Teachers tips
Plan for pretend play.
Pretend play develops language, creativity, and social skills while helping kids figure out their world. Check out our teacher picks for dress-up and pretend play!
Watch Alphabet Videos
These alphabet videos help teach and reinforce the letters and their sounds in fun and engaging ways. Kids will beg to watch them again and again!
Sing letter sounds.
Switch out the first letter of silly songs, like this example from The Wheels on the Bus, to reinforce letter sounds and help students hear how words change when you change the first letter.
Use Mr. Potato Head to teach the five senses.
It’s funny and memorable—Mr. Potato Head is a great way to emphasize the five senses. Check out these other activities to teach the senses, too!
Don’t shy away from science.
Students start learning science basics from the first day of school. Check out this geography lesson for one way to teach Pre-K kids about land, water, and air.
Try rainbow retelling.
As kids learn how to retell stories, give them rainbow retelling bracelets. When students move the red bead, they tell the characters, orange for the setting, yellow for the problem, and so on. (Find more tips for Pre-K at Growing Book by Book.)
Test everything, plan ahead, and assume everything will break
Do your best to assume someone’s connection (maybe yours) is going to go out at some point. Assume the link you share will be broken and that the private message you send will be seen by everyone–and so on. That’s okay. If you have a plan ahead of time, you can mitigate the ‘loss’ of time and learning.
Design for participation
This isn’t always doable, but when possible, design lessons–or activities within lessons–that don’t just encourage ‘engagement’ and student participation, but that won’t work without engagement and participation. See also Remote Learning Tips For Parents
Try to ensure the privacy of each student
Another ‘easier said than done’ remote teaching tip. But privacy laws alone make remote learning a maze of policies, laws, and potential pitfalls. Who sees what–what you see in their homes and they see in one anothers’–it’s a lot to sort.
Thinking differently about ‘classroom management
This needs more explanation, I know. But you can’t ‘manage’ students the same way online as you can in person. Behavior is different and addressing that behavior–what you reinforce and what you reward and what you ignore–will also be different. Further, you have to be extra careful about how you address those behaviors because it’s very literally in front of the entire classroom–in many cases with many