Hopefully you've heard it constantly this year, but it deserves to be said again: You're doing great. You're doing your best, your students are doing their best, and their parents are doing their best. The end of the year brings up these sentiments more than any other time of year, as you prepare to break for summer and send these students to their new classrooms next school year. And all the hard work your students have done - deserves a little reward and recognition. And what kid (or kid at heart) doesn't love a little treat!? You can make it as hearty (cereal) or sweet (candy) as you please, but you can make it easy using the VariQuest® Motiva® 400 Specialty Printer and Engage Every Learner® Content to create labels for your treats to show your students their work has not gone unnoticed!

Engagement. Inclusivity. Social-Emotional Support. With all that students have experienced in recent months, you're looking ahead to the future. In a "normal" year, your federal funding dollars may have gone towards field trips, student performances, or hands-on lab materials. Now you have decisions to make on how to spend that funding in a meaningful way to set up for what next year will bring. Overcoming challenges from distance learning, promoting inclusion and equality, and expanding your social-emotional support efforts are just a few concepts that will require extra action as students (hopefully) return to classrooms. Today we'll explore a few major funding streams and how you can use aligned tools to face these challenges, head-on.

While celebrating the earth is given a special day each year in April, students are fascinated with learning about the ground and the elements and the weather all year long. Recycling, limiting energy usage, and cleaning up litter are all important concepts to instill in our future generations, but what's equally important is their understanding of how the environment functions as its own thriving system - whether humans are here to enjoy it, or not. With rock cycles, life cycles, tide patterns, and more to explore, today we're going to talk about the water cycle, and tips for teaching it with a full class, in small groups, or as a take-home project for students.

by Cathy Henry, Guest Blogger Special education teachers have an important job working to help students reach their full potential. They work tirelessly to find ways to help students navigate the general education classroom and to build life skills. While the job is never easy, it has grown to include even more obstacles and responsibilities during the time of COVID. Trainings offered to help during this time along with new tools for teachers and students are growing. However, finding the time to master these can be a challenge with the very full schedule teachers already have. Today I am sharing five quick tips, plus a downloadable guide with templates and ideas, designed to help you navigate the challenges of teaching special education via a virtual or hybrid model.

You put lots of time and effort into the materials you create for classroom activities and discussion. Wouldn't it be great to use them over and over again, while maintaining cleanliness and sanitization standards?

Career and Technical Education (CTE) may have taken a backseat during the isolation of the pandemic, with less opportunities for collaboration and hands-on learning, but the possibilities of futures for these students are still unlimited, and our responsibilities as educators to help them fulfill those have not changed. As we at VariQuest feel passionately about preparing students for their futures and full potentials, we've gathered together some resources to help you not only build a successful CTE program, but continue its evolution as industries and times change.

There are various ways to get a point across. However, in order to successfully convey information in a way that sticks in the minds of your audience, visual aids are key. This is especially important when it comes to conveying health and safety information in schools. The use of posters made with an educational poster maker can get the job done effectively. At VariQuest, we offer the Perfecta® STP Series Printers which, paired with our innovative Engage Every Learner® Content, are ideal machines for producing health and safety posters in schools.

Distance learning has been hard on students (and teachers!) - not just from the lack of human interaction, but the stress of figuring out new technologies, the eye strain of staring at screens, and the absence of hands-on, collaborative learning activities they thrive on in a classroom setting. With distractions abound and parents often struggling to assist, take-home, printed activities may be a strategy worth employing to encourage a kinesthetic approach to a learning environment we've all had to adapt to.

At VariQuest, we are your source for the tools and resources you need to enhance your ability to teach students in your classroom. The goal of interactive learning is to increase the attention and retention of students, increasing their overall knowledge and comprehension in various subjects. One device that can help teachers convey important knowledge to students in the classroom is the cold lamination machine.

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 Friday, February 12th, and is the Year of the Ox. 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!