Swap, Share, Give!

It's time for another 'Swap, Share, Give' linky! A bunch of us get together a few times during the year to swap and review a product made by another blogger, share a freebie of our own and hold a huge giveaway.  It's lots of fun and a great opportunity to discover new resources.  Let's get started!

Swap:

I was very lucky to have been paired up with the lovely Stef from Miss Galvin Learns.

As I was printing and laminating the cards from her Serving Up Donut Numbers pack I knew my kidlets would love it! 

In Prep we do so much work on number fluency, recognising different number representations, comparing and ordering - it's part of our daily maths work all year.  It can be really tricky to find resources that get kidlets excited about doing almost the same task that they've done before, but this cute donut theme had everyone itching to get started!

Placemats are provided in the pack for kidlets to 'set the table' with their donuts (showing pictures, ten frames, tallies and numerals) and cup (number words), but I grabbed some plastic plates I had in the storeroom and used the cards during Maths groups.

All I had them do the first time was gather the cards showing the same number and put them on their plate.  They had lots of fun giving each donut a different flavour and choosing their favourite hot drink for their cup.  This was a fun revision of numbers to 10.

We've also used the cards to sort even and odd, decide more or less and to order as a number line.  Because the pack includes numbers to 20 it's super easy to choose the cards you need for each skill level.  The cards have also made a few trips to the home corner where they were used to play 'Donut Cafe'.  "Are you enjoying your number 7 donut?" :) Stef also includes worksheets that I'll be copying to add to my 'Fast Finisher' drawers.

This is a great resource - perfect for early years classrooms!

Share:

The theme for the freebies each blogger will be sharing is 'Seasons'.  Here in Australia we're heading towards winter, but of course all of our northern hemisphere friends are getting excited for summer!  We decided that our freebies would cover all four seasons, so they could be used by everyone at different times of the year.  

I made a set of cute number lines for you to use in your whole class counting activities or during small groups.  There's one for each of the seasons.  

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Spring

Click on any of the images to grab them!

Give:

We're giving away all of the products swapped to one lucky winner! To enter, simply complete the Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now, if you're anything like me you'll be off to visit the other posts to grab some more freebies!  Thanks to the lovely Tania from Mrs Poultney's Ponderings for hosting our Swap, Share, Give linky this time around. :)

An InLinkz Link-up

Five for Friday!

Boy oh boy, it sure has been a while since I've linked up with Five for Friday! This week was back to school for us after Easter break and that means back to regular blogging. :)

Our first craft of the term (linked to our phonics focus) were these gorgeous handprint monsters.  If you've read my blog before you might know that I love anything monster themed, and these cuties were no exception!

We simply painted each kidlets' hand - they got to choose which fingers were painted - and printed them onto paper.  When they were dry the googly eyes were glued on and a mouth drawn with marker.  Each little monster has it's own personality!

We also made these cute apples from paper plates.

Just paint, cut, staple and you're done! These turned out so well, but seriously - I need to invest in a paper plate factory  I go through hundreds of them every year!

To go along with our /m/ focus we wrote about our monsters, choosing an adjective to finish the 'My monster' sentence starter.

We also worked on a letter m Alphabet Puzzle.

These were perfect for an independent group work activity.

Don't you love it when kidlets return after holidays and haven't forgotten everything they've learnt during the year?  During during Guided Reading this week we revised rhyming words with 'To Rhyme or Not to Rhyme' made by the very clever Brooke!

My Preppies blitzed this activity!  They said each picture names and then quickly decided which mat the card belonged to.  One happy teacher. :)

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day, a time when we remember fallen Australian and New Zealand servicemen and women.  Today our school held a very moving service to honour those who have died  fighting to protect the truly wonderful country we live in.  When we got back to our classroom, my kidlets wrote the word 'Remember' and drew pictures to represent ANZAC Day.

This picture shows a poppy, a sprig of rosemary, a wreath of flowers, and a soldier standing tall and proud.  

That's all from me today, friends.  Be sure to come back on Sunday to check out my post for the 'Swap, Share, Give' linky that a bunch of us Aussie bloggers have planned! 

Photo Catch Up - it's been a while!

It sure has been a while since I've stopped by to share photos of the things we've been up to in my classroom! This post has no real theme - it's just a hodgepodge of pictures that I'd taken in the last few weeks of term - and it seemed that most of them were snapped in a hurry, so sorry about the quality. :)

The end of Term 1 means lots of reviewing of the concepts I want to make sure my kidlets really 'get' before the Easter break.  As we worked on counting skills two games became the new favourites!

'Race to Fill the Cup' is super fun and very simple to set up.  All you need is some large cups (or really any container), some counting cubes and a die.  Kidlets roll and count that many cubes into their cup.  The first to fill their cup is the winner!  For extra fun I made some pocket dice cards and included a little 'thief' clipart.  When he was rolled, 1 cube had to go back into the middle.  A regular die would work just as well.

Dino Dash is perfect for easy differentiation.  Some of my groups used one die to practice counting, while others used two and worked on early addition skills.  Dinosaur tokens are moved along the rock path and stop to 'rest' under the trees when they make it to the end.  Players have to get as many dinos to the end of the path as they can.  You can grab this game in my store (click on the pics!) and add some plastic dinosaurs for extra fun.

We linked up number representations to review numerals, ten frames, words and dot patterns to 10. 

We made shape ice-creams to review 2D shape!  And who knew that some old cardboard would turn out to be the smash hit of the year so far...

...?  I needed a five minute time-filler activity so during lunch time my TA cut these shapes from old boxes.  I blindfolded a kidlet who had to identify the shape by feeling the number of sides and corners etc.  After we'd done the four shapes I wrapped up the activity and those who'd missed out on having a turn were devastated.  They literally begged me to keep the shapes out as a fast finisher option, and for weeks afterwards there would always be a pair of kidlets playing the 'Mystery Shape Guessing Game' - complete with high levels of excitement.  Who knew it would be such a hit?!

Once a week we do a whole class sorting activity to introduce or review reading and phonics concepts.  That activity then became a small group task. You can click on any of these photos to see the matching pack.

We reviewed letters, words and sentences and completed a cut'n'paste worksheet.

We worked on those tricky medial vowel sounds - next term we'll use mailboxes showing letters only rather than our Sound Waves cards.  We'll do the recording worksheets then too.

These cute tulips are sorted by the number of phonemes (sounds) in each picture.  We also did a cut'n'paste activity to match this sorting work as well, but who knows where that photo ended up. :)

Squirting sight words was by far the most fun sight word review we did all term.  We wrote the words  with chalk inside a bug shape on the path outside.  Depending on the group, kidlets squirted the bug containing the word called or identified the word based on clues given.  "This word has 4 letters and starts with l" etc. Perfect for kinaesthetic learners!

Phew! Told you I had lots of photos! Hopefully you've found an idea or two that you can use in your classroom. :)

It's Currently April!

Happy April, everyone!  Here in Queensland that means some cooler autumn weather (finally!) but I know for lots of you it's the opposite and you're probably celebrating spring sunshine. :) Writing this post has been on my mental 'to do' list for days, so I'm glad to finally have a few minutes to sit down and get it done. 

Listening/loving/thinking: I'm on two weeks of Easter break which means sleeping in! I live right by the beach so the Easter long weekend usually means that things get really busy around here with people on holidays.  The weather prediction was for torrential rain (it ended up being sunny all weekend) so it's not as busy as it usually is, but there's still enough people around to create a nice, happy, holiday vibe.  My nephew was here for a few days and we spent lots of time exploring rock pools and building sandcastles. 

Wanting: It seems that I've fallen out of love with every piece of clothing that I own! I think a day of serious shopping is in order to stock up on some new clothes and accessories.

Needing: A few times a year a bunch of clever bloggers get together for a Swap, Share, Give linky party.  We swap and review a product, give them away to lucky winners and also share awesome freebies.  The next one is coming up soon and I need to get started on my freebie!

Eggs-plaining my name: Even though my name is Lauren, I'm mostly called Lozzy by family and close friends (Loz is the Aussie nickname for Lauren). When I first started my blog I wanted a name that represented the things I find most important in the classroom - so I settled with Love, Laughter and Learning in Prep. 

Another Currently done for the year! Time sure flies when you're having fun. :)