With social distancing rules in place and so many end of school year events being canceled, teachers (and parents) are scrambling for fun learning activities.
One of the best learning activities is to take a virtual field trip! I’ve been collecting a list for some time so this post is just one gigantic list. I’ve divided it into categories to make it easier to navigate. I hope you can find a few fun places to “visit” with your students or your own children!
After another super busy week of everything Google with distance learning, I am ready for another Self-Care Saturday.
Some of my favorite self-care strategies:
*read a book
*go for a walk
*get some exercise
*drink more water
*drink a cup of really good coffee
*light a candle
*wear something new or something that makes me feel good
*getting my hair done
*cooking or baking something
This post is going to focus on coffee, candles, clothes, hair, and cooking!
My hair is suffering the effects of the quarantine. How about yours? Here’s my favorite root boost from R & Co, but I also love this one from L’Oreal. I am keeping both of them in business these days.
Now – on to cooking and baking. We may be saving money on gasoline and entertainment, but my grocery bills are skyrocketing. We are doing all we can to support our local restaurants with curbside take-out, but we are also cooking at home a lot more.
I am slowly decluttering different areas around my house and the kitchen cookbook shelves were next on the list. I do not know why I kept accumulating cookbooks over the years, so I have a big pile of books to donate to Goodwill. However, I do have several “go-to” cookbooks and the following ones are some of my favorites.
*Barefoot Contessa – Family Style
I love her Oven-Fried Chicken, Challah French Toast, and Arugula with Parmesan salad. She gives great tips in her cookbooks on planning meals, making a schedule, and presentation of food.
*Barefoot Contessa – At Home
Some of my favorites are Chicken Piccata, Honey White Bread, and Peach & Blueberry Crumbles.
*Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier
Crash Hot Potatoes, Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce, and Summer Stir-Fry are my go-to recipes.
*Love Welcome Serve
I love everything I’ve tried in this cookbook but her Cinnamon Rolls are my absolute favorite in all my years of trying various cinnamon roll recipes. (My goal in life is to make the best cinnamon rolls in the world by the time I have grandchildren. This recipe is helping me achieve that goal. My kids are not helping on the grandchildren front, however.)
*What Can I Bring? is another cookbook that never disappoints. Her chicken enchiladas are the very best.
With all the extra cooking and baking going on, I have a feeling that my next favorite cookbook is going to be the Instant Loss cookbook!
Thanks for reading, friends! Have a relaxing weekend and make sure to take time for yourself, doing something that makes you happy. Stay healthy and safe!
There are so many things we cannot control right now. With distance learning underway and no end in sight, teachers are concerned about how we can best meet our students’ needs.
I find it helps to consider what I CAN control instead of getting overwhelmed with what I cannot control.
Here is what we CAN do:
*we can make our students feel safe
*we can help our students to feel connected to us and to each other
*we can offer the best learning opportunities possible, given the limitations of distance learning.
This post is all about helping our students feel safe and connected.
A disclaimer: we all have a lot on our plates right now. I am sharing several ideas and resources here, but this is not to say that you should be doing every one of these things. Just pick and choose what works for you. Maybe try one thing this week and choose another idea next week.
*First of all, just checking in with your students helps to calm their stress and keep you connected. On her blog Teaching with Jennifer Findley, Jennifer has some awesome FREE Google forms you can immediately download and use as resources. I started by sending a Google form check-in once a week, but I have started increasing the frequency and asking different questions. I found that even the students who are having more trouble completing the academic online assignments will answer questions on the Google forms.
*Another way to use Google forms is to ask for student feedback on what is working for them with distance learning and what is not working. Simple questions you could ask are:
~what’s working?
~what’s not working well?
~what suggestions do you have?
*Hearing your voice and seeing your face is key for your students. In my district, we are doing recorded video lessons but I know that many of you are doing live lessons. Either way — just seeing you and hearing your familiar voice are a comfort to your students.
So when you are getting tired of making all these videos and planning all these lessons, keep in mind that the social-emotional connection is one huge benefit of the work we’re doing to continue academic learning.
*If reading aloud was an important part of your classroom (and I hope it was!), you can keep it going while you are distant.
I have done a few different things.
~record yourself reading by putting your phone on a tripod like THIS ONE or record your reading with Screencastify or Screencastomatic.
~record yourself reading by using your phone as a document camera. (DIRECTIONS FOR THIS??) or buy a (relatively) inexpensive document camera. (Here’s another option that looks promising.)
~buy the Kindle version of a book and read it from your screen while recording your screen in Screencastify.
*Continue (or start) doing a morning meeting with your students. This doesn’t have to be a long meeting, just a quick check-in at the beginning of the day.
Incorporating morning meetings into our home learning plan can help in a number of ways. First, students thrive on familiarity, especially in challenging times. Next, morning meetings help develop or maintain social and emotional skills. They can help increase student motivation for learning and sharing in online discussions. Finally, morning meetings can help get our students ready each day to take on the academic challenges we’re sending home.
Here are some tips:
~send a link in Zoom or Google Meet;
~as kids join, give them a few minutes to chat with you and with each other;
~try to show your students something familiar from the classroom (maybe a poster or chart, whatever talking object you used in the class, maybe a picture book or something your students would recognize as representing you or the class);
~use some kind of quiet signal to get students’ attention and have everyone mute their microphones (you’ll probably need to set some ground rules and consider using signals for your students)
~do some kind of check-in (show how you’re feeling with facial expression or on fingers with 1-5 ranking)
~use some kind of question for students to respond to. Here you might just call on a few students or you might let everyone share quickly
~do some quick activity together (see my list of possibilities HERE)
~give them their action plan for today (today you will . . .) & how to access help from you if they need it
~one more minute or two of social chat before signing off.
*If morning meetings are too much right now, you might make short, check-in videos for your students. You might do some kind of morning greeting, tell a joke, read a story, make “announcements” about learning for today — use your usual routines for starting class in the morning.
*If morning meetings and making videos are not feasible, try posting a daily question or prompt and allow students to respond. You could post the question using the question feature in Google Classroom, post a question on Padlet, or allow students to make short, 90-second videos in FlipGrid to respond to the question.
*Send a brief note or card to your students through the mail! Everyone loves getting mail and this will make them feel special. There are some great postcard options on Teachers Pay Teachers, like THIS ONE.
*Use Google docs or Google slides to create a virtual journal for students. You could write a prompt on each page or slide or just ask your students to write daily and update you on what is going on in their world.
*Allow your students to process their emotions in a variety of ways. They can write a letter, a journal entry, make a Google drawing, use emoji’s or memes, or write a poem.
*If you’re familiar with Brene Brown’s work, you may have heard her talk about the importance of giving yourself “permission.” Here’s a quick link where she explains what she means. So give yourself permission — to stop working at a certain time, to not answer emails at 10 p.m., to create videos that are “good enough,” not perfect.
And give your students permission as well — permission to miss an assignment or take a day off, permission to talk to you about what is working or not working for them.
*Remind your students of certain life skills they can work on while at home. This is a time where learning how to do these skills can be just as important as their academic learning. Here are some ideas: learn how to do laundry (sort, wash, dry, fold, put away); cook something; bake something; learn how to wash dishes; care for plants or do yard work; write cards or letters to loved ones; organize areas (closets, shelves, books, toys, clothes); learn to do small fix-it chores around the house; care for pets; care for younger siblings; learn how to do cleaning chores around the house.
*Have a purely social Google Meet or Zoom meeting at least once a week. See my list of activities you can do in those meetings HERE. Playing a game together, seeing everyone’s faces, and having a chance to talk and laugh together is good for all of us.
*You could also do an activity together that students might also do on their own at other times. Examples are: Go Noodle, Calm,Cosmic Kids Yoga.
*Consider asking your specialists or other adults at school to join your Zoom meeting or Google Meet. It’s fun for your kids to see other people that they know and to get a chance to engage with them as well as with you.
*I’ve mentioned Edutopia before. It is an awesome website for all kinds of resources, but especially for social-emotional learning. I found some great tips in this recent article.
Here are the tips that resonated with me:
~create an engaging online environment. You can do this by providing
*a checklist for assignments to complete
*a way for students to interact with each other (maybe by using FlipGrid or Padlet and by having weekly social Google Meet or Zoom meetings)
*a way to interact with you or ask questions (with office hours via Google Meet or Zoom).
~build community (by using some of the tips in this post!)
~be present (by having those office hours, by providing feedback on student work, offer strategies or scaffolds to help students to become more independent with online learning)
~establish norms for Google Meet or Zoom meetings.
*It’s a good time to teach your students to practice gratitude. You could use one of these prompts as a check-in question or at the start of a morning meeting.
~What are 3 things you’re thankful for today?
~What are 5 positive things happening in your world right now?
~Who are 3 people you’re thankful for today?
~What’s a place that you’re grateful for?
~Who is a person you know that you are thankful for?
~Who is a person you don’t know that you are thankful for?
~What book are you grateful for?
What’s something outside that makes you happy?
*Before you begin a video lesson (or live teaching), ask your students to stop and check-in with themselves. How are they feeling? You can give them a number scale to use, ask them to use a “weather word” to describe how they feel (sunny, cloudy, stormy, etc.), or use emojis or memes for them to identify where they are and how they feel.
Then, after checking in with themselves, talk about what they can do to change their “state”. Do they need to take a break and do something active? Do they need to take a break and do something calming? Do they need to talk to someone? Do they need to be by themselves for a minute or two?
Asking your students to check in with themselves and to think about what they need helps to empower them to handle their own emotions and mental state. Even if they need help from someone else, it empowers them to ask for what they need. These are great life skills for all of us!
*Encourage your students to do mindful activities as part of their “work” at home. They can spend time creating art, writing, reading, spending time outside, taking a walk, listening to music. Encouraging these activities as much as you encourage academic work is very important right now.
*Check-in with families frequently as well. Just send a quick email or make a phone call, asking them how it’s going and checking to see if there is anything they need. If someone does share a need that you cannot help with, share the concern with the appropriate people at your school. For most parents, just knowing that their child’s teacher cares about them as people goes a long way.
*One Padlet prompt I am going to use this week is a 6-word memoir. To do this, challenge your students to write about how they’re feeling, what is going on with them, or a positive/hopeful thought, but limit it to six words. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. My example is: “This is not what I expected.”
*I saw a great tip where a teacher is making it part of students’ homework to check in with another student. They can email, text, or call. Then their job is to write an email to the teacher to tell the teacher how that other student is doing. I think this sounds like a great idea for reminding students that we are all still connected and still part of a learning family. You might need to model the process first, but I think it’s worth a try.
*Another idea is to set up virtual table groups with a discussion thread in Google Classroom. To do this, you would use the question feature. Post a question or assignment, then assign it to only the four or five students in the virtual group. (You can assign the same question to other groups as well.) Here’s a video link to explain.
You can use Google slides in a similar way. Alice Keeler explains how to do this on her blog post HERE.
*I read a great article on EdNC called “During Covid-19, teachers can support students using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” You may be familiar with the saying that we have to “Maslow before we can Bloom.” I completely agree with that statement, so this article made sense to me. I am linking this short article here.
The seven tiers, in order of what we need to do for students goes like this:
Level 1 – are students safe and fed?
Level 2 – do they know they are loved and missed?
Level 3 – do they have coping skills to deal with crisis and emotions?
Level 4 – do they have access to instructional materials?
Level 5 – skills for online/remote learning
Level 1 may not be totally under our control. But we can do things to support our students in levels 2-5. I hope that you found some suggestions in this post that will help you support your students with levels 2 and 3. Please share your own tips!
One of the best first weeks of school activities is to read aloud to your students. The first week, especially, is unpredictable in terms of planning and knowing how long everything will take when your students are new to your classroom. Having plenty of picture books ready to go is a great use of time when you find yourself with a few minutes.
Besides being a great use of time, I find reading aloud helps bond our class together as a community. Reading books together and having a chance to discuss them builds verbal skills, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and empathy. Plus it’s just plain fun and relaxing. All kids love it, especially when the teacher is engaged and enthusiastic about the book being read.
Here are some of my favorite beginning of the year picture books. I’ve also included a suggestion for discussion with most of the books. This is not to say that you need to read every one of these books! Pick and choose what might fit you and your class, and what might be available.
Another disclaimer: I have included Amazon links to these books so that you can read the description for yourself. But please consider finding these books in your school or local library, or supporting your local independent bookstore if you choose to buy some books.
NERVES ON FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL:
~First Day Jitters – a classic story for talking about feelings of nervousness at the beginning of the year
~Wemberly Worried – talk about nerves on the first days of school
HOW WE TREAT EACH OTHER – BUILDING CLASSROOM COMMUNITY:
~The Day You Begin – a great book for highlighting individuality and looking for common ground. Have a good discussion about how it feels to be “different” from others, how we can help each other to feel like we all belong, how differences and uniqueness make a classroom community (and any community) better and stronger. I also use this book to talk about how we all have common needs, encouraging kids to look for similarities in addition to celebrating differences.
~I’m Trying to Love Math – funny but it still makes the point about math being everywhere and ways that math is useful
IMPORTANCE OF NAMES:
~The Name Jar – talk about the importance of names and the importance of pronouncing each other’s names correctly
~Alma & How She Got Her Name – same discussion as The Name Jar, but this is a newer book and may be one that students have not heard before. This would also fit well with the name origin “Homework” with Chrysanthemum below.
~My Name is Sangoel – talk about the importance of names and the importance of of pronouncing everyone’s names correctly.
~Chrysanthemum – talk about bullying & the importance of names. Optional homework: find out how you were given your name and the meaning of your name if your family knows that information! Then share those stories in class. Please be aware that this could be a difficult activity for some students. Don’t require kids to share if they are uncomfortable.
~That’s Not My Name! – another great book about the importance of pronouncing names correctly
~Patchwork – this book will be my new favorite. It’s all about how we can be combinations of many different talents and skills, and that everyone is continuing to change and grow. (Available for pre-order but will not be released until August 30, 2022.)
~The Dot – talk about how you might “make a mark” – what are your hopes and dreams, both for this year and for the future?
~Miss Rumphius – talk about how you make the world more beautiful by being a teacher; ask students to talk with each other about some of their goals and dreams
~Ish – talk about believing in yourself & your dreams
~Only One You – talk about individuality and individual gifts
~Giant Steps to Change the World – talk about steps anyone can take to make the world a better place. It uses real-life examples, which is inspiring.
~What Do You Do with an Idea? – talk about the importance of acting on your ideas and turning them into something important
~Say Something – another great book for talking about ways of making the world a better place
~A Good Night for Mr. Coleman – a beautiful book based on a true story of a young girl determined to make a difference in a homeless man’s life
~Ida Always – a wonderful book about the power of love and carrying memories of our loved ones with us always. I keep this book handy as a great read-aloud if we hear about the loss of someone important (in our families or in the wider community)
~Superheroes Are Everywhere – written by Vice President Kamala Harris, this is a great story about how ordinary people can be heroes too.
SETTING UP READING WORKSHOP/READING BLOCK:
~Miss Malarkey Leaves No Reader Behind – great book for kicking off independent reading and reading workshop; talk about the importance of finding the right book
~Thank You, Mr. Falker – talk about challenges, bullying, the importance of teachers(!); good book for writing about reading memories & setting reading goals
~A Quiet Place – talk about the importance of reading and of the need for quiet when settling in to read
~Biblioburro & That Book Woman – talk about value of libraries & how lucky we are to have access to books.
SETTING UP WRITING WORKSHOP/WRITING BLOCK:
~Author – talk about collecting ideas for writing
~Amelia’s Notebook – talk about keeping a notebook & using writing as a way think through your feelings; a funny book that makes this point without being “teacher-ish”
~Max’s Logbook – similar to the Amelia book, but about a boy who begins writing about science experiments, and moves on to writing about other topics; introduces topic of writing notebooks
Self-care is important every single day. But I am trying to be very intentional about spending most of my weekend time doing things that make me happy and give me energy.
Here we go with Self-Care Sunday!
Gratitude and positive thinking are a big part of self-care for me. Every day, I am so very grateful for teachers, for all essential workers, and for health care professionals on the front lines who are fighting this virus. The amazing work that all of these groups of people are doing is nothing short of miraculous. If you haven’t watched this video of Alicia Keys singing her song “Good Job” while featuring all of these heroes, here’s a link. It makes me cry every time.
I am also grateful for the creativity of so many people who are posting on YouTube and social media with inspiring or funny messages and tips for how to do things while we’re staying home.
Here are some fun things I found on Amazon this week that made me smile.
*”It’s not drinking alone if you are social distancing” wine glass
*”Quarantine & Tiger King” wine tumbler. Am I the only person in the world who just could not get into the Tiger King thing? I made it through one episode and decided it was not for me.
Another part of my Self-Care Saturday/Sunday tasks is to declutter. I’m focusing on bookshelves first and donating used books to Goodwill. It’s also fun to rediscover some favorite books that I will keep.
Here’s a list.
I love Sophie Hudson and Melanie Shankle’s Big Boo podcast. They are both Christian authors who are very real, down to earth, and hilarious. My favorite combination!
I have started reading some books by Jen Hatmaker, another Christian writer. I appreciate her candid perspective and her “realness” as well. Here are two books I’ve read so far:
Last weekend I declared it “Self-Care Saturday” but after the week I’ve had, I’m now declaring “Self-Care Saturday AND Sunday.”
You with me?
In North Carolina, we officially got the word from our governor yesterday that schools are closed for the rest of the year. And I am so sad about that. It’s kind of like the death of someone who is terminally ill — even though you know it’s likely to happen, you’re still devastated when it does happen.
I know it’s the right decision and it’s meant to keep us all safe. But the abrupt ending to our time together in the classroom doesn’t feel right. Knowing that our fifth graders will not get to do the usual end of year celebrations is very sad for me.
Next week, we will begin brainstorming ways we can celebrate our fifth graders virtually at the end of the year. And I’m also focusing on this important reminder:
Enough of the sad stuff! Let’s move on to making sure we take time to rest and relax this weekend.
Here are a few things I’m doing today and tomorrow:
*Enjoying time outside, taking a walk or sitting on my porch.
*Planning my week ahead and building in time for relaxation and self-care daily instead of waiting for the weekend.
*Making that list of 10 good things from the week so that I can stay focused on the positive.
*Write letters! I have some older friends who are even more confined to home and who are dealing with health issues. A note or a card is a small thing for me but it will be much appreciated by them.
*Trying Chalene Johnson’s PiYo workouts for something new!
*Continuing my bookshelf decluttering. I’ll share some favorite nonfiction tomorrow!
*Doing a little online shopping. Here are some new finds I love on Amazon:
*these lightweight sweatshirts are cute and comfy and come in a range of colors
*LOFT Scrunched Headband – I bet these will be in my future soon, since my salon is closed until June!
I’ll be back tomorrow with another round of bookshelf decluttering selections!
Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
– my favorites!
. This also comes in a pretty lime color.
– I bet these will be in my future soon, since my salon is closed until June!