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

A Developmental Approach to Teaching Writing with Melissa from Teaching to Transform ~ Ep. 114

Managing Math Expectations and Math Materials ~ Ep. 113

A Kindergarten Social Studies Year-Long Plan ~ Ep. 112

A Kindergarten Social Studies Unit: Families ~ Ep. 111

Honest Talk on Handling Teacher Burnout and Difficult Students ~ Ep. 110

Distance and Digital Teaching

Remote Teaching: What I Will and Won’t Miss

I’ve been teaching remotely for almost a full year… I have just a few weeks left. Many said it couldn’t be done and I am here to prove that it could. My students learned just as much as they would have in the classroom. We built...

New Year, New Zoom Activities

Distance and Digital Teaching

If you have been remote teaching like me, you might be bored of the same zoom activities over and over again. Or, maybe you are transitioning from hybrid to remote and need some activity ideas. Well, I’ve got you covered! Here are my new favorite zoom...

Reflecting on Teaching in 2020

Distance and Digital Teaching

This summer, I wrote about the crisis of education and how educators everywhere were feeling. I still can’t believe the number of teachers who reached out to me or shared my post and said that they were feeling the exact same way as me. Teachers from...

Are children falling behind?

Distance and Digital Teaching

It’s all over the news and all over Facebook. It’s all I hear at parent-teacher conferences. “Our children are falling behind.” “We need testing to see how far behind our children are.” “How far behind is my child?” Let me be very clear. Many children are...

Offering choices in remote learning

Distance and Digital Teaching

I think as teachers we are pretty comfortable with providing choices for students in our traditional classrooms, and we understand the importance of choices. Children need choices to feel a sense of ownership over their schoolwork and decisions. Children are stretching their independence and learning what...

Making Google Classroom Easy For You and Your Students!

Distance and Digital Teaching

I am new to Google Classroom this year and have been trying out different strategies to make it easy to use for me and my students. This year, I have been asked to teach 3rd grade, so my experience with Google Classroom is with students that...

Easy Self-Regulation Strategies

Distance and Digital Teaching

It is so important to teach our students self-regulation strategies, but it is even more important this year. Students need to be taught these strategies and have the chance to practice them before they are needed. When a child is in an emotional crisis, they are...

Helping Students Focus At Home

Distance and Digital Teaching

Learning at home is very different than learning at school and we need to support our students to do their best in this new environment. We can use strategies we already use in the classroom and share them with students and families to help them focus...

Literacy intervention for distance learning

Distance and Digital Teaching

With this new way of teaching, whether you are in-person or on a computer, you may be wondering how to make sure we are supporting students where they are with their literacy development. I am here to help! Zoom Tricks I wrote in my last blog post tricks...

7 Zoom Tools for Engagement and Understanding

Distance and Digital Teaching

I have learned a lot this year about this new way of teaching on a computer. There are so many technologies available to us, but in order to really use them effectively, we need to learn how to use them with purpose. I have written about...