Welcome to the first "A Month in Moments" post! This month's topics include:
Poetry Month connections
Exploring seeds
April showers activities
And more
What to expect with "A Month in Moments" posts: Inspired by my mom's use of Joni Hilton's Five-Minute Miracles book when we were growing up, I aim to provide you and your family and/or students with 5-10 minute activities that encourage joy in learning! The suggested "moments" are a blend of active, outdoors, creative, science, and mindfulness activities. At home, these can kick your day off to a positive start at breakfast or serve as a conversation starter at dinner. In the classroom, these activities might be interesting for brain breaks and could be useful to have on hand for indoor recess days. You could also flesh some of the activities out if they align to standards (these activities are marked with a star). This month's activities are designed for elementary-aged students and kids, but you can age most of the activities up or down!
Why "A Month in Moments"? After work, school, extracurriculars, cooking, and cleaning, we may fall into routines that we do over and over again with our families. Routine and structure are wonderful, but I know in our family we fall back on watching TV (once the baby is asleep) or doing the same activities over and over with our little one. A few months ago, I borrowed Five-Minute Miracles from my mom and started planning my own calendars for my 6 month old (the book is aimed at upper-preschool age and older). When I found myself not sure of what to do with our little one, I'd pull from the calendar to spice things up. My husband and I also have a 5 minute miracle jar that we both added silly ideas to (pick 2 international cities you want to visit, Space Jam dance party, etc.) for days when we are tired and indecisive about what to do. By having pre-planned activities, we can by-pass tired indecisiveness and jump into doing! We don't have to come up with and plan an activity - we already did that on a day when we had the brain-space to do it! I hope that you find these pre-planned activities helpful AND if they inspire you to create your own Month in Moments plans, please share!!!
Click the link here for a Google Doc with:
A calendar overview that you can print
Materials list (most of these will be around your house)
Activity descriptions
Book suggestions for story time related to the activities