Classroom Activities and Lessons Archives

Kindergarten Cafe

Welcome to Kindergarten Cafe - your home for teaching ideas, activities, and strategies across all content areas! I am Zeba McGibbon and I love creating resources for teachers and sharing my teaching experience with others. Kindergarten Cafe is aimed for kindergarten, but teachers of Preschool-First grade can find resources here for their students! I love to connect with other teachers so please reach out and say hello!

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Math

What’s in my Math Toolbox?

Zeba McGibbon

The same tools can be used to meet a variety of skills for math small groups or interventions. I keep my math...

Literacy

4 Tips for Teaching Sentences to Beginning Writers

Zeba McGibbon

When teaching beginning writers, it is important to teach them how to write a sentence. I have 4 tips for you when...

Science

Teaching Living and Non-Living Things in Kindergarten

Zeba McGibbon

Teaching about living and non-living things is a crucial foundation to all life sciences, life cycles, biology and ecology. Thinking about living...

Social Emotional Learning and Supports

Turning Misbehaviors In The Classroom into Teachable Moments

Zeba McGibbon

The secret to good teaching? Finding those teachable moments and running with them. Good social-emotional instruction involves...

Teaching Tips and Tricks

7 Tips for Difficult Parent-Teacher Conferences

Zeba McGibbon

I’m not sure about you, but I have Spring Parent-Teacher Conferences this week. With the upcoming conferences, I’m thinking ahead to some...

What’s in my Math Toolbox?

MathZeba McGibbon

The same tools can be used to meet a variety of skills for math small groups or interventions. I keep my math toolbox stocked and ready to go behind my small group table for every kind of math group I might need!

4 Tips for Teaching Sentences to Beginning Writers

LiteracyZeba McGibbon

When teaching beginning writers, it is important to teach them how to write a sentence. I have 4 tips for you when teaching sentences to beginning or struggling writers! Hearing comes first when teaching sentences https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Phonemic-Awareness-Interventions-5550853

Teaching Living and Non-Living Things in Kindergarten

ScienceZeba McGibbon

Teaching about living and non-living things is a crucial foundation to all life sciences, life cycles, biology and ecology. Thinking about living things may be easy, but non-living things are more abstract. Students should be able to group living things together to see the...

3D Shapes for Kindergarten

MathZeba McGibbon

Teaching about 3-Dimensional (3D) Shapes for Kindergarten involves hands-on exploring, explicit teaching, and linking 3D shapes to our real world. With these three things, your students will have fun and learn a lot about 3D shapes! You can get all these 3D shape activities...

Teaching High-Frequency Words in Kindergarten

LiteracyZeba McGibbon

When learning to read and write, learning high frequency words quickly and purposefully can make all the difference. In this blog post, I will go over my best tips for teaching high frequency words in Kindergarten so they actually stick! Want to read other...

Read Across America Week

Classroom Activities and LessonsZeba McGibbon

In case you haven’t heard, teachers and the National Educators Association are moving away from celebrating Dr. Seuss during Read Across America week, because of the growing research on his racist messages within his stories. So instead of celebrating Dr. Seuss, let’s celebrating the...

Addition and Subtraction Strategies

MathZeba McGibbon

I love the time of year when we can start working on addition and subtraction strategies in math. There are three key strategies that I like to teach my students that draw on other important math understandings that we have been working on throughout...

Phoneme Segmentation

LiteracyZeba McGibbon

The best way to increase your students’ reading and writing development is to work on phoneme segmentation. There is a clear order to work on these skills to best support the students in your classroom. For all the skills, you want students to be...

Letter-Sound Correspondence

LiteracyZeba McGibbon

One of the most important concepts for kindergarteners to learn for their early literacy development is letter-sound correspondence. Children need to know that the written letters are connected to sounds we speak and they need to be able to match the two.

Benefits to Reading Strategy Powerpoints

LiteracyZeba McGibbon

I love using reading powerpoints to enhance my reading instruction. Reading powerpoints showcase different reading strategies, use powerful shared reading technique, and encourages transfer of the reading skills. Reading strategies There are so...