Education Resources Blog

For organization, for health, for safety, or for sanity - labels make a huge difference. In the classroom, labels are needed now more than ever - to keep track of constantly changing schedules, student belongings, personal protection equipment (PPE) supplies, and the list goes on. With capabilities for user-friendly customization, class list uploads, and creative template options, the VariQuest® Design Software, complete with our educator-influenced Engage Every Learner® Content, makes creation easy on the VariQuest Motiva® 400 Specialty Printing System. See how easy it is:

Teachers and families across the country have been under immense stress approaching a different kind of instruction over the last year and a half, and worrying about how it has affected our students. While focusing on health and safety is always a top priority, as students return to the classroom this year, we may need to broaden that focus and prepare them with an accelerated learning approach. But as educators, we are not only concerned about academics, but also about mental health, and to ensure students flourish upon their return, it is important we look at the whole child. In this 14-lesson plan eBook, created in partnership with Cathy Henry of The Curriculum Corner and Free Word Work, we've put together a variety of lessons and activities for K-12 students, including those in special education classrooms, to work towards project-based, student-driven learning designed to help combat the academic impact of lost instructional time.

It's no secret that we're all dealing with a lot right now. Between anxiety about health & safety, isolation, and inequity, it has obviously been a rough couple years. And as students return to learning in this back-to-school season, there's no question that we all need to focus some efforts on supporting mental health. We've rounded up some of our best free resources and downloads, to help you re-engage learners with movement, calming activities, breathing exercises, and behavior management techniques, to help your students when "overwhelmed" is an understatement.

Educators know that having strong behavior management skills can be as important, or even more important, as the ability to teach content. We want to help children modify detrimental behaviors, but we also don’t want any of our actions to result in a child feeling shamed or demeaned. This can be a challenge! Because we've all had a challenging past few months, and feelings of embarrassment won’t help children improve their behavior, we've partnered with Cathy Henry of The Curriculum Corner and Free Word Work to put together some ideas to help you work on actions and reactions with your students on a more personal level. These are ideas to help students learn and grow and meet goals, making them proud of their positive results!

An emotion meter is a great way to gauge what mood your students are feeling in the moment! Whether it's for posting in the classroom, calming corners, or student journals, this tool can be created large or small for group or individual discussions. With social-emotional learning for students a topic of the utmost importance as children grow and mature, use these simple exercises to give students meaningful tools for managing and working through their feelings!

We're moving towards holiday break, and we don't need to tell you that it has been one crazy year. Whether your students are heading home for their break early in distance learning, or they're only apart from the classroom for the holiday, send them off with a "Flat Stanley"-like cutout of their favorite teacher (that's you!) and a fun assignment to document your (their) experiences while you're in two different places! With social-emotional support at the top of every educator's mind during a trying year, what better way to remind your students you're always with them, than a small cutout take-along of yourself!

Some schools have set up classroom calming corners, places where students can be taken for a brief period of time to relax and decompress from over stimulating activity or frustrating tasks. At VariQuest, we offer the Cutout Maker 1800, a reliable and effective digital die cutting machine that may be used by teachers to help students learn in a visual manner through the production of shapes, letters, numbers, bulletin board items, and manipulatives that are automatically cut. These items and others may be used in calming corners to help students relax and learn at a slower pace for a period of time.

With the return of students to classrooms during this pandemic, 2020 has provided a robust amount of talking points and learning opportunities surrounding important topics such as race, inclusivity, safety and mental health. So how do you equip your teachers to address these topics with their students? How do you empower them to build substantial understanding and empathy towards their fellow classmates, neighbors and community members?

As adults, we imagine relaxing activities in the context of going to take a walk surrounded by quiet and nature, or soaking in a bubble bath with soft music and candles. We seek calm in a place of our own, free from distractions and unwanted noise.   For many students, school is a safe and familiar place where there are established routines and food is a guarantee. And unfortunately, we know there are students whose homes are sometimes not any of those things. So while we as educators make every effort to mentor and support our students in a safe environment in every way possible, we must also consider how to create personal spaces for when the world becomes too overwhelming. On top of all of this, we're in the midst of a global pandemic. Enter the Calming Corner.

There's no going around it, over it, or under it - so we gotta go through it. There's a lot going on in the world right now.  And as much as we feel it, we know that our students feel it even more - as they learn to understand and process feelings and events they haven't felt or experienced before.  There are lots of strategies students (and adults) of all ages can employ to take "brain breaks" to refocus and practice mindfulness to fully experience their present moments. Here are a few of them: