Stretch children's minds and imaginations - and help them meet the standards - with dozens and dozens of fresh activities for your classroom learning centers. each of the five sections of this treasury is devoted to a different learning center - literacy, math, dramatic play, blocks, and art. Within each section, you'll find delightful ideas and projects that integrate math, literacy, science, and more. These flexible, cross-curricular activities are designed to engage children, foster independent learning, and develop essential skills. Create learning center magig in your classroom each and every day!--

Keep students engaged with Learning Centers in Kindergarten. This 176-page book includes suggestions for how to set up learning centers, arrange the room with appropriate furniture, determine the number of students at each center, move in and between centers, develop activities, and find materials. It supports the Four-Blocks(R) Literacy Model and includes ideas for center time and month-by-month activities for eight centers.

Play is serious business. Whether it's reenacting a favorite book (comprehension and close reading), negotiating the rules for a game (speaking and listening), or collaborating over building blocks (college and career readiness and STEM), Kristi Mraz, Alison Porcelli, and Cheryl Tyler see every day how play helps students reach standards and goals in ways that in-their-seat instruction alone can't do. And not just during playtimes. "We believe there is play in work and work in play," they write. "It helps to have practical ways to carry that mindset into all aspects of the curriculum." In Purposeful Play, they share ways to: optimize and balance different types of play to deepen regular classroom learning teach into play to foster social-emotional skills and a growth mindset bring the impact of play into all your lessons across the day. "We believe that play is one type of environment where children can be rigorous in their learning," Kristi, Alison, and Cheryl write. So they provide a host of lessons, suggestions for classroom setups, helpful tools and charts, curriculum connections, teaching points, and teaching language to help you foster mature play that makes every moment in your classroom instructional. Play doesn't only happen when work is over. Children show us time and time again that play is the way they work. In Purposeful Play, you'll find research-driven methods for making play an engine for rigorous learning in your classroom.

Ever wonder what the rest of your class should be doing while you are working with a small reading group? Debbie Diller offers practical suggestions in Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work for over a dozen literacy work stations that link to classroom instruction and make preparation and management easy for teachers. Learn how to set up work stations, how to manage them, and how to keep them going throughout the year. Each chapter includes: How to introduce each station Which materials to include at which station What to model the station as How to solve problems and differentiate How to assess while keeping students accountable Reflection questions for professional development Materials in both English and Spanish are provided in the extensive resource section. Throughout the book the author has included photos of literacy workstations from a variety of classrooms in which she has worked to illustrate the methods discussed in the text. Literacy Work Stations is a go-to classroom resource that will help you keep all students engaged while you focus in on small groups.

Discover new, practical methods for teaching literacy skills in your early childhood classroom. Has teaching early literacy skills become a stumbling block to getting your preschool students kindergarten ready? Break out of the tired “letter of the week” routine and learn how to transform your lessons with fun and effective techniques. Teach Smarter: Literacy Strategies for Early Childhood Teachers will equip teachers to infuse every aspect of their teaching with exciting hands-on literacy teaching methods that engage students and help them build authentic connections with books, so that 100% of their students will have a strong literacy foundation and will be fully prepared for success in kindergarten and beyond. Respected author Vanessa Levin, veteran early childhood educator and author of the “Pre-K Pages” blog, breaks down the research and translates it into realistic, actionable steps you can take to improve your teaching. Features specific examples of teaching techniques and activities that engage students in hands-on, experiential learning during circle time, centers, and small groups. Offers a simple, four-step system for teaching literacy skills, based on the foundational principles of early literacy teaching Demonstrates how to build your confidence in your ability to get 100% of your students ready for kindergarten, long before the end of the school year Understand the problems with traditional literacy teaching and identify gaps in your current teaching practice with this valuable resource.

Inquiry based play; Centers for reading; writing; mathematics and science