By Rachel Lynette
Asking open-ended, engaging questions is a great way to get to know your students and for them to get to know each other. Use these ones as discussion prompts or as writing prompts for journals or notebooks. How would life be different if there were no electricity? List three different ways. Explain a flower to someone who has never seen or heard of one before.
Kids often embrace the idea of a summer journal because it is a nice way to capture some summer experiences and it has a finite end – the end of summer is the end of the journal. Here are three fun ideas. Nature Journal Use a book with unlined pages (or half lined pages) for a nature journal. Use the journal to record interesting things found
I rarely write personal stories on Minds in Bloom, but in addition to being over the moon about my daughter’s grades, there is a good takeaway for parents, so please bear with me (or just skip to the last paragraph for the takeaway). Before this school year, my daughter Lucy’s academic career was far from stellar. She was at best a C student with little motivation
“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.” -John Lubbock This summer, Minds in Bloom will be focusing on nature – certainly one of the greatest inspirations for creativity. Posts will mostly be activity based, starting with this one: An ABC Nature Walk
Diffy is great for practicing subtraction, but it also requires students to think logically and identify patterns. It can be played with integers, negative numbers, fractions, decimals, and money, but I think it is most fun with whole numbers. It’s great for kids, but adults enjoy playing, too. Begin by writing four different numbers into the four circles on each of the outer corners. Fill
