Tag Archives: lower primary

keep the children engaged and learning with fun Easter activities

Keep children engaged and learning with fun Easter lessons and activities – #readilearn

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Easter is coming in 2020 along with school holidays, school closures and lockdowns. While readilearn lessons and activities are designed with teachers of the first three years of school in mind, perhaps, in these challenging times, parents may also find them useful in supporting their children’s learning while they are out of school.

The collection now numbers over 400 resources and more than 70 of these are interactive lessons and stories. All resources can be accessed with a small annual subscription or purchased individually. Many of the resources are free.

While teachers would normally use the interactive lessons on the interactive whiteboard with the whole class or small group, parents access them on their home computers. Just as teachers would discuss the resources when using them with a class, so too, parents discuss them with their children as they work through them together. The most benefit for children comes from the discussion. They are not designed for children to use independently.

Lessons and activities with an Easter focus

Lessons and activities in the readilearn collection cover a range of topics and curriculum areas. However, the focus of this post is on those with an Easter theme and how they can be used to keep the children thinking and learning while having fun. (Note: All readilearn Easter-themed resources can be found here.)

Continue reading: Keep children engaged and learning with fun Easter lessons and activities – readilearn

teaching and learning about living things in lower primary classrooms

Learning about living things in lower primary classrooms – #readilearn

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Learning about living things is an important part of education for young children. This post suggests ways of teaching biological science in lower primary classrooms with lessons ready-to-teach and activities that make learning memorable and fun.

Concepts include:

  • the needs of living things
  • external features of living things
  • where living things live
  • how living things grow

and relate specifically to insects and other minibeasts.

Continue reading: Learning about living things in lower primary classrooms – readilearn

classroom Christmas lessons and activities

Classroom Christmas lessons and activities – reblogged from readilearn

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It’s almost Christmas again and here in Australia we’re on the countdown to the end of the school year and our long summer holidays. Whether you’ll be enjoying a long break or a shorter break over the festive season, here at readilearn we’ve got many ready-to-teach lessons and activities to support your teaching in the lead-up to Christmas.

Get an early start with these lessons and activities

You will get most benefit from some activities if you begin them a few weeks before the finish of term.

Friendship Trees, one of readilearn’s most popular Christmas activities is best begun three to four weeks before school closes for Christmas. Children make their own friendship trees which are then placed on display in the classroom.

Each day children write anonymous messages of affirmation or friendship to each other and place them in the trees. At the end of term, children take their trees home and read the positive messages contained within.

The trees help to develop self-esteem, confidence and friendship skills and are perfect for those last few weeks when temperatures soar and children can become edgy with excitement for the holidays.

A 3D Christmas tree makes a beautiful focal point of the classroom Christmas display. Children cooperatively construct the tree by contributing leaves made by tracing or printing their hands. It is a visible recognition of the value of teamwork and will be admired (and envied) by many. It makes a beautiful background for photographs of individual children to be given as gifts to parents or other loved ones.

Continue reading: Classroom Christmas lessons and activities – readilearn

teaching and learning with nursery rhymes

Teaching and learning with nursery rhymes – reblogged from readilearn

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Nursery rhymes are often a child’s first introduction to our literary heritage. Parents sing nursery rhyme lullabies to soothe their babies to sleep and play nursery rhyme games to entertain them in their waking hours. All the while, children are learning the rhythms and tones of our language, developing vocabulary, ideas and imagination. When children learn the repetitive patterns of nursery rhymes, they are also developing their memories.

Australian author Mem Fox is often quoted as saying that

“Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.”

While I am aware that others question the existence of research to back up that statement, I think most teachers would agree that children who have been spoken to, sung to (including nursery rhymes) and read to before school will find literacy learning much easier in our classrooms. Success with literacy learning often correlates with success later in life.

Already on the readilearn website, there are resources to support your literacy teaching using the nursery rhymes Humpty Dumpty and Little Miss Muffet. More are in development. While some nursery rhymes may be considered to have questionable origins, those origins have no place when teaching them to children. The benefits flow from having fun with the rhythms and rhymes of language.

Teaching literacy skills & developing creative thinking with Humpty Dumpty

The Humpty Dumpty suite of resources includes:

Continue reading: Teaching and learning with nursery rhymes – readilearn

learning is fun with Halloween-themed activities

Learning with Halloween fun – readilearn

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Halloween is just around the corner and many of us wonder how we can have fun with a Halloween theme while ensuring learning is not forgotten in repetitious and meaningless worksheets.

readilearn teaching resources support teachers in keeping the learning alive while the children are having fun with Halloween-themed lessons.

trick or treat printable game for Halloween

The printable Trick or Treat Game for Halloween is a fun board game for two or more players of all ages, suitable for use in maths and literacy groups, with buddies or in family groups. It combines reading, mathematics, activity, and loads of fun and laughter.

Everything required to play the game is included in the zip folder. All you’ll need to add is a dice and a sense of fun. There are treats to collect and instructions to follow. Try not to be scared by those witches and ghosts and, most of all, look out for your friends.

The kit also includes additional ideas for lessons in maths and writing.

Each of the game components are also available individually to use in other ways if you wish.

Continue reading: Learning with Halloween fun – readilearn

I Can Swim a Rainbow by Kim Michelle Toft

Swim a Rainbow with Kim Michelle Toft – readilearn

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Kim Michelle Toft is the author and illustrator of a collection of beautiful environmentally-themed picture books focussing on the conservation of marine environments. I have previously introduced you to Michelle when we spoke about her books The Underwater Twelve Days of Christmas and Coral Sea Dreaming.

Kim illustrates all her books with unique and beautiful silk paintings. You can view Kim’s painting process in videos that show 40 hours of work in two minutes on her website here.

In this post, to coincide with a special giveaway, we discuss her beautiful book I Can Swim a Rainbow.

About I Can Swim a Rainbow

I Can Swim a Rainbow adapts the lyrics of Arthur Hamilton’s song I Can Sing a Rainbow, with which most young children are familiar, to the colours of the ocean and its inhabitants. As are all Kim’s books, it is illustrated with her magnificent and unique silk paintings which highlight the beauty of the ocean’s colours. As always, the environmental message of this book is as strong as its pages are beautiful as it calls us to protect the world’s fragile reef environments.

Continue reading to find out more about Kim’s beautiful book and a special giveaway until 18 October: Swim a Rainbow with Kim Michelle Toft – readilearn

developing-number-concepts-with-lessons-ready-to-teach

Developing Number Concepts with Lessons Ready to Teach – readilearn

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Ensuring children have a firm understanding of number concepts is important before moving them on to working with larger numbers and more abstract concepts. A strong foundation makes for greater confidence when working with numbers of any size.

To support your teaching of early number concepts, I have produced a new interactive resource, Count with Teddy Bears, with lessons ready for you to teach on the interactive whiteboard. The resource extends the range for teaching understanding of number already available from readilearn.

The lessons in Count with Teddy Bears provide opportunities for teacher explanations, teacher-student discussions, and student demonstration of understanding.

Interactive lessons are engaging for students, and with the children focused on the lesson, the teacher can identify areas of misunderstanding that require further teaching as well as concepts about which the children are already confident.

About Count with Teddy Bears

Count with Teddy Bears incorporates five separate sections with teaching in five main concept areas:

Count Teddy Bears — Counting in ones from 1–12.

Children click on each Teddy to count. As it is clicked, the Teddy is coloured, and one is added to the total.

Teddy’s Cupcakes — One-to-one matching up to 10.

Continue reading: Developing Number Concepts with Lessons Ready to Teach – readilearn