Enjoy these quick, easy, colorful, and fun writing activities and games with your students. These creative ideas add a fresh twist on commonly used writing activities to help teachers save time and assist children in being successful.

Use loose parts to spark children's creativity and innovation Loose parts are natural or synthetic found, bought, or upcycled materials that children can move, manipulate, control, and change within their play. Alluring and captivating, they capture children's curiosity, give free reign to their imagination, and motivate learning. The hundreds of inspiring photographs showcase an array of loose parts in real early childhood settings. And the overviews of concepts children can learn when using loose parts provide the foundation for incorporating loose parts into your teaching to enhance play and empower children. The possibilities are truly endless.

"Letter-a-week" may be a ubiquitous approach to teaching alphabet knowledge, but that doesn't mean it's an effective one. In No More Teaching a Letter a Week, early literacy researcher Dr. William Teale helps us understand that alphabet knowledge is more than letter recognition, and identifies research-based principles of effective alphabet instruction, which constitutes the foundation for phonics teaching and learning. Literacy coach Rebecca McKay shows us how to bring those principles to life through purposeful practices that invite children to create an identity through print. Children can and should do more than glue beans into the shape of a "B"; they need to learn how letters create words that carry meaning, so that they can, and do, use print to expand their understanding of the world and themselves.

"This hilarious collection of letters from Michael to his new teacher comes packed with alligators, pirates and rocket ships, and much, much more. Can Michael's imagination save him from the first day of school?"--Page 4 of cover.

Generations of children have read, re-read, and loved Ezra Jack Keats's award-winning, classic stories about Peter and his neighborhood friends. Now, for the first time, Peter's Chair, A Letter to Amy, and Goggles! are available in paperback exclusively from Puffin. "A master of ingenious collages, Keats has made brilliant variegated pictures."—The Horn Book Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983) was the beloved author and/or illustrator of more than eighty-five books for children.

This is an essential book for everyone who wants to write clearly about any subject and use writing as a means of learning.

From fairy tales to five-paragraph essays, Kumon Writing Workbooks offer a complete program to improve the development and organization of ideas and expand vocabulary. Our fun and innovative exercises inspire creativity and the desire to write.