Math practice kit activities with printables

 Montessori and Math Their Way teach math in hands-on learning center tasks, as opposed to paper and-pencil lessons. Here's a homemade mini math learning center. Use this shoebox math facts practice kit for independent, on-the-go learning. Retention of math facts and operations is vital for higher math. Use this math homework practice kit to reinforce addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.

 Children should practice 5-10 minutes 4-5 times a week. In a shoebox or plastic lidded box, place these items 

--color-coded list of digits. For example: 0-yellow, 1-blue, 2-red, 3-orange, 4-purple, 5-green, 6-brown, 7-pink, 8-black, 9-gray. Some 1,983 would be written blue-1, gray-9,black-8 and orange-3. Color coding helps many students visualize and organize numbers, learn place value and memorize math facts, 

--set of dice. Practice math facts by casting die and adding or multiplying two numbers shown. 

--set of dominoes (base 12 set is best) or homemade"domino"flash cards made from index cards. Write domino dot configuration in number color from chart. Student selects a domino and adds, subtracts or multiplies the two numbers. Write answers on back for self-checking. Here are free printable dominoes. 

--deck of playing cards--student chooses two cards and adds, subtracts, or multiplies them. Face cards are valued as such:(ace-1, jack-10, queen, 12 and king-0) Here's a free printable deck of playing cards. 

--math flashcards for each fact family. Purchase at Dollar Tree or discount store. Here are freeprintable math flashcards. Make flashcards by writing math fact (problem) in color code on one side and the answer on the back. 

--pencil, eraser and scrap paper squares--student writes out a fact family, or writes story problems, illustrating with items to represent (three apples times seven apples). Use for pop quizzes also.

 --tablet of small stickers or mini-stamper marker-- Child makes his own flashcards with stickers and scrap paper, for the math facts family on which he's working. 

--100 chart or cheat sheet. Student uses to skip count by different numbers (multiply), look for patterns, or practice facts. Here are free printable 100 charts. 

--yarn strung with 100 plastic beads. This homemade abacus is a great visual for math operations. Give student a problem, like 7x8, She counts out and add seven groups of eight. 

--food snacks with little pieces; fish crackers, breakfast cereal, raisins, candies, pretzels. Students demonstrate math facts with food while eating it. 

Keep math facts practice kit in the car. Use travel time for homework reinforcement.

Free printable Greek mythology coloring pages

Mythology is an important subject to teach in school. But ancient mythological systems like Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic, Egyptian, Teutonic are often misunderstood, especially by fundamentalist Christians. Ancient civilizations and cultures are how we frame our own modern world. The children's literature book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters made teachers give Greek and Roman mythology a modern twist. Percy (Perseus) Jackson has many adventure with the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. Explore Greek mythology, gods goddesses of Mt. Olympus and mythological creatures and monsters symbols with these free printable Greek mythology activities

FantasyJr. has twelve free printable Greco-Roman coloring pages of the Olympians.  Karen's Whimsey has dozens of free printable mythology and Ancient Greece coloring pages. Color the Olympians, gods and goddesses, heroes, mythological monsters, beasts and creatures. Color free printable famous works of art featuring the Greek pantheon, Satyrs, Circe, the Sirens, Odysseus and many more characters from Greek mythology. Print coloring pages from ancient Rome, as well gods in Roman mythology.

Coloring.ws has a complete free printable Greek mythology coloring pages on the Olympians of Ancient Greece. This site also contains free printable maps of Greece. The link provided takes you to the twelve Olympians, the Immortals, each with biographical data and coloring pages both of the god or goddess and his or her symbol. The Olympians are arranged as a family tree. The Twelve Olympians include: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Aphrodite, Athena, Ares, Hephaestus, Apollo, Artemis and Hermes. It is important to note that the Olympian deities have the same personality in Roman mythology, however they go by different names. Here are the Greek Immortals with their Roman names, which the planets are named for. Constellations and star signs also take their names from mythology.

Zeus= Jupiter

Poseidon=Neptune

Hades=Pluto

Hera=Juno

Hestia=Vesta

Aphrodite=Venus

Athena=Minerva

Ares=Mars

Hephaestus=Vulcan

Apollo=same

Artemis=Diana

Hermes=Mercury

Cronos=Saturn

If you continue scrolling and pressing next you will find coloring pages for lesser god, goddesses, heroes and creatures of the Greek world. This list includes; Herakles (Hercules), King Midas, Pan, Demeter (Ceres), Eos, Eros (Cupid), Hebe, Iris, Persephone, Nike and more. Free printable Greek mythology monsters and creatures include: centaur, Charon (River Styx ferry boat captain), Cerberus, Cyclops, giants (sons of Titan Uranus), griffin, harpy, Medusa, Minotaur, (battled Perseus), Phoenix (bird that rose from the ashes of fire), Sirens (lured Odysseus to his doom), Trojan Horse (employed by Greeks for entering Troy), Pegasus and unicorn coloring pages

Free printables ESL and Spanish lesson plans, language activities, worksheets

Spanish is quickly becoming America's second language after English. Many jobs now require that employees be bilingual in Spanish and English. I'm a former ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher. One of the best conversational language activities was to role-play dialog games.

Here are
free printable Spanish lesson plans, ESL activities and Spanish-English translation. Print ESL worksheets, games, flashcards, matching games, puzzles, crossword, word games, projects--in short interactive activities! Here's a neat concept website in English as a Second Language printables--a user-supported site where teachers have to upload and share their ESL worksheets in order to download and print others.

Spanish Sponge has dozens of free printable Spanish to English flashcards and flashcards for English to Spanish lessons. Print foreign language flashcards for vocabulary, verbs, conversation and other language and translation activities. Use the flashcards to play games involving the entire class. This helps to reinforce pronunciation, diction, dialog and fluency in a learning a foreign language.

ABC Teach is a pay site for educators, but has many free printable ESL worksheets and foreign language lessons to sample. They print in full page pdf printables and have many Spanish lessons geared toward younger students and those who are new the Spanish or English language. This links you directly to the languages pages so that you can choose whether to use the English as a Second Language materials or the Spanish activities for speakers of English. visit EL Civics for ESL worksheets, workbooks and learning games to print free.

Free printable handwriting worksheets, penmanship activities for cursive and print

One of the lesson plans that has virtually disappeared in this digital age is penmanship. Arguably, handwriting, especially cursive, is less important with the advent of computers. Older people (like me!) remember spending hours practicing manuscript and cursive. Now although kids type more, they do still write and should learn to do so neatly. 

There are different methods for teaching penmanship. Zaner-Bloser style is the older handwriting style in which printed letters are written vertically with no slant. D'
nealian manuscript (printed letters) are written at a slant with rounding of letters. D'nealian is more comfortable to write and works with the curves of the hand and body. D'Nealian print also transitions to cursive writing better. Here are free printable penmanship lessons for both styles of handwriting worksheets.

Writing Wizard has many free printable handwriting worksheets and writing practice pages for manuscript (print) and cursive writing practice pages. There are upper and lower case letters. You can print pages with single letters to practice. Kids Zone has really nice free printable handwriting worksheets and writing practice pages. The letters are grouped according the movements needed to write them. For example, there are the "rockin" round' letters and the "up the slide letters." This site is very kid-friendly. There are gobs more free printable writing and reading lessons on printing, tracing, alphabet, Dolce sight words, phonics, poetry and more.

Handwriting for Kids has a collection of free printable penmanship writing practice pages and handwriting worksheets. Look for cursive writing practice pages on this site.. Each of the cursive handwriting worksheets has a coloring picture on it. Children love to color the pictures when they have finished their handwriting practice. Make the coloring page a reward. When they have shown you their five best examples of the letter, they get to color the pictures.

Free Printable Earth Day lesson plans on ecology, environment, poverty, world hunger

Looking for Earth Day science lesson plans? How about social studies lesson plans to teach students global awareness? Here are activities to show how poverty is rooted in habits that are unfriendly to the environment like pollution, deforestation, destruction of natural resources and rainforest exploitation. . The Hunger Site offers free printable lesson plans to build global awareness. The Hunger Site and partner sites support the rainforest, animals, literacy, diabetes, autism, Alzheimer's and veterans. Clicks and purchases at fair trade stores enable The Hunger Site to donate to those in need around the world.

The Hunger Site and partner sites provide free printable global awareness resources for teachers and homeschoolers. Click the tab "literacy and education." Get free printable ecology and environment lesson plans to teach students about the dangers of global warming, rainforest exploitation, expansionism, imperialism, urban sprawl, pollution, deforestation, water shortage, poverty and hunger. These activities are perfect for Earth Month or Earth Day lesson plans. 

Here are more free printable ecology and environment lesson plans help students explore world hunger, poverty, disease and famine from a social justice perspective. Smithsonian Education offers free printable conservation, ecology and environment activities on pollution, world poverty, famine and disease.  Why Hunger has free activities on natural resources, world hunger, distribution of wealth and poverty.

Feeding Minds helps teachers and students explore world hunger and poverty inside out and provides many free printable educational resources. Rain-tree has free printable rainforest, ecology and environment activities. Students learn about deforestation, wildlife preservation, pollution, depletion of natural resources and more. Eduweb offers students online games and free printable resources to explore the Amazon rainforest and the environment. There are lessons on food webs and natural resources. Teach students about world hunger and poverty in a proactive ways, by building global awareness of natural resources, ecology and environmental science