As these hot summer days draw us nearer to the end of August, we're approaching the beginning of the new school year (where did the summer go!!??), which seems a perfect time to recap some of our recent products.
Calendar Time!
If you've been watching our TPT store or this blog, you've seen some great Calendar and Bulletin Board additions
we recently added that will work brilliantly for you as you plan out
your classroom decor. The theme is Bohemian, so think lots of bright
colors and fun patterns excellent for lower elementary.
Another fabulous
product line, so often needed for the beginning of school, are our
latest Craft packets. If any of you have a Solar system theme going,
our little Astronaut Craft (with room for student photo) will be
perfect! Check those out on our "A Crafts" Blog that shares about them in more detail.
A is for Astronauts!
And with that, all of us at Glimmercat Education would like to wish all our friends an incredible Back to School Year!
There is no doubt about it: crafts are an undervalued part of the education process for young children. And yet SO important! Those little hands still need opportunities for hand-eye coordination and those little minds delight so much in the ability to create things. Using a craft to connect the dots between a letter/sound or a read-aloud story, take that learning to another level. So while the temptation is to put craft-making on the shelf, I'm trying to remember that it is an all important facet of the daily process.
Our latest Craft Packet tries to keep in mind the types of crafts that can be most easily implemented in the classroom, as well as keep them fun and entertaining for children. Not too difficult, but still challenging those little hands with using scissors, and working in letters when appropriate.
Above, in our Ant Craft, we use the Letter A to make the Ant's lower set of legs. Children draw in the letter A before gluing on pom-poms to form the body. It's a perfect follow-up to learning the song, "The Ant's Go Marching":
...or reading a favorite children's book about Ants.
In fact, here's my recommended children's book list for letter A, perfect for reading out loud and perfect for introducing apples, astronauts, ants and alligators to little ones!
Our Alligator Craft will challenge those small hands with extra cutting, but it is a very rewarding finished product to little people who still see paper creatures as a kind of new toy.
Apple crafts are a dime a dozen, but we suggest having students poke a little hole in their apple that their finger can stick through. A little happy face drawn onto their "worm" finger will make their face light up with smiles.
There's no better way to follow up Nick and Sally meeting an Astronaut then to let children put themselves in space with the awesome photo craft.
All of our crafts are also available in black and white, so if you want them to practice coloring their crafts to make them truly their own, that possibility is there:
Feel free to look at our Letter A Craft Packet in more detail in our Store. This is a printable packet, requiring glue, tape, scissors, printing ability, and little else. You can check it out here today.
We have been doing some fascinating activities for our Medieval History unit, (Viking Runes, Medieval Illuminations, and our own homemade Medieval Subtleties) but this craft or "craftivity" turned out the most beautiful of all. We created our own stained glass windows!
This is an easy activity, especially if you purchase our premade Medieval Window packet which includes 4 possible designs for your students to choose from to make their window.
You will also need a transparency sheet (or some recycled flat plastic), a sharpie, food coloring and glue. And some Q-tips. Because we always fall back on Q-tips as an easy go-to paintbrush for these kinds of activities.
After drawing the designs on the transparencies with black sharpies, we cut out our window shapes. And we began to fill in the window shapes with our glue paint.
To make it easier, we cut out our paper design and taped it, along with the transparency to the table. It kept our image stable while the kids filled in the colors.
After the colored glue had dried, we cut out our window edging and glued it over the glass. An optional idea is to go over the top of the sharpie with black puffy paint. This raised black edging makes the stained glass really pop. It feels just like the leaded glass stained windows you might see in an old church or heraldic window.
The finished product is tacked to the window so that the light can stream through, just like it streamed through Medieval stained glass windows, many years ago.
A beautiful finished product! Check out our packet that includes everything you need to create this craft, here in our store.
Reviews
"My students were completely engaged and created a great deal of stained glass with this project. We researched how stained glass was made with Medieval techniques (the V&A Museum has a fantastic video!) and then we got to work, having unearthed a box of old transparencies, which I think really makes this project. We also were creating them for our Medieval Faire for our K-3rd graders and they found the stained glass captivating. I would have never guessed they would have looked so good! Excellent lesson!" --- Anne C.
"Loved the informational text. It was so helpful. The activity wasn't as engaging as I'd hoped, but it was still worth the purchase." --- Get Schooled
"We a learning about the role of churches during the Medieval time period so this is a great supplemental for us and a nice break from the heavy reading and material. The students enjoyed creating these." --- Pham-tastic Teaching
"One of the better stained-glass projects I've seen. Worked greatly for my A&H class!" --- Eli Edwards
"We used the patterns to make our own stained glass. We used sharpies instead of glue and they came out beautifully." --- Tippecanoe
"I used this resource to supplement what we were learning in class. My students loved the activity?" --- Wendy E.
"This was a fun activity to do in my summer program during medieval week." --- Karen C.
"My students really enjoyed making them, and were so proud of the outcome. We did what someone else suggested and just used permanent sharpies. They look awesome!" --- Randy Bland
"My students loved this activity! We completed it in the middle of our Middle Ages reading unit. To make them even more stained glass in appearance, they lightly used a cotton ball to spread vegetable oil on the back to make them translucent." --- Dayna K.
Check out our packet that includes everything you need to create this craft, here in our store.
We are diving into a second year of classical history. This year's study will begin with the Fall of Ancient Rome and travel all the way through the Renaissance, the Reformation and up to the beginnings of Colonization. At the moment, we've been taking a little time with the early Christian monks.
We began by reading our chapter in Story of the World, Volume 2, which tells us of the noble aspirations with which the monasteries were begun. We took a listen to some Gregorian Chant.
Not all Gregorian Chant is created equal. It should be made up of just men's voices, and no instruments. Because that is the point, of course: it's the music you get when a bunch of guys are stuck together with few creative outlets and a pious belief system which said the only channel for pleasing God was by singing for your supper. "Chant" has a pretty, though melancholy sound, and will give your young listeners an idea of the primitive nature of good music in that era. You can almost feel the dank, cool halls of stone.
We even tried walking across the hardwood floors on our knees, like the monks sometimes did when they were serving their penance. This was the kids' idea, actually. Because it's fun if you don't have to do it and if you can get up once your knees get sore. The very serious look is part of the pretend play.
We also took some time to look at various Medieval Illuminations, that other channel for the monks to let loose their creativity. And using this latest product from our store, we took some actual quotes from monks and illuminated the copied scripts ourselves.
There are three quote options to choose from in our "Medieval Illuminations" Packet. On each one, there is room for added illustrations, and coloring in the letters.
First, the kids drew images like they had observed in the Illuminations we looked at in advance: small animals, vines, leaves, and flowers.
And then, they colored them in. To take it up another notch, we could highlight parts with gold paint, like the monks did. But this was a pretty good beginning.
But let's get onto the feast, shall we? Now, I know you're going to ask the question, "What's with the robes and blankets?"
This was another child-inspired plan. When they heard that the monks would wear simple brown robes and walk slowly and piously around their monastery, nothing would do but that my kids had to run off and grab blankets and robes that would give them the same monastic look. I was allowed to snap one photo of them pacing slowly across the living room, but only from the back.
Here it is, for your viewing pleasure. You can see our cat was thoroughly confused at their slow tread and bowed heads, but the kids were loving this monastic pretend.
But let's talk about this Medieval Feast we enjoyed, shall we? First, the main course:
You can vary your root vegetables. You could throw in a turnip or a parsnip, but I would definitely keep the onion for flavor. This was an easy recipe and borrowed from many recipes online. As BrandNewVegan explains here, this humble stew was the standard fare for most peasants in the Dark Ages.
Now, about those Honey Cakes, which were the favorite of this meal, I owe the recipe to the free online PDF found on "The Circle of Ceridwen Cookery", which has some other delectable looking middle age recipes I'd love to try out.
They taste a bit like a rough biscuit, slightly flavored with honey. I would definitely recommend letting your students flavor them up with a bit of butter and additional honey.
Next, some sides we included which were probably reserved for very special occasions, were the slice of pear and bit of hard cheese.
There are a variety of cheeses you could allow your kids to sample. Some cheeses you could use are Cheddar (first recorded use is in 1500), Gorgonzola (first recorded use is in 879), or Gouda (first recorded use is in 1697).
Now, about our Mead. Monks are known for making mead. This is not their actual recipe in its fermented version, because for obvious reasons, I'm not suggesting alcohol for kids. This is the un-fermented recipe before it ferments. But, you can make the actual version, from a 17th century monk recipe right here. It takes a good 9 months to ferment properly, and to be honest, I don't think I have the patience to wait around for it. But I'd still personally like to try out real mead,(I have always wondered about it during the reading of almost every slightly historical fantasy book out there) and I found a version that can be purchased here on Amazon. (It has great reviews!)
In the meantime, you can get the gist of the taste of mead, by brewing up a starter batch of the un-fermented brew:
And that's it, that's our Medieval Feast in a nutshell. If you have additional medieval recipes you would like to share, please post a link in the comments. We love to add to the information gathering! And thanks for reading.
Let's get down and dirty, shall we? In this post, we're sharing how you can stage your own archaeological dig with your students with a little preparation and a patch of dirt. There is a time investment in this activity, but what better way to introduce history to young people than to give them an experience of how the real folks do it? All of the activity printouts that you will see here come from our Archaeology Tool Kit which you can purchase for easy download in our teacher store.
In that activity packet, we also offer a lesson plan for staging an Inside Archaeological Dig, just in case you only have a classroom to work with.
The fun of doing a Dig is that I can almost guarantee that after this hands-on lesson, at least one kid is going to come away from it thinking, "I want to do THAT when I grow up!"
Also after this experience, any primary sources or artifacts that are observed in your upcoming history lessons will be treated with a bit more awe. When kids have an understanding of what goes into discovering that artifact, respect naturally follows.
But let's discuss how to Prepare for your Dig. First, we need some "Artifacts". There are three types of artifacts we recommend for this activity: Material Remains (chicken bones will do the trick), Points (arrowheads can be purchased inexpensively online), and Potsherds, or Shards.
Let's start with the Shards.
There are many recipes for homemade pottery out there. We include our own simple recipe using common household ingredients in our Tool Kit. But if you want to pick something up for this, you can always grab some clay at a local craft store. Best results for breaking your pottery will occur if you don't allow it to dry completely.
Don't worry to much about creating an aged look. Five minutes buried in your dig will accomplish wonders.
Bury your items in an area that is roughly 3' by 2'. Mark it off with twine and label the grid with letters corresponding to our Grid Chart above. Make sure everything is covered up with dirt, but not too deep. It's a good idea to keep track somewhere yourself, just how many items you buried and what they were.
If it would make it more fun (it did for us), send your students Glimmercat's letter (seen above) in an envelope, inviting them to take place in an Archaeological Dig and explaining the items they will need to keep an eye out for.
In order to better prepare, we then watched some real archaeologists in online videos, as they explained how carefully they sifted through their dirt. This turns out to be important when searching for arrowheads.
Another important step when doing an outdoor dig, is to prepare for it by wearing clothing that can get dirty and including a good hat and sunscreen. The clipboard also came in handy.
The tools you will need will vary depending on how solid your dirt-pack is. Based on the assumption that you prepared your dig right before the lesson, kids might be able to get away with just using their hands. I suppose they could use gloves, but gloves can be unwieldy. A shovel is way too big and could damage artifacts. A trowel might even be too big, though we did have one available.
A good stiff hair colorist brush is very helpful. But little hands that aren't afraid to get dirty are the best tool you can use for this activity.
We wanted to add letters to our Grid to help make the connection between the worksheet on the clipboard and the physical map of the dig. So we added letters, as you can see here. We secured our letters (to match our Grid) with thumbtacks. Small metal tent-stakes would have worked even better.
The best moment of all when you do this activity is when that first artifact is found. Ours was a small arrowhead. The excitement is tangible and all of a sudden, everyone is wide awake and ready to search for more "treasures"! But first, we must mark down where we found it and what we found:
First on the Location Grid, she marks down the Letter corresponding with the area she discovered her arrowhead. And next...
She draws a rough picture showing what and where in her area. Once this is completed, she can head back to the Dig and look for more!
An exciting addendum to this lesson is to allow student to attempt a reparation of their pottery pieces. If you include pottery in your dig, that is.
Allowing the students the opportunity to carefully clean and glue the pieces back together will again, give them a new understanding when they see repaired artifacts in a museum or photos of the same online.
Thank you so much for reading about our Archaeological Dig! We'd love to hear how you introduce history in YOUR classroom in the comments.
The time has come to introduce my youngest daughter to the alphabet.
Being the youngest, she has grown up watching her older brother and sister do their schoolwork and has been chomping at the bit for awhile, even though she is only three years old.
There is no right or wrong age to begin teaching your preschool child early reading skills. It has a lot to do with the individual child and their eagerness and excitement to learn. All the same, while our letter of the week packet has a lot to offer three year old's, they definitely cannot do all the activities in it by themselves, as yet. But let's look at what a smaller child can do.
With young children, there are so many ways for them to experiment with letter-sound relationships. The way I like to begin teaching the letters, is with a story.
Let it be known, I didn't coach her to cry when the kitty "disappeared", but this does demonstrate one of the reasons why I use a friendly animal character to accompany children on their alphabet journey. Glimmercat helps children to learn because young children love familiarity and routine in the midst of newness, and this is exactly what this friendly kitty establishes.
So, I introduced my daughter to Glimmercat and shared the first story of how Glimmercat slipped off the letter A on her way to pick apples, and now she had a solid mnemonic introduction to the sound of aaaaa (short a). At that point, she was ready for flash cards.
There are only four flashcards in our Letter of the Week packet. We try to keep it simple.
I recommend letting children work together on these, after you first introduce them. That way they are practicing "reading" the little words, connecting the letter words to the pictures, and feeling just a little important about all their knowledge in the process. See what this looks like here:
Now that we have practiced our flashcards, there are millions of ways to learn just a little bit more about letter A...children will see and recognize it in street signs, they can cut the letter A out of magazines or junk mail, they can draw it in sand at the beach or in salt in a pan, they can point it out in the stories you read to them.
Speaking of stories, let's look at a few of the stories I love to read out loud and include in my letter A week! I try to focus on one of the A subjects from our flash cards each day, so I have found fun children's books for each.
Feel free to print the above list out and keep it on hand the next time you go to the Library to check out some letter A books!
Interspersed with these books, you can purchase our Letter of the Week for A packet and print out easy crafts and activities for children that tie in perfectly with the subject areas in these stories.
Although some of the activities in this packet are intended for older children, (as mentioned) some will work perfectly with little ones, too. Let's look at those!
This one above, is our Path of Motion Practice sheet. I laminate this sheet (using clear contact paper from Dollar Tree) and then my daughter can use a dry erase marker to follow her arrows. It's the perfect size for her small hands!
I believe it is important to teach the correct way to make letters from the beginning, but not at the cost of enjoying the writing process. My daughter had several days of working on her letter A practice sheet. Each time, I would remind her to follow the arrows. Now she does the big letter "A" and the little letter "a" on her own, correctly. And as you can see, she is able to do them perfectly:
We don't over-do this, by the way. At age three, little ones can be done in five minutes or twenty. My daughter is anxious to do "her work" because she watches her old brother and sister doing theirs. To her, this makes "work" a delightful and exotic experience in her life.
We want to keep it that way for her! Here's how we do that: Crafts...
A is for Alligator
Simple Puzzles...
A is for Ant!
And anything Edible you can fit into your Letter Fun!
A is for Apples and Apple Pie!
As long as you fill your learning times with these engaging experiences, little ones will be able to handle more challenging attempts like this one with our Letter Maze that we modeled in our Teaching Lesson here:
Keep it fun! Keep them coming back for more! Children are already geared towards wanting to learn. All we have to do is steer them in the right direction.
If you feel you need more concise or scripted lessons, those are also offered in our Letter of the Week packet, where we walk you through five days of fun learning experiences for each letter.
