“I never teach my students. I simply provide the situations in which they can learn.” Einstein
As an ESL teacher, I use Potato Pals At School Book to teach ‘My School and Me’ unit. Kids improve language and communication skills by telling stories related to their own daily lives using Potato Pals Books. Kids can read and sing the songs using memoricon easily. The story is repetitive and this makes them easy to understand and memorize. After they learn the story, they create At School Project using memoricon that is a little picture representing each story page and they present their projects using the memoricon. They also create ‘My School is Cool’ booklet to read the story to their friends and parents. You can download PDF form of ‘My School is Cool’ Booklet. After kids take some photos of the school (Teachers’ Room, Art Class, Music Class…), they paste the photos onto the pages of their own books to create ‘My School Book’. If you want to find more free printable mini booklets, you should click on Mrs.Jones-Free Printable Mini Books. If you want to create shape books, check out the link Shape-Book Patterns.
You can check out our At School Slide Show below.

At School on PhotoPeach
One of my favourite Potato Pals Books is Good Friends.Kids learn how to share and gain the idea of being a good friend when they read this book.After we read Good Friends, we create our ‘Good Friends Step Book’. You can watch the slideshow to learn about how to make a step book.

Potato Pals Book Set is a great way of picking up natural spoken language. The songs of the stories are also simple and catchy for kids. You can visit the Official Blog of Potato Pals or The Potato Diaries Blog to learn more about Potato Pals Book Sets.
Making books for kids is a great classroom and after-school activity. Many kids enjoy reading to pass time and enjoy making their own books.If you want to publish your own children’s book, you can use Story Jumper .I’m using ‘Making Big Books With Children: Resource Book and Reproducible Patterns‘ that was written by Joy Evans, is a good guide to learn how to make a big book such as; flap books, wheel books, tri-fold books, accordion books, shape books and pop-up books. I like making step books with kids but my favourite one is pop-up books or cards.All you have to do is the first simple box, then draw whatever you want and attach it to the front of this simple box and when you open the page it will look like the thing you stick is standing.You can find many nice examples of pop-up books when you visit the official web site of best-selling children’ book author and illustrator Robert Sabuda. When you visit his official site, it will give you some inspiration about making pop-up books. You can visit ‘Shop for Pop-up Book’ and ‘Pop-up Books for Kids’ to buy pop-up books.
Here’s a great video to learn more about how to make pop-up books.

‘Making Books‘ site by Susan Kapusinsky is the greatest resource that you can learn all about making books.You can also download some pdfs and watch videos.

Another great way to learning is educational games that allow kids to experience both playing and learning at the same time.All board games are fun for not only kids but also adults☺ They also encourage kids to communicate, share and develop their skills easily. I want to share our latest great discovery ‘Orchard Toys’ thanks to one of my inspiring colleagues, Demet Yavuz.When you click on Orchard Toys page, you can find all information about the wonderful educational games and you can also download instructions leaflet and get an idea about the games. Highly recommended for kindergarten.
Here are some links about educational games for kids:
Inhabitots has modern wooden puzzles and handmade wooden nature books for kids and babies. Lakeshore Learning has educational materials, arts and crafts, free activities and more.
Growing Tree Toys has also educational games for kids.Hazelnut Kids is a site that you can find natural toys for your kids. Sparklebox is a nice site that you can find free printable teaching resources; labels, charts, phonics, posters and signs.