Five for Friday - Back to School!

Well folks, week one of 2015 is done and dusted! This year's kidlets are absolutely gorgeous and I'm excited to teach them this year. :) My Five for Friday this week is back to school style!

My classroom is set up this year much the same as it was last year. I decided to cover the horrible brown pinboards with fabric... I should have googled before I got started because the first ones I did have wonky edges! It's driving me mad every time I look at them. I got the hang of it eventually so might change out the dodgy ones.  Here's a few pics of my room!

Classroom library corner.

Small group teaching table.

Carpet space.

In amongst my purchases to get ready for the new year I bought 25 packs of Crayola crayons for 80c each.  We only have pencils and markers on our supply list and I wanted kidlets to have another option for their colouring and drawing.

Turns out that soap holders from the dollar store are the perfect solution for storing them!

I'm trying out something new this year for my classroom helpers/line leaders set up.  I had a pack of foam hand cutouts that I actually bought at Walmart years ago. Brought them all the way home to Australia and never had any use for them until now!

I wrote the names of my kidlets on them and made this very simple poster to stick them to.  Whoever is displayed on the hands gets to be the line leaders, tuckshop monitors and general classroom helpers.  This week I kept them the same as we got used to moving around the school, but I plan to change them twice a week.

We jumped right into maths this week by learning all about the number 1!  We sorted with the lucky dip bag:

One

not one!

 We made these gorgeous Number Crowns...

...and reviewed with these cute worksheets!

My kidlets were pretty worn out after their first week of Prep.  We did this torn paper activity for some quiet time. :)

Each kidlet had a template with their name and first letter.  We cut the strips and they tore and glued the pieces on.

I know, I know... they desperately need a border, but cute doesn't always win. :)

That's all from me today! I hope you are having a wonderful, relaxing weekend!

Five for Friday!

Here we go with another Five for Friday!

It's been hot here this week.  Not 'Oh, it's summer, let's go to the beach!' hot, more like 'If there's no air-conditioning, I'm not going' hot.  Today was 40 degrees C in the shade (104 F) - heaven help you if you were in the sun!  Tonight I'm keeping my wine in the freezer for wine slushy, the only way to keep cool on a Friday evening. :)  

Unfortunately, all that lovely ice melted about 30 seconds after I took the photo! 

Summer break has come to an end!  This week I spent 3 days in my classroom and Monday we go back for a week of student free days.  

This is how I left things this afternoon... don't you love my new carpet?! I'm hoping that if I leave it a few days the rolled up edges will flatten out.

If you read last week's Five for Friday you would have seen that I ordered some business cards from Vista Print. 

They arrived!! And they are super cute. :)

I've been getting my butt kicked in Trivia Crack, for reals.

But it's not my fault - I keep getting hard questions like this one! Pretty sure I got this wrong... most of the answers sounded like swear words so I was scared to choose one.  If you want to challenge me (and probably win!), you can search my username - lozzybeck.

I've been a laminating fool lately!  

Nothing says 'back to school' like the smell of hot plastic. :)

Before I go - did you see the cute freebie I uploaded to my store this week?  I'm so excited to use it with my fresh batch of Preppies in just over a week. :)

Happy Friday, lovely friends!

Fine Motor Fun... with a FREEBIE!

Hello lovely friends!  I wanted to pop in very quickly to share a few new resources that I'm planning to use this year.  Everyone knows teachers need to make the most of every minute in the classroom, so the bonus is that both of these tasks integrate fine motor skills with literacy and math concepts. Double bonus? One of them is a freebie!

First up is an addition to my Link-It-Up! series of products, this time with a focus on word families.  Simply add plastic chain links, pipe cleaners or laces to the cards and you've got a perfect Literacy Center or fast finisher activity that's easy to differentiate.  Choose pictures only...

...pictures with words...

... or words only.

Or of course, you could use a few of each!

These photos are from the 'Short A' pack, but of course there's 'Short E', 'Short I', 'Short O' and 'Short U' families as well.  You can also grab them all in a BUNDLE!

Just this morning I uploaded a cute counting (1-10) freebie to my store.  I'm so excited for my kidlets to use these, I know they'll love the cute snowmen and scooping 'marshmallows' onto hot chocolate!  It will be perfect to practise counting as well as numeral and number word recognition.

Click on the image below to check out this resource:

I hope wherever you are that you're having a wonderful day. Thanks for stopping by! :)

Five for... Friday?

I'm going to be really honest and say that when the first 'Five for Friday' post popped up on my Bloglovin' feed earlier there was a moment when I was totally confused.  I've been too busy enjoying my glorious Summer break and have totally lost track of time.  I hadn't thought about what day it might be since this time last week! Thank goodness for linkys to keep me on track. :)

In between pinning this week I ordered some cute business cards to use as 'take home' tokens.  The first for kidlets who have made it to the 'Super Kid' card of our clip chart, and the second for those who were caught filling someone's bucket.

I'm also excited for my self-inking stamp to arrive!  It says 'Checked by Miss Kuhn'.  Teaching Prep (Kindergarten) I don't mark my kidlets work with ticks and crosses.  I don't do a heap of worksheets and when I do, I ask kidlets to 'try again' if they are wrong.  If they end up getting it right I give them verbal praise (or a smiley face on their page if they've done a super job), but if they are wrong I don't put a big old cross on the answer they worked so hard to come up with.  I've seen Preppies become really stressed when their work is marked wrong.  This stamp will be a quick way to let parents know that I've seen each page.

I ordered the business cards and stamp from Vista Print.

My brother and nephew came to visit yesterday and we went to the zoo!

Mack loved this little wallaby almost as he loved the giant Boa Constrictor!

I loved this cute guy.

Earlier in the week I finished off a pack that I'd had in the works for a long time!  Read this post to learn about how I teach my kidlets to use 'Spaceman Spaces'.

Or click on the preview below to see the pack in my store.

I've been reminiscing about my fun 30th trip to Vegas with some lovely friends who I miss a lot.  

Australia to Canada is a long way to go for a catch up - I'm thinking we need to meet halfway in Hawaii!

How cute is this 'ant'onyms anchor chart that I pinned today!  I'm definitely going to use this idea.  The link goes nowhere though - bummer.  I bet whoever made this had a heap of other clever ideas.  Let me know if it's yours!

Now that I know it's Friday I'd best be off to watch the wedding shows on TLC, while reading the other Five for Friday posts of course! :)