Five for Friday! Sunshine, Costco, Dinos and a GIVEAWAY!

As I sat down to gather my thoughts for today's Five for Friday I almost couldn't remember anything I'd done at school this week! We're getting set to write report cards, so I can only blame my scarce collection of photos and scatty memory on a super busy week. :)  My five random moments are just that - quite random!

Summer break?  Nope, just an almost-Winter's day in Queensland!

It's the perfect time of year to enjoy long walks in the sun!

This week I decided it was time to get organised!  I transferred all of my TpT ideas to one notebook, instead of random bits of paper and notes on my phone and laptop.  I've got two 'to-do' lists on the go as well, one for home and one for my blog etc.

It's helping so far!

I introduced one of my favourite Maths games to my kidlets this week!  I call it Dino Dash.

The idea is simple.  Kidlets roll two pocket dice, with dot patterns for 0 - 3.  Each child has a card with a rock path on it and we use a container of plastic dinosaurs.  After the dice are rolled kidlets move their dinosaur along the path after counting the total number of dots.  This works on counting, subitising, number bonds and introduces addition in a relaxed way.  Later in the year I'll change one of the dice to show numerals - perfect to work on counting-on skills.  Once the dinosaur reaches the end of the path they have a rest under the tree, and a new dino starts his journey!  The kidlet with the most dinosaurs under their tree at the end of the playing time is the winner. :)

You could adapt this game to play with any manipulatives that you have - frogs on lilypads, insects on flowers etc.  My kidlets go mad for this game!

Big excitement 'round these parts recently...

...Costco opened!  It's the first in Queensland so the hype around opening day was HUGE!  I'd shopped at Costco when I was living in Canada so I wasn't quite as excited as some of the other people I saw there. Everyone was loading their carts up with huge smiles on their faces and one of the employees I spoke to said they turned over more than $1 million on their first day.  Crazy! Although my photo only shows about 5 people there it was actually super duper busy, so I just had a quick look and only bought a few cleaning products and a 10kg bag of rice to make rainbow rice for the sensory bin at school. :)

Time for the GIVEAWAY!  It's a miracle - I finally added a new product to my TpT store!

Not sure about you, but I find Show & Tell in the classroom tedious (I know... I'm a terrible teacher)!  It seems to veer between kidlets whose parents have made a larger than life poster that the child has had absolutely no part in and those that have literally grabbed something out of the car on their way into school.  I wanted a way to make Show & Tell times effective for developing oral language skills by providing guidelines as to the type and amount of information children should present.  The templates also help me to assist those little ones who've forgotten what they wanted to say, and because everyone has had the same poster to complete they all feel proud of theirs when it goes on display.

(I've included two sets of templates - one with Aussie spelling and the second is US friendly!)

There's 10 different topics in the pack.

Check it out here or 'Pin it to Win it'!  Leave me a comment with a link to the board you pinned to and I'll give away three copies at the end of the weekend. :)

Happy weekend friends!  I hope wherever you are you're enjoying some rest and relaxation - you deserve it!

Lauren

Five for Friday! 13/12/13

When the Five for Friday posts started popping up in my Bloglovin' feed this week, my first reaction was 'Huh? It's Friday?!'  Don't you just love being on Summer break and forgetting what day of the week it is? :)  Link up with Doodle Bugs and share your five random moments.

1. So... when I posted my Christmas Questionnaire responses the other day I mentioned that I love receiving presents over giving them... reading through everyone else's responses, I realised that I was just about the only one who gave that answer!  Consequently, I felt like the world's worst person!!  But I've had a think about it, and I think my honest answer would be that I love exchanging gifts. I love choosing a special item that I know my friends or family will love, and I also love opening up gifts that make me feel special and loved.  It's the giving and receiving of pressies at the same time that's my favourite. :)  Yesterday I exchanged gifts with my best friend (she's off overseas tomorrow).  We must know each other so well... we bought the same 365 Journal!

2. Along those lines, I wanted to share a pic of the cutest paper ever that I'm using this year to wrap some of my gifts.  I love watching Charlie Brown Christmas, so I was so happy to find this at Typo.

3. In my shopping adventures this week I have crossed quite a few things off my list for family and friends but I've also grabbed some bargains that are for (where else?) my classroom.  Alison Lester writes such gorgeous books so I was happy to grab a pack of 4 for $15, and I got a hardcover edition of The Very Hungry Caterpillar for $10 (normally $30).  'Yes' and 'Tall', written by Jez Alborough were down from $17 to $3!  You can never have too many Zoobs - they are on sale at Aldi this week, and the felt Christmas tree will get packed away to use next year on a classroom wall. The pretty scarf is for me. :)

4.  Yesterday was a beautiful, hot day.  I wandered down to the beach in the very late afternoon and enjoyed the warm breeze and the sound of the waves. :)

5.  To celebrate a few weeks of nails with no paint or playdough stuck in them I'm going to have a go at this manicure.  Wish me luck!

Happy weekend everyone!  

Lauren

A Day at the 'Beach' and Tuesday Typography!

Hi all!  I hope you had a terrific Tuesday - I know I sure did!  Today my kidlets and I spent the morning at the 'beach', building sandcastles for a Maths investigation that we have been working on. :)

The aim of our investigation was to design and build a sandcastle to hide a crab in ('Where's Wally' style) for a class photo book.  We had done lots of talking about measurement (capacity, tall/short, wide/narrow) and 3D shape, as well as using lots of positional language.  We'd made posters detailing all we knew about sandcastles (it turns out that beach kids know A LOT!), we poured over 'Where's Wally' and 'I Spy' books to make lots of diagrams showing how we could hide our crab in the sandcastle and, finally, we worked with a partner to design an awesome sandcastle and list the tools we would need to make it.  

Today was the day we got to celebrate our work and build our sandcastles... with lots of smiles and laughter... and perhaps even an ice-block as well! :)

Our beach for the day.  I have a WONDERFUL teacher aide who set all of this up for me.  Along with the sandpit tools that the kids would need to build with, she (and the other aides that work with me) also collected all of the castle decorations and created atmosphere with huge sea creatures displayed, two row boats, fishing nets and a CD player with 'Oh I do like to live beside the seaside' on repeat.  The kids love her, and so do I.

Busily working on our castle designs.

This was my favourite design.  It's a bit tricky to see in this photo, but these boys added a sun deck that they built just like a real deck!  You can just see their blue crab in the tunnel (the deck is north-west of there).

The lovely mummy of these twins has given me permission to publish photos of them, and she actually took all of these photos for me too! :)

Cooling off under the hose... not technically maths, but lots of fun!  Luckily I didn't plan to do this activity tomorrow, the forecast is for 32 degrees.  

Sometimes I think my biggest responsibility as a Prep teacher is to instill in my kidlets a real love of learning and love of school... today was a day that I hope helps with both of these goals. :)

Last of all, I wanted to share some gorgeous typography, just because it's Tuesday!

Anne Shirley. Smartest woman ever. 

Pinned from here.

Have a wonderful week everyone!  

Lauren