Education Resources Blog

Election day is around the corner - and as it is the civic duty of all citizens of the United States when they turn 18 to exercise their right to vote, we've put together a simple set of lesson plan activities to help students learn about the process! Combining social studies/civics and English language arts (with printables in Spanish too!), this interactive activity booklet gives you simple instructions, tips, prompts, and resources to guide your students in running their own classroom election. In this lesson plan, designed for students in grades 2-6 but fully customizable for the needs of your classroom, students will work through hands-on activities and exercises for discussions in learning about the process of nominating the candidates, choosing the issues, promoting the platforms, voting, and more. Created in partnership with Cathy Henry, educator and founder of The Curriculum Corner and Free Word Work, students will explore discussion questions, vocabulary words, and more to better-understand our democratic process.

While everyone has different holiday traditions and celebrates this time of year in different ways - we can all agree that spreading kindness and joy is one of the best! We've put together some printables to do just that! Maybe you remember a time of doing "Secret Santa" - or maybe you've done "You've been BOO'd" during the fall months - this fun holiday activity for your classroom or school building is appropriately called, "You've been SOCKED!" For this activity, you'll put together door hangers and a fun little Christmas surprise (made more fun if it's an actual sock ;) ) and secretly deliver them to another classroom to hang on a door, or you can have students gift them amongst each other on lockers, cubbies, or desks. Inside the sock or delivered bag can be treats, prizes, or simply a hand-drawn card or picture - anything to spread a little cheer!

Sensory paths are not only fun for elementary education because they help get the wiggles out, but they help with learning too! At VariQuest®, we feel passionately about visual and kinesthetic learning - and a sensory path is a great way to get "a-movin' and a-groovin'" while learning something too! In partnership with Cathy Henry of The Curriculum Corner, we've put together not only printables to build your own sensory path(s) on your school floors, but paired them with lesson plan activities to teach common curriculum-based concepts. Check out and download these great booklets, featured below!

In this midst of the back-to-school shopping season, teachers, parents, and students alike are purchasing tools they will need to be successful in the coming school year. And using notebooks, folders, and pencil boxes, students will be filling the insides with useful knowledge and creative expressions which will lead them onto paths of success for later in life! So as you fill your teacher toolboxes for the upcoming school year, we've put together some extra inserts that will help everyone - My Logins and References Page Inserts for student notebooks or folders - in both English and Spanish. We know you're busy, so these are designed to be plug-and-play!

THERE (not their, or they're) is no way around it - homophones are tricky...and the English language is full of them!

Reading broadens the imagination, exercises your brain, and is one of the best tools to build learning and understanding of vocabulary. As educators, we aspire to inspire a generation of students who love to read. And as you retain more information when you read, then discuss, then teach others - your reading comprehension exercises are working to do just that. We've once again partnered with Cathy Henry from Free Word Work and The Curriculum Corner to put together a lesson plan that works great for distance or hybrid learning, and helps students in 1st-3rd grade work on identifying parts of a story, or summarizing what they've read. Introducing - our Rainbow Summary Lesson Plan.

In the fall, the leaves change, and so does our content! We just released our VariQuest® Design Software version 9.0 - packed with brand new and updated Engage Every Learner® Content, and we know you'll love all the latest additions around social-emotional wellbeing, health & safety, movement, and more. Along with new functionality adding our new Perfecta® 2400PRO Poster Design System, and shortcuts and options to make using our tools even easier, you'll love having over 22,000 templates, graphics, fonts, collections, cutouts, sensory paths and more to use in your classrooms, hallways, and throughout your learning community.

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.

It's well known among educators that in the learning pyramid, students learn a small percentage of what they see, hear, and do - but they learn the most from teaching others. In this activity to practice math skills, students in grades 1-8 will put together their own game - helping them learn during its creation, and when the game is carried out, they're teaching others how to follow by the rules they designed!

Introducing a new learning concept with students may feel like a daunting task - with the uncertainty of the coming weeks top-of-mind. In the year that keeps us on our toes, we can still rely on those teaching strategies that are tried-and-true for classroom instruction, but quickly adapt them for distance learning when we have the right tools. The Y-Chart is one of them. The concept of a Y-Chart is likely not new to you, but thinking of ideas on how to make this group discussion concept work in a hybrid or distance learning environment, might be. We've again partnered with Cathy Henry from Free Word Work and The Curriculum Corner to put together some tips and activities that you can use, especially for distance learning.