suggest things like happy, sad, angry, frustrated, silly, shy, scared, and nervous.
Next, cut a circle the same size out of the edge of a second paper plate. Label the plate “How Am I Feeling?” Let your child paint the center, if you like. Stack the plates, punch a hole in the center of both, and attach them with a brad.
Spin the top plate to reveal various emotions peeking through the hole and ask your child to identify them. You can also use the plates as a tool to help your child verbalize feelings in the moment – a particularly helpful (and distracting!) tool when your child is too upset to speak or doesn’t know how to articulate what they’re feeling.
Next time your child is upset, take a deep breath, and in addition to telling them “it’s okay”, help them feel their emotion and understand it. This will do wonders for their emotional well-being as well as your own. Then, of course, give them a hug, a kiss, and a Popsicle! ????
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