Welcome to Kindergarten Cafe!

I’m Zeba, and I’m here to help you find the *kindergarten magic* in your classroom. I create resources and share strategies to make your teaching easier, more engaging, and focused on those magical moments of growth with your students. Whether you teach kindergarten, preschool, or first grade, you’ll find ideas and activities to bring that *kindergarten magic* to life. Feel free to reach out—let’s make teaching kindergarten magical again!

recent

End-of-the-Year Social Emotional Learning: Supporting Big Feelings Before Summer ~ Ep. 135

Creating a Smooth Transition from Kindergarten to First Grade ~ Ep. 134

Engaging End-of-Year Activities for Kindergarteners ~ Ep. 133

Supporting Students who Struggle With Mistakes

Building Self-Confidence In Kindergarteners ~ Ep. 131

Classroom Activities and Lessons

End-of-Year Magic: Unleashing Excitement with Theme Day Ideas ~ Ep. 82

Apple Spotify Amazon Music It's a great way to keep everyone excited to come to school, excited to see what today will bring.~ Zeba from Episode 82 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast Episode Summary The end of the year is quickly approaching! In this episode I share some of the end-of-the-year...

Science of Reading 101 With Heidi from Droppin’ Knowledge ~ Ep. 81

Literacy

Apple Spotify Amazon Music You don't want to think about the fact that you've been doing things wrong this whole time. But again, it's not your fault. We have to give ourselves grace. And also that, you know, when you're looking into changing these things, it is a journey....

Building Effective Literacy Centers with the Science of Reading ~ Ep. 78

Literacy

Apple Spotify Amazon Music If we know better about what helps kids learn to read, I feel like we should want to do that as teachers. Some teachers are holding on firm to outdated methods that aren't really backed in research.~ Zeba McGibbon from Episode 75 of The Kindergarten...

A Weekly Routine for Teaching Sight Words in Kindergarten ~ Ep. 77

Literacy

Apple Spotify Amazon Music Make sure to point out what makes the words tricky for students, think about grouping similar words together, and then make sure to find ways for kids to engage with the words frequently. It's not just taught once and done forever. You continually...

Fun and Easy Vocabulary Activities for Kindergarten ~ Ep. 76

Literacy

Apple Spotify Amazon Music Early vocabulary development is a huge predictor of later academic success. The more words that kids know and understand, the better readers they will be when they get older.~ Zeba McGibbon from Episode 76 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast Episode Summary This episode is the first of...

Differentiating Instruction in Kindergarten for Diverse Learners ~ Ep. 75

Classroom Activities and Lessons

Apple Spotify Amazon Music Differentiation would be more like individualizing the instruction, maybe changing the activity or the assignment, whereas accommodation would be more like providing support or tools to support the learning, to support the same activity that everyone else is doing.~ Zeba McGibbon from Episode 75 of...

Phonemic Awareness in Action: Tips from Kristina ~ Ep. 74

Literacy

Apple Spotify Amazon Music So it's, it's pretty quick, and it really only takes five minutes. But I found that those, like, structuring the lesson like that every single day is the most effective thing because you're working in phonics, you're working in writing and phonemic awareness all in...

How to Effectively Manage Kindergarten Math Centers ~ Ep. 71

Math

Apple Spotify Amazon Music Centers are the perfect way to help students practice the math skills that you are teaching them. They are developmentally appropriate. They are hands on engaging when you have choice to them, whether the kids are choosing, how long they're staying, which center they're going...

Building Math Fluency Beyond Memorizing Facts ~ Ep. 70

Math

Apple Spotify Amazon Music When we talk about number decomposition, we mean that children are able to break apart numbers into different numbers into different parts. So knowing that the number five can be split into three and two, or that three and two can be combined to make...

Building Strong Number Relationships in Kindergarten ~ Ep. 69

Math

Apple Spotify Amazon Music Whenever you're counting forwards, always count backwards because you know that if they struggle with number relationships, number order. It's really important to have that flexibility of forward and backwards of more and less.~ Zeba from Episode 69 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast Episode Summary In this...