The educational toys children play with can make a positive difference in their development. Educational toys encourage essential life skills such as creativity, motor skills, problem solving and cognitive skills. Different types of toys tap into different learning areas in a child's mind. While any toy has some value, we believe certain toys, usually referred to as educational toys or learning toys, are more valuable. Educational toys can be broken down into four broad categories. These include 1)Building or Construction Toys 2)Role Play or Imaginative Play 3)Problem Solving 4)Active Play or Physically Active Toys. Blocks, clay, dough, Legos are all types of building toys. Although, you don't necessarily need to build anything. A child can just stack block on top of block, or mush, squeeze or shape clay. These toys are open ended. There is no right answer. There is no start or finish. Some great examples are Sargent Art Clay, Crayola Play Dough, Educational Insights Play Foam, Learning Resources Gears, Gears, Gears, Melissa and Doug's Wooden Blocks or Jumbo Cardboard Blocks, Dowling Magnet's Floating Rings or Giant Horse Shoe Magnet. Next we have role play. This category is also open ended. No winners or losers. No right or wrong way. Costumes, action figures, dolls, fire trucks, pretend food are examples of role play toys. Some of the most popular are Melissa and Doug's Costumes or Wooden Pretend Food and Castle Toy's Fire Helmet and Construction Helmet, and any type of doll or action figure. The third toy category is very different from the first two. Problem solving toys are puzzles, sequencing toys, shape sorters, stacking toys and nesting toys. The child needs to complete a task in the correct way. Most children will want to do this same task many times over. They will repeat the same 12 piece puzzle dozens of times. Satisfied that they know it so well. Some of the best educational toys in this category are Learning Resource's Alphabet Puzzle Cards, Counting Bears and Stacking Shape Peg Board; Melissa and Doug's Lacing Beads, See and Spell Learning Puzzle, Alphabet Nesting and Stacking Blocks; Trend's Fun to Know Puzzles and Carson-Dellosa's Picture Sequencing Puzzles; Dowling Magnet's Fun Foam Pattern Blocks, Magnetic Tangrams Lastly, on our list of best educational toys is active play toys. These include any type of ball, yo yo's, jump ropes, frisbees, skate board, bicycle and the like. This may not even be considered a toy, but more a sport. It kind of boarders both. Of course, all these are great for developing motor skills. ...read more

You just got your first teaching job and need to figure out whatteaching suppliesyou will need. Here's a brief list of the most essential teaching supplies for the new teacher. Number one on the list is a teacher plan book. Not just any daily planner, but a teacher's plan book. You want to have your entire lesson plan laid out step by step in your planner. A good plan book design will make this easier for you. Most schools and school districts now require that a teacher makes lesson plans, and some schools and district collect their teacher's plan books and review them. They want to make sure that the teacher is sticking to the curriculum Next on theteaching supplieslist is a grade or record book. Just like a planner, schools require this. With a good grade book, you should be able to look at a semester of work and tests of a particular student, and know how they are doing. Many grade books also double as an attendance book. If not, you'll need an attendance book, or delany cards. You can also buy a combo teachers planner and record book at anyteaching supply store.  This is my preference. So, now your in your class ready with your lesson plans and grade book. What do you write with? You'll need either chalk or a dry erase marker and an eraser. Whichever you use, you have a lot to choose from. You have dustless chalk, colored chalk, jumbo chalk, chisel tip dry erase markers, bullet tip markers and more. There are also a lot of great brands. Sargent Art, Prang, Crayola, Dixon, Expo, Sanford and more. If you need to use chalk, you probably want to get a chalk holder. This will help keep chalk dust off your hands. Non-dustless chalk is the lest expensive option of all.  A box of 12 pieces of chalk will cost under 79¢ at your local teaching supply store. Now, if you need to use dry erase markers, the best option is a chisel tip black dry erase marker. This will make the clearest and thickest marks on your dry erase board. What happens if you you have a classroom with a chalkboard, but you are allergic to chalk? Or, you have a marker board in your class, but can't take the chemical smell of the dry erase marker. That's easy. You can buy a roll up chalk board or dry eraser board. It comes in a roll like contact paper. It's adhesive on one side and good for writing on the other. So, you can switch your chalk board to a dry erase board, or visa versa. What if you don't like either? Then I recommend a chart tablet. With a chart tablet, what you write will be permanent. The best marker for a chart tablet is the Dixon chisel tip. They wont bleed thru the paper. The above are the most essentialteaching supplies. If you teach the elementary grades, you will need to decorate the classroom. You'll need fadeless paper, trim or bordette, lettering, learning posters, charts and some bulletin board sets. You have some great suppliers to choose from. Some of the top manufactures of teaching supplies are Pacon, Trend, Carson Dellosa, Teacher Created Materials, Creative Teaching Press, Scholastic and Paper Magic Group. There are many others. Now, if your teach the really early grades: prek, kindergarten; you'll want to have name plates, name tags and some classroom management signs. You can find all these teaching supplies in any goodteaching supply store.   ...read more

-Be sure you have studied properly. -Get enough sleep before the exam. -Alway arrive early and take a moment to relax and reduce your anxiety. -Listen closely to any instructions. -examine every answer choice before you choose your answer. -Cross out answers that you are sure are %100 wrong. -Rely on your first impression. The answer that comes first is often correct. -Take the questions in the order that they appeal to you most. There is nothing sacred about the order you answer the questions. -Go toTeachers Choicefor test prep books and materials. ...read more