5 Things To Remember When Starting Baby on Solids

Who knew that feeding solids to my baby would come with its own cardio workout? At least it did for the first few days. 

To get my little cherub to eat those first few days, I sang, danced, nearly did a headstand to get her to open her mouth, only to watch her tiny tongue snowplow all of our hard work down the front of her shirt. It was a terrible endorsement for the bib industry. 

What's more, did you know that the first few days have very little to do with eating? It's all about teaching them to bring the food to the back of their throats and actually swallow. Sure it seems obvious now and maybe you think I'm ridiculous, but I honestly thought that was just something we knew how to do from birth. Spoiler alert: it's not. 

As I write this, we're deep into week 5 of eating solids. Parents, it gets better. She's actually tasting and enjoying foods now. Hooray! As is typical with motherhood, I've learned a lot from this experience despite the rather short timeframe. I hope it helps you as you and your baby navigate solids for the first time together. 

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Writing Valuable Student Comments + Student Friendly FREEBIE!

Digital communication is synonymous with 2020. Maybe more so now than ever before, being able to clearly and professionally chat online is something students should be practicing. Adults too for that matter. Let's be honest...were we ever really all that impressed by emails and comments left by our coworkers? 😜

Comments and emails need to be direct, concise, and professional. This can TOTALLY be taught at the elementary level and beyond!

Sure, we're working to encourage a generation of texters that short notes can be both grammatically correct and detailed even if they're brief. Will they be resistant? Probably. But as soon as they start receiving clear and meaningful messages from their classmates,  they'll be hooked! Trust me on that one. 

In my 1:1 classroom, I used Google Slides and Google Docs daily. Even when we weren't separated by distance learning, having students leave comments on each other's digital work amped up our classroom community so much! 

So how do we encourage this? First things first! We need to make sure our learners are comfortable with the tools for leaving comments. Here's how it's done: 

This information and more is included in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for FREE. 

Click the image at the bottom of this post to get your copy today!

Leaving Comments on Google Slides/Docs

Step 1: 
Click the comment button in the upper-righthand corner.

Step 2: 
Select “Comment” 

Step 3: 
Write an AWESOME comment! 

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OK, now that we know how to leave a comment, what kinds of things do we want our students to write about? Remember, this reaches way farther than the classroom (my favorite kind of skills to teach!). 

Social VS Scholarly

There's a time to be social and there's a time to be professional. Comments on our classmates' work are definitely something to take more seriously. After all, we want to make them feel good about their work, don't we? 

Knowing someone took the time to read something you've written AND to leave a thoughtful, well-crafted comment can really brighten someone's day **cough cough...feel free to do so at the end of this post 😉 **

Social Comments are more appropriate for Instagram and texting. It's the kind of writing that doesn't offer much in the way of feedback or effort. Here's an example from my TPT resource: 

Scholarly Comments, on the other hand, offer so many different things! These all-important types of comments are...

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