fbpx

Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

Engaging Lessons

15 Simple Machines Activities that Will Hook Your Students

by

Are you looking for activities you can use to teach upper elementary students about simple machines and their connections to every day life? We pulled together our favourite activities in one convneient place. Come read it today and get your science unit planned in minutes!

One of our favourite science units to teach is about simple machines or wheels and levers (if you teach in Alberta). We love it because it provides many opportunities for hands-on learning and can be done inside regardless of the weather. Students love to build contraptions and we can use up materials that would generally go in the recycling bin so it’s also a very low-cost science unit. Which of these activities have you tried during your science lessons?

[Read more…] about 15 Simple Machines Activities that Will Hook Your Students

How to Teach Students to Tell Time

by

Teaching time can be a stressfull situation in math class. How do you teach your students to tell time? We've put together all our activities for reading clocks, understanding the 12 Hour and 24 Hour clock, AM/PM, elapsed time and calendars. Come add these activities to your time lessons!

Teaching students to tell time is a necessary and difficult challenge, but time lessons are a life skill.

Some people argue that reading analog clocks is a skill that is slowly disappearing. Perhaps one day, digital clocks will completely take over, but for now, they are still around, causing grief for teachers and students around the world during time lessons in math class.

Come learn some of the activities we use to help our students learn to read the time with these time lessons that will save you time.

[Read more…] about How to Teach Students to Tell Time

Spring Classroom Activities To Make You Bloom

by

Spring is here and we have collected our favourite spring classroom activities to help you get through spring fever. Come read our list a get some ideas you can use right away.

Spring is a great time in upper elementary classrooms. By this point in the school year, students understand the routines and things tend to start running smoothly. Of course, there is also the spring fever that tends to creep in and make students a little squirrely as the weather changes. Nothing says spring like the smell of damp socks and slushy halls after recess breaks.

We put together some of our favourite spring classroom activities that we use to keep students learning and moving forward. Come see which of these would work in your upper elementary classroom.

[Read more…] about Spring Classroom Activities To Make You Bloom

How to Bring Indigenous Culture into Art Lessons

by

One way to show appreciation for Indigenous artists is to study their work as you would any great artist. We put together some of the ways we incorporate learning about Indigenous artists and other aspects of culture in Canada in one post. Come read more.

Incorporating the stories and culture of Indigenous people is important to us. It’s woven throughout our subject areas, but we often look for other places to provide opportunities to bring cultures together. We’ve had several students who share their Cree and Dene cultures with us. Other years we’ve had no one in our classroom with a direct connection to our Indigenous People. We want all of our students to feel connected to the history of our country and the people who were here first. One way we do this is by exploring the works of Indigenous artists in Canada.

[Read more…] about How to Bring Indigenous Culture into Art Lessons

Heart Art Projects You’ll Love

by

Heart art projects are great any time of year. We collected some of our favourite art projects that use basic materials like markers, pastels and crayons and put all the instructions in one blog post. Come see which one you can make with your upper elementary class for Valentine's Day, Pink Shirt Day or just to show how kind your students can be.

We love to create art projects that use simple shapes but teach students different techniques. Heart art projects are perfect around Valentine’s Day, but they are a universal symbol that can be done any time of year. These art projects are some of the favourites that we use year after year. Best of all, they mostly use common materials you can find in most schools.

Check out these heart art projects that you can use to decorate your classroom, make gifts or share the love.

[Read more…] about Heart Art Projects You’ll Love

Free Winter Classroom Activities Worth Scooping Up

by

Are you looking for some simple and free classroom activities to keep your students busy during the long winter months? We collected many winter activities for language arts, math, scrience, art and some just for fun and put them all together in one big post. You can use these activities for instruction or give them to your students during indoor recess on those long winter days. Come take a look!

Depending on where you live, winter can be a very long season. In northern Canada, where we teach, winter can start as early as October. It continues up to the end of March. That means we are always on the lookout for winter classroom activities to use in class. More importantly, we use them during those dreaded indoor recesses when it is just too cold to go outside.

[Read more…] about Free Winter Classroom Activities Worth Scooping Up