At VariQuest, we help educators and students alike in the quest for effective teaching and learning by supplying easy-to-use and highly effective visual and teaching aids. As you review our selection of academic tools that are able to help you transform your classroom, you will find excellent solutions for helping teachers teach and students learn more effectively. These tools create effective teaching aids such as visual posters, presentation templates, and more.

Cooperation: to work together in a positive way towards a common goal or purpose. From "circle time" to "group projects" and beyond, cooperation is a prevalent theme throughout all age levels of daycare, schooling, and the professional world. And cooperation can't operate alone - it requires some of our earlier social-emotional lessons to be taught first, as it incorporates kindness, fairness, respect, and so much more. Beginning in preschools where you're helping your friends, teaching cooperation (or teamwork) is a great way to motivate the class to work together and help them understand why that's important. But cooperation isn't just in the classroom - it's important to teach students to apply what they've learned in this lesson within their families, their activities, and their places in the world.

Did you know? When you become a VariQuest customer, you don't just receive hardware + software. Of course, that part is pretty great...because...THOUSANDS of templates, graphics, cutouts, and collections? Kind of a big deal. But VariQuest customers have access to so much more - and one of those benefits is the VariQuest Resource Center - with exclusive content, INCLUDING a bunch of additional free posters to download and print on your Perfecta® Poster Design System! If you're a VariQuest customer and not using these visual aid posters already, log in right now and download! And if you're not a customer yet, well - let us show you just a sampling of what you could be enjoying!

Responsibility: to do the things you are expected to do and to be accountable for your actions. From a very young age, children take pride in having responsibilities and tasks that they can learn from, and be proud of. We know that giving students jobs in our classrooms gives them understanding for their contributions to the greater learning community, and makes them feel included in the success of the group as a whole. But responsibility isn't just tasks on a to-do list - it also means that we are held accountable for our own actions. And this is an important part of developing maturity, and "growing up." Students are challenged each day with responsibilities in their classrooms and everyday lives, but especially taking responsibility for themselves.

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, has been celebrated for thousands of years. It is one of the most important holidays widely celebrated in many Asian countries and territories including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Thailand. Usually falling between January 21st and February 20th, this year's start of the Chinese New Year will occur on January 25th, and is the Year of the Rat. The celebration lasts for about 15 days. Gung Hay Fat Choy is a common Chinese New Year’s greeting in Chinese Cantonese, which means “wishing you great happiness and prosperity.” On Chinese New Year, the themes of happiness, wealth, longevity, luck and good fortune are celebrated. Some of the traditional celebrations include family gatherings, visiting friends and relatives (baai nin), exchanging “lucky money” contained in red envelopes (lai see), decorating homes with paper decorations and scrolls, lion dances, and fireworks. Chinese New Year is a special holiday to celebrate with your class while teaching them others’ cultures and comparing them to American traditions. We have put together a collection of fun, hands-on and Common Core-aligned lessons and activities, classroom decorations, and craft projects for you to explore and enjoy with your class, and I want to share them with you!

40 years ago, would you have predicted that every household in America would have a need for a computer? 20 years ago, would you have predicted that every person would need to surf the internet on a phone - a mobile phone? Probably not. It's hard to imagine a world where every household would have a 3D printer, but that time could feasibly come sooner than we think.

We're approaching the end of the calendar year, and that means gearing up for a holiday break, then full speed ahead in January!

Perseverance: to do your best to meet a goal even if it is a big challenge. When working through a difficult task, we all experience a wide range of emotions. We might be excited about making progress, frustrated about a setback, or exhausted over the amount of time or effort we've invested. "Never Give Up" is a phrase that comes to mind - to help pull through. Students are challenged to persevere each day in our classrooms and their everyday lives - as they learn about finding their roles in this great big world.

As educators, we sometimes refer to this time before the holidays as the "Mid-Year Slump." Your students may be getting a bit restless with less outdoor time due to the changing seasons, and we are all looking forward to the upcoming vacation days - to give our brains a little "break" from the structure of the school week. Building movement into your students’ day is important for so many reasons, but in the months of November and December it becomes a necessity. We suggest building several small "brain breaks" into your day. With 21st Century Skills in mind, Jill and Cathy from The Curriculum Corner share their tips for powering through this "slump"-like time, to get your kids moving and motivated to power through a restless time of year. With the help of the VariQuest Motiva®, Cutout Maker, and Perfecta® utilizing Engage Every Learner™ Content, they'll give you some great ideas to carry out in your classroom!

Of the eight categories of intelligences, research suggests that visual-spatial learning is the most predominant. When a teacher can train him or herself to think like a visual learner, modifying instruction isn't hard. Some fairly straightforward tweaks in the instructional approach can support learners across the spectrum in core curricular areas and beyond. Visual and other sensory approaches to learning can transcend the barriers of language and culture, create a common language to bridge the generational gaps between educators and students, and open up new opportunities for societal and job equity for those students traditionally disenfranchised by the formal education system. We at VariQuest know how important diversifying instruction is, to ensure the needs of all learners are met, so in partnership with Susan McClester and updated with the help of Carman Le, MAT, we've created a free eBook dedicated to successful strategies in catering to visual and sensory learning instruction - and we'd like to share it with you! Visual Learning for the At-Risk Student contains...