I love this book set so I have to tell you about it. It teachers readers how to write different types of writing for instance, a fairy tale, a friendly letter, a poem, etc.  What are in the books? What I like about these books is that they don't just explain the steps to the reader but they use lots of examples of actual ...

I love this book set so I have to tell you about it. It teachers readers how to write different types of writing for instance, a fairy tale, a friendly letter, a poem, etc.  What are in the books? What I like about these books is that they don't just explain the steps to the reader but they use lots of examples of actual ...

Hello again from Ayn at little illuminations!   We've just ended our school year and summer has officially begun! In the last couple of weeks of school, I hold parent teacher conferences and one question seems on the top of the parents' list: ''What can we do over the summer to help prepare my child for kindergarten?'' Often parents want to ...

Switch Kids On to Reading and Writing by Brian Rock As a former teacher and current parent, I’ve had experience in introducing kids to reading and writing. And while there’s no magic potion that works for all kids, I’ve learned that oftentimes the messenger is as important as the message. Even reluctant readers and worrisome writers ...

Welcome to day five of our activities for toddlers series. We’ve already looked at sensory play, arts and crafts, maths games and imaginary play and today we have some lovely playful ideas for reading, writing and songs that are just right for toddlers. Activities for toddlers :: reading, writing and songs These reading, writing and song . . . ...

Coming Soon!  A Surprise! I've been working on a project with an award winning author and artist for the last four months and the project is almost done! It's been hard keeping this a secret and it's one reason why I haven't been posting much on my blog, lately.  I'll be posting it here soon so that everyone  will have an opportunity to read all ...

One thing I really like to do (though I suspect we all do ;) ) is connect the language arts skills we are learning about to the reading we are actually doing.  If the kids see what it is that I am telling them good writers do while they are reading a book that is considered good writing, I feel like there is more buy-in.  So while teaching about ...

My daughter is interested in learning how to read so I’m always looking for ways to add words in to our play. She enjoys reading books, but she’s still at the stage where that can feel like hard work sometimes. Adding words into our play gives her lots of opportunities to practice reading but it feels much . . . → Read More: Learning how to read ...

Who am I? I'm 'THE BEEZY TEACHER'      This “Beezy” teacher has been teaching for 34 years.  Starting her teaching career working as a Special Education teacher for the Austin Independent School District in Austin Texas, she decided to accept a teaching position working for the Department of Defense Dependent Schools Overseas.   After ten years ...

Yesterday I implemented the following activity with my adult students – all of them are retired people that wish to learn English for traveling and visiting different countries.  Basically it was a listening activity, but it also had speaking and reading parts. It requires several steps. We have not finished yet – I expect tomorrow or on coming ...