Andrea Knight

Teacher · Learner · Author

Maps and Globes Activities for Kids

Press pause on your social studies plans and check out our favorite maps and globes activities for first graders. We get it... a lot of districts are squeezing out science and social studies to make more time for ELA work. But the content area standards still exist. And those topics are exactly the ones that light up most kids, so... If we use resources that are literacy rich, so many … [Read more...]

Election Day Activities for Kids

Election Day is coming up. Everybody is talking about the issues and kids want to participate in some way. But many don't fully understand and they wonder, "What is voting all about?" This topic is on our social studies radar, so finding Election Day activities has made its way to the top of our teacher to-do list. One of the best (and easiest) ways to create a basic awareness can be found in … [Read more...]

Taking the “Scary” Out of School Safety Drills

School safety drills are so important and, though they're probably not our favorite thing to talk about, we need to prepare children for the kinds of emergencies they could encounter during the school year. The problem is, they're a little bit scary... at least for some kids. The alarms are loud and there's a sense of urgency that jolts us out of our routine... even when we know it's coming. I … [Read more...]

Chrysanthemum Activities for the First Day of School and Beyond

We read this sweet book by Kevin Henkes at the beginning of every school year, but these Chrysanthemum activities work well beyond the first day of school. If the story is new to you, it's about a little girl (mouse) with an unusually long name... Chrysanthemum. It doesn't bother her one bit though. She loves her name and thinks it's absolutely perfect. That is, until the first day of … [Read more...]

Fun Activities for Teaching Prepositions

Teaching prepositions and positional words is fun when you use games and other engaging activities. Little ones will eventually put pencil to paper, but let's begin with some out-of-your-seat fun first! From Simon Says to a fun twist on musical chairs, these ideas will really get the ball rolling. First though, let's grab a quick library of books about prepositions. These can be used at any … [Read more...]

Grammar Activities for Learning Parts of Speech

Finding grammar activities that are fun and engaging is important. Why? Because I have friends (grown adults, mind you) who still crab about the time they had to learn the parts of speech and then diagram sentences. I mean these are people who are decades out of school, yet they continue to remember those experiences negatively. And, kind of like I used to say after geometry class, they wail, "Why … [Read more...]