The Differentiated Kindergarten blog uses our Manuscript Letter Beads!

Students will love being able to see their numbers and letters up close! These sturdy, colorful beads can be strung on thread or sorted into trays just like the photo above. Use the beads to teach number and letter recognition using visual and tactile approaches. Like blogger Marsha states, the beads aren’t simply beads, because “the bead IS the letter”! 

Blogger Marsha published her post on July 12, 2013. The post is entitled, “Beads Glorious Beads!!!” Check out the full blog post here!

As the post shows, the Manuscript Letter beads come in two formats: Lowercase and Uppercase.

To order our products, visit our website here or click on the following links to locate our products:

• Manuscript Letters (Uppercase)

• Manuscript Letters (Lowercase)

Number Beads

The Manuscript Letters can be used for a variety of projects or in educational lesson plans. Great for introducing letter and number recognition, the Manuscript Letters and Math Beads come in a variety of bright and fun colors that students will love to work with.

String up the letters to make bracelets or necklaces! Tie a knot in between each new threaded letter to keep them from bunching up, or use pony beads to separate the letters when spelling multiple words.

Use the letters for Bingo games! Play a variation of Bingo called Lingo (Letter + Bingo)! Draw a 4 x 4 square grid and write a random selection of letters on it. Distribute the graph cards among students and provide a handful of letters for the students to use. When a random letter is called out, students must search through their letter supply to find the correct letter. The first person to call out Bingo must have a row of 4 letters with corresponding letter beads!

One of Marsha’s activities involved separating a handful of letter beads into consonants and vowels or lowercase from uppercase. To really increase students’ letter comprehension, you can ask them to make words from the jumbled uppercase or lowercase letters!

Marsha even designed a lovely little cubby area to store all the letters inside. You can customize the storage area to hold letters as well as numbers or to differentiate between upper and lowercase letters.

Thanks to Marsha for this insightful post!

Images and original post © This Little Class of Mine

This post was not sponsored for a review. At LittleFingersBigArt, our mission is to present to our readers and viewers the newest and most creative craft ideas that fans of Roylco have made on their own. Our goal is to allow you and other educators and parents to reuse our products in fun ways so that children always get the best educational experience from them!

We’d love to see more ideas like this one! If you’ve got a brilliant craft idea or have made a version of one of our crafts that you would like to share with us, send an email to us with photos, descriptions or a link to your work. We will create a feature post and link back to you with full credit. Contact us through the contact form for more details. We’d love to hear from you!

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This Little Class of Mine uses our Color Diffusing Paper!

Used to make ocean backgrounds for these adorable squid characters, Color Diffusing Paper was combined with paint and bit of salt to create neat bubbly water effects!

This activity was part of a literacy/art class that studied a fun children’s book, I’m the Best Artist in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry. The squid on the front cover was used as the inspiration for this classroom’s art projects. Students also gained a lesson in biology as they learned a bit about ocean life and habitats of ocean creatures.

Check out some of the amazing art projects at this link!

The post, entitled “Best Artist in the Ocean: Giant Squid Painting” was published on September 27, 2010 at the Little Class of Mine blog. Visit more of this blog here!

Ms. Nellie Mae first showed her students a simple and challenging way to draw squid characters. The students painted their squid characters onto blue-color paper. While they waited for the paint to dry, the students prepared their backgrounds.

The R15212 Color Diffusing Paper was first placed on top of a sheet of white paper. This was a bonus trick that allowed students to make a copy of their artwork! Using liquid watercolors, the students painted their diffusion paper. The students then dropped pinches of salt onto the still-wet paint. This created a bubbly effect on the paint!

Crazy cool!

Thanks to Nellie Mae for sharing this post!

Images and original post © This Little Class of Mine

This post was not sponsored for a review. At LittleFingersBigArt, our mission is to present to our readers and viewers the newest and most creative craft ideas that fans of Roylco have made on their own. Our goal is to allow you and other educators and parents to reuse our products in fun ways so that children always get the best educational experience from them!

We’d love to see more ideas like this one! If you’ve got a brilliant craft idea or have made a version of one of our crafts that you would like to share with us, send an email to subscriber@roylco.ca with photos, descriptions or a link to your work. We will create a feature post and link back to you with full credit. We’d love to hear from you!

Craft Spotlight: Stand Up Letters

DSCF7019Our newest product addition: R49702 Stand Up Letters! Students can color in and decorate the letters, adding their own unique touch with collage materials, stickers, mosaics and more! The Stand Up Letters are perfect for helping students picture exactly how each letter looks like–since they stand out so well!

Stand Up Letters can be used for a variety of literacy projects! Click on the link to visit our full product webpage.

• Younger students can trace the inside of the Stand Up Letters to help build their fine motor skills and get them prepared for learning how to write the letters individually!

• Older students can spell their names with the letters.

• Draw on images that match the letter (i.e. Cat for the letter ‘C’ and so on).

• Use the letters to teach the differences between consonants and vowels!

• Students can also play a spelling game that’s a version of Boggle Letters! Choose 3-5 assorted consonants and vowels and encourage the students to spell out words with the provided letters.

View more ideas here in the PDF guide!

The Stand Up Letters are made from sturdy card to help reinforce the folded letter when it’s placed upright.

R49702

The video below shows how to set up and decorate the Stand Up Letters.

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Yoga in the Classroom

Yoga in the Classroom!

Classroom exercise can be a source of joy for both students and teachers, but to fit exercise into an already stressed schedule, it needs to have clear objectives and measurable results. Many teachers feel uncomfortable about implementing an exercise program because they don’t have sufficient confidence in their own knowledge and skills. The benefits far out weigh the challenges—the trick is to find the right program that works for you and your classroom. Let’s start off by looking at the benefits of classroom exercise.

We’ve all heard about the epidemic of obesity. Besides just the physical and social problems of overweight children, there are significant learning challenges. Exercise helps stimulate the mind as it stimulates the body. Short sessions of physical activity will improve alertness, focus attention and raise self esteem. Those benefits are good for all students! The challenge is to develop a program that you can do easily in the classroom and meets your comfort level as an instructor. Let’s review your options.

Yoga is a wonderful exercise program. People who aren’t familiar with yoga can still introduce it to students at a basic and introductory level. Even at that level, it produces excellent results in the right classroom environment.

If you ever feel that your class is too rambunctious or unfocused, turn to yoga as a way to increase attention and build calmness. You won’t need a lot of space or any extra supplies. You can learn more by visiting a local yoga studio or go on-line to read about yoga practices or you can jump right in and buy Roylco’s R62011 Body Poetry: Yoga Cards for children 4 years and older.

Body Poetry Cards

The kit contains a complete guide to implementing yoga in your classroom. Each session starts with breathing exercises and stretches that help children build an awareness of their body while focusing the attention. Once they reach a calm mental place, they can start recreating the yoga poses. Roylco has produced large, vibrant cards that you can use to show students how to create each pose. When students see the children pictured on the cards in the poses, they naturally want to try them on their own.

Roylco has produced three challenge levels of poses: easy is framed with a green border; intermediate is framed with a yellow border; challenging is framed with a red border. Children love challenging themselves to higher and higher levels of poses. Arrange the cards in different configurations to keep the exercise routines fresh and fun. Roylco has provided suggested routines to get your started. Each session should be 10-20 minutes long. When your students have mastered the poses, let them create their own routines. They can sort through the cards and arrange them with special themes in mind based on the illustrations pictured with the children on the front of each card. To help you feel more comfortable teaching yoga, Roylco has printed instructions for each pose on the back of the card. As you display the card to your students, you can describe how to recreate the poses.

After each session, you should see results. Your students should be more focused, calmer and yet invigorated. Although it’s great to have a routine time of day for your exercise sessions, try different times so you can evaluate the best time to have a session. Some teachers find mid morning or mid afternoon to be the best time to use yoga to reinvigorate their students. Other teachers use it to start the day. There are some teachers who have second sessions right before tests or assemblies to help focus their students’ minds.

Although yoga is a great exercise activity that doesn’t need a lot of space or any extra supplies, it is not your only option. If you find that your students are already calm and maybe even sedate, get them up and moving with Roylco’s R62010 Animal Action Cards. The intent of this exercise program is to get the heart thumbing and the mind racing! Each of the 16 picture cards features a photograph of an active child along with a beautiful animal illustration. Children in your class assume the pose of the child pictured on the card and then carry out the action of the animal. Students can flap their arms to represent a bird or jump like a frog. Three challenge levels will keep kids entertained and motivated.

Although yoga is a great exercise activity that doesn’t need a lot of space or any extra supplies, it is not your only option. If you find that your students are already calm and maybe even sedate, get theAnimal Action Cardsm up and moving with Roylco’s R62010 Animal Action Cards. The intent of this exercise program is to get the heart thumbing and the mind racing! Each of the 16 picture cards features a photograph of an active child along with a beautiful animal illustration. Children in your class assume the pose of the child pictured on the card and then carry out the action of the animal. Students can flap their arms to represent a bird or jump like a frog. Three challenge levels will keep kids entertained and motivated.

If you are looking for something to Laugh Track Cardsreally inspire mental well being, try Roylco’s R62015 The Laugh Track. This system is based on Laughter Yoga and come with hilarious pictures of students doing funny activities AND a CD filled with music featuring human laughter. Your students won’t be able to resist laughing when they see the pictures and hear the tunes. More importantly, laughter builds core strength while producing endorphins. Just think how wonderful it will be to spend 15 minutes doing hilarious activities on a dreary day! You and your students will end the session refreshed and ready to learn. All you’ll need is a CD player.

If time is tight but you still want to integrate a physical activity program, combine it with another subject area. Teach letter recognition, the alphabet and spelling with Roylco’s R62017 Twist and Spell Exercise Cards. The 48 cards show happy children posed to resemble letters. Popular letters are repeated. Once children learn how to make each of the letter shapes with their bodies, organize the cards into words and start spelling with the students’ whole bodies! It’s fun and perfect for kinesthetic learners.

Twist and Spell

Exercise has many benefits beyond controlling weight. In the classroom, it can help focus the mind, increase self discipline and promote higher self esteem. Roylco makes it easy for teachers at every level to conduct short, daily exercise routines. Just pick the one that you think is most closely aligned to your needs and get started. Enjoy this time with your students. It can be a wonderful bonding experience!

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Craft Spotlight: Alphabet Pasting Pieces

Feature-Image-alphapastingpiecesThis week’s Craft Spotlight highlights our Alphabet Pasting Pieces as we get set for literacy activities! Use this literacy tool as an introduction to letter recognition, letter order and to help students construct new words.

The Alphabet Pasting Pieces are small cutouts of letters in different fonts and colors to help students get used to the variable appearance of the alphabet. Add the pasting pieces to any of your scrapbooking projects or use in conjunction with scrap pieces of paper to make interesting collage artwork!

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The letters are printed on both sides of the card, so they can also be used for literacy mobiles! In this activity, our crafters used the pasting pieces to spell out their names.

IMG_2347One of the projects they made was a homemade scrapbook from zip-lock bags and decorative paper. The pasting pieces were then used to spell out words such as, “My Book” or “Art Book.” Each zip-lock bag was attached together at one end with a hole punch and pipe cleaner to make it look like a miniature art portfolio!

IMG_2340Use the colorful letters for sorting and counting activities! Give students a handful of the pasting pieces and ask them to sort the letters by vowels or consonants. Then sort by color! Finally, count how many individual pasting pieces are in each pile.

_DSC0073The pasting pieces are a great way to decorate scrapbooks, journals, collage art and more!

Line-09Show us your literacy activities or artwork with photos! Contact us at subscriber@roylco.ca for a chance to be featured in one of our upcoming posts!