Playlist: Bookmarks
Struggle Makes Us Stronger
How the lotus can teach your young students about resiliency.
Regulating Our Emotions
Tools to help your young students regulate their emotions.
Holiday Shuffle – Day vs Date
Wouldn’t some holidays be better on a certain day of the week? Should Thanksgiving have a set date?
Halloween Problems and Solutions
When we try to solve a problem, sometimes we end up creating new problems. Which lead to new solutions. Which lead to new problems.
Words Within Words: CORNMAZE
How many words can you find within CORNMAZE?
Halloween Emoji Story 🎃
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Words Within Words: ORNAMENT
How many words can you find within ORNAMENT?
Words Within Words: SCARECROW
How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?
Words Within Words: CRANBERRY
How many words can you find within “cranberry”?
Words Within Words: STUFFING
How many words are hiding inside STUFFING? More than you think.
The Heaviest Pumpkin
How heavy is the world’s heaviest pumpkin when measured in Mr. Byrds?
Squiggles Introduction
What do you see in this squiggle?
What If… No Sleep?
What would the consequences be if no one had to sleep anymore?
Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
Lipogram: Rewrite “Mary Had A Little Lamb”
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
Categorize and Re-Categorize Animals
Put these animals into groups. Then do it again. Then… do it one more time. How does re-re-grouping the same creatures reveal new patterns and give new insights?
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
Words Within Words: AIRPLANE
How many words can you find within airplane?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Ultimate (or Inception) Tic Tac Toe
What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it?
Game: Number Scrabble
What if we played Tic-Tac-Toe with numbers and instead of three-in-a-row, we add up to 15? Well… then we’d have Number Scrabble!
An Escher-Style Tessellation Project
Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!
Game: Gomoku
Want to take Tic-Tac-Toe to the next level!? Imagine a 15×15 board. You must get five-in-a-row. You cannot get six-in-a-row. That’s Gomoku!
Remixing A Holiday Poem
Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!
Holiday vs Holiday (from a Mascot’s Perspective)
Want something to do during the holiday season that is both fun and involves thinking? Get students writing about what a snowman would think about Halloween or what a ghost would think about Thanksgiving.
Characters Dressed as Other Characters for Halloween
What if one character dressed up as another for Halloween? Would the Cat in the Hat pick Captain Jack Sparrow, because they’re both chaotic yet good-natured people? Would Elsa dress up as The Ice King since they are both lonely?
SCAMPER: Scaffolding Creativity
Asking students to “think creatively” won’t get you far. They won’t know how to start, they’ll get stuck with simple ideas, or they’ll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.
Investigating Christmas Trees
Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?
Dots and Boxes
Who can make the most boxes from dots in this strategy game?
More Specific than “Smart”
When students are told that they’re “smart”, what does this word actually mean to them? (Psst. It isn’t what we intended.)
Building Creative Analogies
We’ll take two seemingly unrelated pieces of content (say volcanoes and the human body) and then build analogies to connect the two ideas. In the end, students can create a skit, comic, or story relating the two concepts.
The Thinking Hats
So… do your students moan when forced to work in a group? Part of the problem is that lack the structure to work well with peers. Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats are a perfect tool to help with this problem.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
Reduce Anxiety: Square Breathing (Tool 1)
Reduce anxiety by breathing in a square pattern.