Classroom Favorites from Learning Resources

Learning Resources has a ton of great, affordable resources for the classroom! I combine them with my own handmade materials to use in educational activites. Here are the products I highly recommend!



Learning Resources Smart Snacks Alpha Pops, Alphabet Matching & Fine Motor Skills Toy, Letters, 26 Double Sided Pieces, Ages 2+

These are so adorable! My students love playing with these and coming up with flavors for each one. I usually start by having them separate (you have to pull them apart with some force so they are good for fine motor) and hide them. Then I distribute letter cards and they have to go find the matching popsicles and put them back together. It's a great up-and-down activity.

The ONLY qualm is that they only come with 13 popsicles so you have to flip them over to see the other letters. If they ever go on sale I would get a second set and use some parts cleaner or magic eraser to remove the letters from one side and just have a set of 26 popsicles.

Learning Resources Counting Surprise Party, Homeschool, Fine Motor, Counting & Sorting Toy, Ages 3+

These are a recent buy and I know I will get a ton of use out of them! They can be used for so many things! You can practice counting, colors, names of the objects inside, asking questions like "What's inside?", "What is it?" or "Is it a ball?" etc. You could use the boxes to put other objects inside, depending on your theme. I think they will be great for birthday party and Christmas-themed lessons. They are such a good price, I almost considered getting two sets!



Learning Resources Alphabet Acorns Activity Set, Homeschool, Visual & Tactile Learning Toy, 78 Pieces, Easter Basket Gifts, Easter Gifts for Kids, Ages 3+

Probably the best value of all are these acorns. I use them for my fall lessons in almost all my classes. They are so cute and colorful and kids love opening them and closing the acorns. I made my own set of cards that have the upper and lower case letter and a picture of the object to go with each acorn because otherwise it is an overwhelming activity. It comes with enough to give each student five or six or put them in pairs to work on it together. There are some design elements I would change (for example, B is for Boat but it is a sailboat and V is for Van but it looks like a bus and is the same color as the B acorn) but overall, for the price, I think this is a great value.

Learning Resources Farmer's Market Color Sorting Set, Homeschool, Play Food, Fruits and Vegetables Toy, Easter Toys, 30 Piece Set, Easter Gifts for Kids, Ages 3+

I started my school with handmade felt toys and I quickly learned that I needed more durable materials to use with my students. I have quite a collection of play food from Learning Resources but I wanted to highlight this set because it is such a nice set with the buckets included and it is a really good price. I love the chunky, soft rubbery plastic that these are made out of and they are a nice size for little hands.



Learning Resources Super Sorting Pie, Fine Motor Toy, Early Number, Patterns, 68 Pieces, Grades Pre-K/Ages 3+

This is used for my fruit lessons but the pie is a fun sorting tray that my students like to use creatively with other manipulatives. The set comes with red apples and grapes, orange oranges and peaches, yellow bananas and lemons, green apples and bananas, and purple grapes and plums. If only it had strawberries!!! I have done sorting activities, letter-recognition activities and pattern-making activities. Food-themed toys are always a hit with students!



Learning Resources Domestic Pets Counters, Educational Counting and Sorting Toy, Set of 72

As my class size grew (I try to cap my classes at six kids each), I realized that having manipulatives and having enough for each student was very helpful in activities. I have pretty much every set like this that they make and they are all good for reinforcing vocabulary and teaching phonics. Here are more versions below:



Learning Resources Mini Motors Counting and Sorting Fun Set, Early Math Skill, Set of 72, Ages 3+



Learning Resources Farm Animal Counters, 10 Different Animals, Set of 60, Ages 3+ and Learning Resources Friendly Farm Animal Counters, Educational Counting and Sorting Toy, 72 pieces



Learning Resources in The Garden Critter Counters Math Manipulatives, Set of 72

My students prefer these because they are not as creepy-looking as the other insect counters!



Learning Resources Jungle Animal Counters, Educational Counting and Sorting Toy, Plastic Animal Figurines, Jungle Animals, Set of 60, Ages 5+

Best Educational Games

SEQUENCE Letters by Jax - SEQUENCE Fun from A to Z

This game is a great way to work on letter recognition and beginning sounds. You start with three cards each, face up so you can see what your opponents have, and choose one card to play and then place your coin on a picture that starts with that letter. Each letter has two spots and two different word options so there is a lot of thinking and strategy involved but it's also fine if kids just want to choose a picture that they like or randomly place your coins on the board to see what happens. The object is to get a "bingo" of four of the same color coins in a row. The coins make an awesome clinking sound and are fun to play with--by awesome I mean awesome to the kids but a test of patience to the facilitator. (:

Some of the words chosen are not phonemically consistent but it is a good opportunity to teach the different sounds that each letter makes. For example, the A words are "airplane" and "apple," C is for "cereal" and "cat," I is for "ice cream" and "igloo," G is for "giraffe" and "grapes."

Modification suggestion: instead of having three cards to choose from, I just have kids draw one card and decide which picture to place it on. I feel like that is enough decision making for beginners and allows them to focus more on the letter and word that starts with it. You can also tell them to find the "cat" or "cereal" if they are beginners. The game board can be overwhelming at first and difficult to find the picture unless half of the pictures are covered with coins so I feel like that is a good way to play the game at first. Once they have played many times they will remember which words go with each letter so the game will go faster.





SEQUENCE for Kids -- The 'No Reading Required' Strategy Game by Jax

This is different from the Sequence Letters edition because it has animals and animal cards, BUT I made a set of alphabet cards that corespond with the animals on the board to make it more educational. I also had to cover some of the animals with other pictures because there are some with the same letter like, PANDA and PENGUIN, WOLF and WHALE or KILLER WHALE and KANGAROO, but you could try to leave them and just add extra letter cards. I also decided to do SH for SHARK instead of just S. If you want to focus more on learning the animal names then this is educational in that aspect but if you don't want to make a set of alphabet cards then I would suggest the Sequence Letters game instead.





USAOPOLY Telestrations Original 8 Player, Family Board Game, A Fun Family Game for Kids and Adults, Family Game Night Just Got Better, The Telephone Game Sketched Out, Multicolor

This is a great way to work on spelling and reading! Like the name says, you are playing a pictionary/telephone game. Each player gets their own booklet, a whiteboard marker, and cloth for erasing. For each round you are going to alternate between reading a word and drawing what you think it is and looking at a picture and writing what you think it is. You pass it around until each player has had a turn on every booklet. The fun part is checking everyone's drawings and words at the end! We have gotten some really hilarious drawings and misinterpretations but all in good fun!

It is quite advanced for ESL but you can easily modify it and it is still a super entertaining game! Instead of using the word cards provided, I write the secret word myself on each player's booklet. I have done this with CVC and CVCE words, as well as common vocabulary words that I thought they could recognize. Some students really froze up and "drew" a blank when they looked at the first word so I sometimes start by reviewing a set of vocabulary words and the spelling and telling them that one of the words in their booklets will be selected from this set of cards. This helps the game go more smoothly and achieves the goal of reveiwing and evaluating my students' reading and spelling abilties.





ThinkFun Zingo Word Builder Early Reading Game - Award Winning Game for Pre-Readers and Early Readers

This is a hit amongst all ages and it truly is Bingo with a zing! It spices up a normal Bingo game and things can even get quite heated or competitive. The gadget that slides the tiles out two at a time is very fun to handle and my students always want to take turns doing it. The tiles also make that fun clinking sound that kids seem to love and the slots for inserting the unneeded tiles makes an exciting "click" that could be incentive enough to say the target vocabulary or sound.

I have made two sets of boards to use with my students who are not ready to creatively make up their own words without any visual clues. The first set is a set of boards with just letters. I did this by having my older students sort all the tiles into three-letter words and arrange them so that all the letters are used up. This can be played as just a letter-recognition bingo where the kid who calls out the letter first gets to take the tile and put it on their board. There is some overlap but at least half of the kids will not have to compete for the same letter. For more advanced students, you can have them read the three-letter word they spell (CAT, FOX, etc.) once they get all the tiles on it. I have also played this where they have to say the sounds or a word that starts with that letter inorder to take the tile.

The second set I made has pictures of words that start with each letter tile. This was easy to make using the letter boards by just replacing those letters with pictures. For my CAT board I have a picture of a cat, an apple, and a top instead of the three letters. They can try to read the words once they've covered the pictures with the letter tiles. After playing this many times I have noticed a big improvement in my students' phonemic awareness!





Educational Insights Raccoon Rumpus Game, Dice Rolling Color Matching Preschool Game, Ages 3+ and Educational Insights Koala Capers Card Game

These two adorable games are my go-to for clothing-themed lessons! They are so cute and simple! You take turns rolling two dice: one has different colors (Racoon game) or patterns (Koala game) and the other has different items of clothing. Then you have to find a card with that combination and dress your animal card. There is one side of the die that has both a shirt and bottom which allows you to select two cards and one side has underwear which means you have to put back all of your cards and start over. If this is too frustrating for some kids you can just let them reroll! The point should be to have fun, practice vocabulary and matching, and practice taking turns. These are also nice and compact and always a great price on Amazon so you could even buy two if you had more than four students/players but I like to just pair kids up to make the game move faster.





Guess Who

This game is great for practicing asking questions. I write down some sample question patterns for my students to reference. They all love playing this game. This particular version has different themed cards you can slide in, which makes it very versatile. I have also made my own cards to practice different themes or include some of my students favorite characters like Disney, Pokemon, Sumikokurashi, etc. It is harder to find this version now but if you can wait for a price drop or thrift it, I highly recommend this version!



I have also written about these educational games here.



SNAPPY DRESSERS and Winning Moves Games Scrabble Slam

Our Favorite Cooperative Board Games

Peaceable Kingdom Hoot Owl Hoot - Cooperative Matching Game For Kids

This is a cooperative preschool game but it's actually challenging enough to play with older kids who are not experienced in playing board games. Each player gets three cards that they place face up so that the other players can advise them on which card to use. You choose a color to move the owls around the board but you can choose whether to make one owl progress further or move each owl little by little. You can modify the game by using less owls, or, what I like to do is remove some of the sun cards. When you draw a sun card you automatically have to use that and move the sun. If the sun reaches the sunrise then the game is over.

The game looks really simple but I find that kids who are not used to playing board games do not understand the strategy but I personally love the concept! Sometimes, to make the game go quicker, I just have them draw one card and then I have them practice saying the color and that becomes the main focus of the game. It is also hard for kids to grasp that they aren't a particular owl but that they need to work as a team to get ALL the owls home. I really like this concept and it's adorable!




Gamewright Outfoxed! A Cooperative Whodunit Board Game for Kids 5+, Multi-colored, Standard, Model Number: 418

I got this recently and Owen LOVES it. It is super unique and fun to play. I this Otis is still too young for it because he has a very short attention span but Owen can play it over and over again and he really wants to play it until all of the different foxes have been a thief.

What I like about it is that the game board design allows for you to be able to reach a clue each turn and it's pretty easy to win this game as a team because the fox doesn't progress too quickly (unlike the sun in Hoot Owl, Hoot). It exercises your memory and deduction skills, and all of the components are really well made. Owen loves the clue slider! It is super fun to insert the clue tile and slide the gadget to see if the suspect has that item or not. For ESL purposes, you can practice a lot of vocabulary because each clue is a different clothing accessory! This game has a lot of replay-ability, which makes it a great value.




My First Castle Panic

I got this recently from Prime Day (along with Outfoxed!) and both of my kids love it! It's super simple and short but I think the theme and the artwork are super appealing to my kids. We love to be really dramatic when we send the goblins into the dungeon! We jokingly like to catcall the goblins as we throw them into the dungeon (think Home Alone but a little more rated G).

The main focus of this is to match colors and shapes to see where you progress on the board but, unlike Hoot Owl, Hoot!, you are not given as many cards to choose from and because the deck is so small, we found that it is almost impossible to win sometimes because we just don't draw the right cards to move forward. However, because this is such a quick game, as soon as we realize we will lose we can just start over. For an ESL classroom, this is a great game to have because it is fast to set up and it is short!

Our favorite card games

Gamewright Dragonwood A Game of Dice & Daring Board Game Multi-colored, 5"

While, to be honest, the artwork to me is not really my style (I prefer more whimsical or cute designs), this is an amazing sneaky math game! I am not a real gamer yet so, in simple terms, I think this is similar to poker in the sense that you are building different sets: same color, same number, or a run (up to six numbers in a row) and then you are going to use those cards to trade in for dice. The more dice you have, the better your odds of getting a higher sum. The dice are regular six-sided dice but they only go up to four (two 2s, two 3s) so once you roll the dice you add up the value and try to take certain cards that are worth points. It is a little long to grasp at first so I have played with less cards and taken out the spell cards at first just to teach the dice rolling bit. What I like about it is that you have to choose a card you want to roll for and if you don't earn enough points from the dice roll you can't just take a different card of a lesser value BUT you do get a chance to reload and try to build a new set and try again for a card. It's really unique and addicting! My kids and my students really love the artwork and sometimes they try to get certain animals that look cool, even if it's a bigger gamble or "wastes" more cards. Owen is kind of funny because he is obsessed with reloading and hoarding his cards instead of taking small risks and earning point cards little by little. I often have to remind him of the nine-card limit and force him to play what he has. Some kids might get super frustrated or upset if they don't roll the value they expected but Owen is like, "that's okay because I can just reload and try again!" Way to go, buddy. :) When he was playing it nonstop I really noticed an improvement in his mental math so I really want to play it regularly.

In sum-mary, there are six dice so you are potentially adding six different numbers together (the highest value would be 36 but the odds of that are pretty slim...) which makes it a great sneaky math game!




Zeus on the Loose

This is a throwback to my high school and college summer job as a caricature artist! Again, the artwork is kind of unappealing to some, but this is a great math game! And we actually love learning about Greek Mythology so this is right up our alley. In this game, you are adding up numbers 1-10 to 100. But there are some character cards of the different gods that will change the value. For example, Poseidon reduces the value by 10 and another card reverses the value (37 becomes 73 or vice versa). Everytime someone reaches a multiple of ten, they get to steal the Zeus figure. It's a fun and fast-paced game! But it's exciting because the character cards can really turn things around and make each round go longer (kind of like Uno how some games are so long and some are really quick). Whoever has Zeus when the sum reaches 100 is the winner! And if you go over 100, whoever has Zeus is the winner, so you want to save certain cards until the end in order to prevent your opponents from winning.

This is fun to play one on one or with multiple players--I think multiple players is more thrilling because it could really go any way. Dragonwood is a pretty long game but this one is pretty quick. I like that it is different enough in the math skills and strategy to make it worth owning both.




Winning Moves Games Scrabble Slam

This is a great card game for learning spelling and reading and you can get really creative with it. The way I used it was to teach the CVCE or magic "e" words. I started with a word like CAKE and dealt the cards to my students. Then, they were able to use their cards while keeping the spelling pattern to make words like BAKE, LAKE, RAKE, TAKE, MAKE, and then LIKE, BIKE, BAKE, MINE, etc. Some of my students were losing every time but after more rounds, they actually started to remember the pattern on their own and make the words. You could even use it for CVC words and just start with three cards instead of four.

Of course you could get creative and make any type of word but I found that in an ESL classroom, it was easier to start with a type of word and then practice making similar words to teach a particular type of phonics.




Sushi Go! - The Pick and Pass Card Game

This was given to me by my brother many many years ago so it is a long-time favorite. This is one of the cutest Gamewright games and definitely more my style. While it is not as useful for ESL lessons, it is something that many of my students adore and I can use it as a "reward" to play at the end of class if they finish early (less goofing around and more focus and we can power through a lesson!). This is a drafting game, so think of it as the conveyor belt sushi: you choose a card from your hand and then you will pass your hand to the next player and receive a new hand. You play until all the cards are gone so your cards will come back to you as they rotate amongst the players.

What adds to the challenge is that you flip over the card you choose each round so your opponents can see what types of cards you are trying to collect and can either sabotage your sets or ignore them if it's more strategic to focus on earning their own points. When you understand the game better, it's easier to see which types of cards to give up on collecting if you see that someone has already collected more than you or if you have already collected enough to earn points. It has a lot of strategy involved and it's adorable! Sushi Go! Party is on my wishlist because I want to see what other cute cards are in the deck but this original version is super afforable and compact so it makes a great gift!




SNAPPY DRESSERS

This game is such a great value! It is super versatile because it comes with instructions for seven different games! I haven't gotten around to playing all of them but I've tried most of them and they are all actually really good and fun! The basic game is like Spot It! where you are trying to find a match in either the clothing or the animal so it is great for practicing vocabulary with my students. There are also other fun versions that are fun to play as students vs. teacher! One is like a tower that you are trying to move up by being first to find the match and moving up a tier but you can also choose to make your opponent move down! This really adds excitement to the game!

Bottom line: It's a super affordable game that is quick and versatile!

Room update: dining room curtains

We picked out some dining room curtains finally! It took a long time to find what we wanted (and for the price we wanted). I like how the prints on the curtains layer with the wallpaper without clashing too much. I like how they both have a kind of vintage feel. And what I like most is it makes the room so much warmer covering that huge window up! We also added a white curtain track that closes off the entrance to the living room. It makes a huge difference when we turn the space heater on because it cuts the size of the room in half. Also, it's kind of hard to see but Seisuke added this vintage clock on the wall. So far the room is simple but has personality.

Room update: Atelier

atelier: a workshop or studio, esp one used by an artist or designer.

I never knew this word until coming to Japan, where they have many shops with the word アトリエ or "atorie" in the name.

Finishing up and reorganizing the sewing/printing room (or atelier, as we like to call it) took a long time. Things just move at a slower pace in the winter, don't they?

Well, walls are painted, curtains are hung, so the room is functional again. We tried moving things around and consolidated a lot so parts of the room are still empty (!) but I'm sure it will be messy again once we start using it.

Here are some pictures I took last weekend!

Our Next Project

So, as some of you might know, there are three houses on our property (it sounds fancy but it's really like living on a farm in Bakersfield).

We live in this house:

Seisuke's parents live in this house on the other side of our house (sorry it's hard to see...I'll have to take a better pic later):

And then we have this old Japanese house that nobody lives in:

So we decided to convert the old Japanese house (which we call "Gomoku") into an English school. Our main focus is on toddlers and preschoolers, but we might expand eventually to elementary school, junior high, etc.



Here are some of the things I did to get ready:

Lots of handmade teaching materials.

Five little pigs.

An easel-turned-felt-board.

More handmade baby toys.

Here are some of the things I made and purchased for the school. We found this cute rug at Costco!

More felt board pieces.

Picked up some great ESL-recommended books from Amazon.

I think I can get a lot of use out of these books.

Laminated like crazy!

Tons of cutting.

I love that I married a man who owns a laminator!

Made some signage.

Moved the stuff to Gomoku.

Created a play area.

Built a ball/sensory pit out of handmade cushions.

Hung up garlands from Target.

Had a trial lesson with Seisuke's friends' kids!

Got lots of cute pics for the homepage!

And now we have Gomoku's first students! :)

We'll update again after we've made more progress! I'm so excited about this project and we have a lot of young kids in our neighborhood who are interested in signing up! So this is going to be my new job that Seisuke is going to help manage--we hope people love this unique setting and atmosphere!