"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," is a popular phrase in our society. The instructional activity here puts the phrase to the test as pupils explore what truly is beautiful through a study of some Japanese folk art. A careful...

Even though this is technically an art lesson plan, haiku poetry is actually the main focus! Learners view photographs of Japanese tea caddies. They list five descriptive words for the caddies, then write haiku poems using the caddies as...

Animals are the theme of this series of challenge activities. Extend scholars' learning opportunities by writing personal narratives and book reports, creating picture and alphabet books, and drawing scenes from stories read aloud.

Some smells are better than others! Explore your sense of smell with a series of activities based on the Peruvian folktale, The Stolen Smell. With exercises about phonics, counting, cooking, art, and drama, the lesson is a...

It can be awfully hard teaching young children how to read, but this phonics resource will make the job a little easier. Focusing on the au and aw vowel digraphs, this collection of engaging activities teaches beginning...

What do all those chairs and pencils do in the classroom once everyone leaves? Allow imaginations to run wild with frighteningly short poems!

Here is an effective way to have your charges practice and model important listening skills. After a short review of effective active listening concepts, such as using body language, summarizing what the other person said, and asking...

A thorough lesson plan takes your first grade class through Jane Yolen's beautiful Owl Moon. It crafts the unit with clear objectives, high-level guiding questions, cloze activities and sentence frames, and extension...

Here is a instructional activity that sounds like a lot of fun. Kids discuss the artistic elements and motives for the painting, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. To get the scope and scale of this oversized masterpiece, they use butcher...

You'll feel more than prepared for the start of the school year with this collection of daily activities for the month of August! From filling in numbers on a calendar or coloring patterns to solving addition and reading...

Here is a great way to get the brain going. Children look at an image of the sculpture, Jar and then imagine what an animal would look like as it moved inside the sculpture. They then use clay and cookie cutters to create a...

Explore caves with your class! Your scholars will participate in scientific observation, research, inference and deduction, reading, vocabulary, and writing activities about caves with this lesson plan. This resource contains five...

Read and incorporate a variety of Aesop's Fables into a fable genre study with an eBook produced by the Library of Congress. The interactive eBook contains 146 fables written by Aesop and includes colorful interactive illustrations...

Learners recognize and identify onomatopoeia. They will read the book All Aboard! A True Train Story, by Susan Kuklin. After reading the book, they list and illustrate examples of onomatopoeia. Then they write a poem or...

Have your class analyze the narrative art in quilts. They identify elements in this domestic art and the stories they tell. They define a story quilt, view an example, and analyze the work of Harriet Power. This is a great instructional...

An excellent grammar reference page from Jolly Phonics provides definitions and actions to remember several fundamental parts of speech. The methods are interesting for learners who have a hard time remembering the differences between...

Readers participate in activities designed to increase their fluency with language. They collaborate in small groups to complete stem sentences about themselves. They write facts about themselves and answer questions asked by the other...

Focus on family during this themed collection of extension activities for more advanced learners. Class members draw, share, retell stories, create posters, and more during these activities.

Learn about how the seeing eye dog program began with a reading lesson about Eva Moore's chapter book, Buddy, The First Seeing Eye Dog. With vocabulary words, discussion questions, and extension resources, the lesson is a...

Kindergartners and first graders create a chain of word cards with this fun activity. Participants read the word on the right side of a card, and match the word to the corresponding picture on the left side of another card....

Does the fastest one always win the race? Look deeper into The Tortoise and the Hare with a set of discussion questions for before, during, and after reading the story.

Our differences aren't meant to divide us! Use Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale "The Ugly Duckling" to reinforce the concept that appearances don't define someone's character, and that there is always somewhere where we belong.

Is progress progressing too fast? So believes the Lorax, the eponymous character from Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. Young environmental science students read the book and debate the arguments of the Lorax and the Once-ler regarding the...

One frog is fine, but two frogs are better—and more challenging, grammatically speaking! Challenge elementary learners to make six singular nouns into plural nouns with a handy activity.