I believe education comes from more than just books, has to be engaging and get students to think critically. After reading assignments I create activities based on the reading such as writing a story based on the book storyline, pulling nouns or verbs from the story and categorizing them. During reading I ask questions that aren't completely fact based such as predicting what you think may happen, life lessons learned, symbolism. For younger students I have plenty of hands on activities. For example with TK students I had them watch Pete the Cat videos and use rubber bands to count how many and show the right color. For a current student, we start each session by working on a calendar. She starts by putting strip with correct month then puts the number of days in correct order then puts the cards with the appropriate holidays for that month then I ask what day of the week it is and what day comes tomorrow or came yesterday. They also cut out days of the week/months of the year and sorted them in correct order. They also selected shapes and street signs and drew them