Free Project Calendar for At Home Learning



With so many of us facing several weeks out of school right now, I wanted to do something to offer you a little relief! This at-home learning situation looks so different from school to school. Some districts are taking control of what the schooling is going to look like, while others are letting each individual teacher decide what distance learning will look like for them.

No matter where you sit on the spectrum, the thread that is binding us all together right now is that the parents are shouldering most of the responsibility of making sure that kids are logging in on time, doing the work assigned to them, and helping them when they get stuck. One thing that can help our families in such an unprecedented time, is providing them with projects!

Projects:
  • require deeper application of skills
  • can be done over and over again, and get a different end result each time
  • are hands on, and therefore can be more engaging

For these reasons, projects can be a life saver when it comes to keeping kids busy, but working independently! I have a summer project calendar that I have offered in the past, because the summer months tend to be a time when parents are scrambling to keep their kids busy, keep their math skills sharp, and inspire creativity. We never could have predicted that we would all be living out that summertime schedule at home for all of the spring, as well, but here we are...and I want to help! 

I took my FREE Summer Project Calendar and shifted it to be something that you can use right now for the coming weeks of distance learning. Eight weeks of project ideas are included, with each day of the project’s work mapped out for you!

These projects can be adapted to use materials you already have in your house, and done with just family members...or with classmates, digitally! Teachers can send these calendars home to parents in packets or via email, or take the ideas from this menu and work into their lesson plans. I’m hoping that this versatile menu can help fill a need for teachers and parents everywhere as we all do our best to navigate this trying time!

GET YOUR FREEBIE HERE


If you're in the market for more Project-Based-Learning fun for your 2nd-3rd graders, check out the other PBLs in my store! You can find a topic for every kid in your class, and keep the learning fun going on for weeks at a time!



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Grow Your Students' Math Skills from Home


Parents everywhere are being asked to step up and fill the teachers’ shoes right now...and they didn’t have a whole lot of time to figure out how to do that. My heart goes out to the parents, students, and teachers who are all working to navigate a new normal during this unprecedented time. I have a resource to share with you all that I think could help! 


At Home Learning Math Menus (see 3rd Grade here and 2nd Grade here) are the perfect way for parents to engage students deeply in the math content of their child’s grade, without having to spend much time learning how to ‘be the teacher’. They provide the best of both worlds!

3 Ways At Home Math Menus Make Math Practice Easy on Parents (and Teachers):

Easy to Implement

These math menus can be presented to students by simply displaying the menu on the computer screen, or printing out the individual menu pages. Each menu set comes with recording pages and worksheets for students to display their work on, but they are completely optional! All work can be done with supplies lying around the house, making it the perfect solution for busy families, and families who can't make regular runs to the store...which is all of us right now! The less standing in your way, the quicker you can get students started on the project of your choice.


Fun for Kids (and parents, too!)


With projects such as: Plan A Disney Vacation, Create a Board Game, Pizza Fractions, and Paper Airplanes...there is no way that kids will be bored, while practicing their standards very closely! These projects are the perfect thing for pulling siblings and parents into, making it a family project. School work that inspires family bonding is the best kind, in my opinion, because it keeps kids working. The more kids are engaged in fun, authentic math work during this time at home, the less of a gap they will see when they return to school.

All Domains Are Covered:

The at-home learning menus for both 2nd and 3rd grade in my store, have activities that cover each of the standard sets in the CCSS math standards. 2nd graders will practice place value, telling time, regrouping, and more, while 3rd graders will work on elapsed time, fractions, multiplication, and the rest of their skills for the year. This ensures that, if students complete a project or two from home each week, they will have practiced every standard for their grade level!

Whether you are a parent seeking some engaging math work for your 2nd or 3rd grader to participate in at home right now, or a teacher needing 6-8 weeks of math work for your students...these At Home Learning Menus are the perfect fit!


Check out my 2nd Grade At Home Learning Menus and 3rd Grade Menus to get your students engaged deeply with the math standards today!






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3 Creative Ways for Kids to Respond to Reading At Home




One thing we’re all probably doing a bit more of these days is reading. Extra time at home means more time to catch up on good book, and to encourage our kids to read more than they normally do. Today, I wanted to share some creative ways to get students engaged with the texts they are reading. These are not your average response activities! 


Three Reading Response Activities Your Kids Have Never Seen Before:

Create a Theme Song
Have some students who are more musically inclined? After finishing a book, ask them to create a theme song for the book, as if it were a TV show. This can be as simple as just writing the lyrics, or they can add music if they have a favorite instrument! 

Character Emojis 

After finishing a book, ask students to make a chart of all of the major and minor characters. Then, ask them to scroll through the emojis keyboard on a phone or other device, and choose one emoji to assign to each character! They will draw the emojis on their chart, and then write about their reasoning for choosing each emoji. Their reasons should come from text evidence-things characters said or did throughout the story. 

Interview a Character
This activity digs deep into those inferencing skills! Students create an imaginary interview with their favorite character from the book they just read. They create questions based on evidence from the text (events that happened, conflict with other characters, the setting, etc.). Then, the students must pretend to be the characters, and answer the questions the way they think that character would answer them! This activity hits dozens of literacy standards at once!


These three ideas can get you started, but I have many more! My Reading Response Choice Boards give students engaging, unique response activities to do with texts from home, as early finisher activities, as projects in small groups, or however else you can think of using them! 




With distance learning in effect for many teachers and families at the moment, these choice boards can adapt to your teaching needs. You can email the choice boards to parents to print or project at home, and let students complete tasks with the paper and materials that they have at home, or you can post them in your digital classroom. For students without internet access at home, you can print and prep these choice boards as part of their ‘at home learning packets’ and include extra paper for finishing the tasks. Adapt the way these are used to best fit your teaching needs! 


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Math Choice Boards for Distance Learning


How’s distance learning going for you? My mind has been racing for days now about how I can offer you resources that take a little work off of your plate, but remain highly purposeful for your students. Math Menus are a great way to keep your 2nd graders engaged with the standards, and I wanted to share a little more about them with you all today!

First, how could math menus make at-home learning easier on you, as a parent, or an educator?

They alleviate planning stress. 

We are high in demand and short on time right now. The idea of distance learning started immediately for some teachers, where others were given a week or so to prepare. It’s difficult to prepare for something you’ve never done before, so my hope is that these learning menus give you one ‘grab and go’ solution for your math planning! Every 2nd Grade domain is covered in these menus individually, as well as menus that review all skills. (There are 3rd Grade Menus to practice those standards, too!)

They make differentiation a little easier.

One of the biggest burdens of this time of digital learning is trying to plan for all of the different types of learners you have in your classroom...but from a distance. It’s difficult to make our lessons fit every child’s needs right now, and I believe that learning menus are a great way to help, because they provide choice for the families. You can assign menus to students based on the domain they need to practice, limit the number of boxes certain students must complete, or let them choose which project they want to complete. Each option differentiates the expectations for your different learners, easing the burden on the kids, their parents, and you!

They are engaging, and review things students have already learned. 

I think we’d all agree that parents are hoping for assignments that will keep their students engaged, at the moment. Many are working from home, or are working in fields (like health care or food service) that are requiring grueling hours and new demands. One of the best ways we can help our families is to give the students work that they can engage in independently, and that they want to do. With assignments like planning a Disney trip, creating pizza fractions, and making your own board game...students are going to love the work they’re being asked to do. And the parents won’t complain about that one bit!




3 WAYS TO USE MATH MENUS IN DISTANCE LEARNING:

  • Post the menus digitally in your virtual classroom and assign certain boxes for completion each week (or let students choose one to complete). Students can complete any of these tasks on plain paper, with whatever they already have at home. They can take pictures of their work to submit back to you!
  • Include the menus of your choice in an at-home packet for students who don’t have access to technology. You can include the printables that go with them or just the menus that you want students to work on in their time home. 
  • Privately email or message different boards and directions to students (or include different boards with some boxes blacked out) whom you want to practice certain domains separately. You can have one group working on addition and subtraction, another on measurement, and another reviewing all standards! These boards can work alongside the data you collected on your students this year!



    Check out my 2nd Grade At Home Learning Menus and 3rd Grade Menus to get your students engaged deeply with the math standards today!

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