Five for Friday on the First Day of Winter! 01/06/13

Good morning everyone!  It's Saturday here and the first day of Winter... I can't decide if I'm happy or sad about that.  While I decide, I'm going to read everyones' Friday Fives.  Link up with Doodle Bugs to share five random things from your week!

1. This is my only school related thing this week:

I have permission from this little one's parents to show her face. :)

Last weekend I finished off this Maths activity - 'Bruce the Bulldog': A Listen and Learn Maths Mat pack. I designed it to help with my assessment this term - I needed a way to quickly gauge where my kidlets were with their ability to apply all of the things they know about number.  We read them the task cards (more/less, addition and subtraction word problems) and observed how they used the manipulatives to solve the problem.  Then we asked them questions to check how deep their understanding was.  It worked much better than I expected - some of my kidlets whizzed through each question with ease and some really struggled.  A few of them really surprised me with what they were able (or not able) to do so I'm glad I now have this extra data to write report cards and to plan where they need to go next in their number work.  Best of all, they loved Bruce the Bulldog and spent time in their free choice work using the cards and making up their own problems for others to solve. :)  You can buy it from my TpT store if you think it might be useful for you.

2.

I had fun this week using my new printer to make some cute things for my house.  This little quote from 'Where the Wild Things Are' looks perfect on my bookshelf, and the free menu planner (in grey and mint chevron - bonus!) is on my fridge helping me to stay organised. The quote was from Etsy and the menu planner was free!

3. 

Loving the beautiful flowers blooming on my patio!  Also pretty impressed that I've had these for a few months and haven't killed them yet. :)

4. 

Slightly over-excited to find Jeopardy! on Aussie TV. If Wheel of Fortune came on after it I would be in heaven. :)

5. 

I spent two days this week in Brisbane at a conference.  I caught the train from my parent's house and home again both days - and managed to read an entire novel before I got home yesterday.  I think maybe I'd like to commute by train to work just for the opportunity to get through the piles of books I have waiting to read. :)  I'm planning to post soon about the conference because it was amazing.  Lots of really inspiring ideas to help plan differentiated tasks so every kidlet has the opportunity to work with their preferred learning style and achieve success.

Happy weekend friends! 

Lauren