Let's Go Buggy!

Anyone who has read my blog before would know that my all-time favourite resources to use in any subject area are GAMES!  Joining in with an interactive game is so much more engaging for little learners than a worksheet (and even most other hands on activities) - and best of all they'll be happy to play over and over again, practising skills and concepts without even realising!

Just about the most popular game that I have introduced to any of my classes has been 'Let's Go Buggy'!  It's a counting game that focuses on numbers to 10.  To play, children take turns to roll the die.  Choose either numerals, pictures or number words depending on the needs of your kidlets.  Each time they roll, players add bugs to their jar - aiming to be the first to collect 10 bugs.  I use bug toys from the dollar store, but you could just use regular counters.  Adding an element of fun, the dice include a fly swat and bug spray pictures - if either of those are rolled the player must take away 1 or all of their bugs.

I usually use the pocket dice inserts, but this game also includes templates for you to make your own from card if you prefer!

I love this game because it's super easy to set up, works on number recognition as well as simple addition and subtraction concepts, and can be played pretty much all year.  I can't really remember a class who hasn't wanted to play this game right up until the last weeks of school. :)

Once your kidlets have finished playing the game, they can complete one of the 4 recording worksheets included in the resource!

Click on any of the images in this post to see 'Let's Go Buggy!' in my TpT store.

Board Games in the Classroom!

If you've read my blog before you'll know that I absolutely LOVE using games in the classroom! As well as being hands-on and engaging for little learners, they can also help kidlets to practise and consolidate many maths and literacy skills, as well as social behaviours like turn-taking and rule-following.  While I'm all for using products that have been made specifically for use in the classroom (like those you can find on TpT), you don't always have to print and laminate to have a resource that fits in with the curriculum.  I own lots of store bought games that I use either straight from the box or with a few simple hacks. (Read to the end to find out how I get them on the cheap.) Here's a few of my favourites - with some ideas of how to use them! 

1. Snakes and Ladders!

Usually Snakes and Ladders is set up as a 100s board - bonus! Use a regular die to work on subitising, counting and number recognition with your kidlets. You might also like to use different dice depending on what your maths focus is.  This makes it a great game for differentiation! One group may use a dice with numerals, one with number words, another with ten frames and yet another might use two dice to work on their addition skills.  Ask questions as the game progresses - What number are you on now? You've rolled 5 - what number do you think you will land on? What number do you need to roll to land on the number 20?

2.  Scrabble!

Scrabble (or Junior Scrabble) is a perfect word work activity.  Depending on the ability of your kidlets, you could play the game in the traditional way or modify it to make it a little easier.  I like to have the letters laid out on a table - kidlets simply pick the letters they want to build a word on the board.  Speaking of the board - you don't even need to use it if it's too tricky and we never bother to keep score.  Of course, the Scrabble letter tiles can also be used for a tonne of other spelling and phonics activities - use them as you would magnetic letters, stamps, letter beads etc.

3. Boggle!

I like to use Boggle initially as a letter recognition game.  Give the container a shake and then name the letters you can see!  Kidlets can write one per shake on a whiteboard etc. or cross them off a worksheet or board as they appear in the game.  When you begin phonics teaching, have students say the letter sound rather than it's name.  Of course when your learners are ready they can play the game as it's intended - writing down words made from the letters that appear after each shake.

4. Guess Who?

Let me start by saying that if you have the original style Guess Who? with the flat boards, make sure you hang on to it!  The newer version has connected boards that stand upright and it's much trickier for little learners to manage.  Guess Who? is perfect to play straight from the box - it's a game that encourages kidlets to use critical thinking and specific vocabulary in order to narrow down the faces on their board - and on top of that their questions must only have a yes/no answer.  If you watch your kidlets play this throughout the year you'll see how their skills improve.  If you have the time, make up a game board (either a sheet or individual cards depending on which version of the game you have) with the faces of your whole class.  A perfect way for kidlets to get to know their peers! Hasbro even has additional character sheets that you can print from their website to mix things up a bit - and a little Googling will help you find themed sheets that other clever clogs have shared.

5. Trouble!

Everyone loves the popomatic bubble!  Trouble is perfect to play when little learners are working on number recognition and counting skills.  No hacks necessary. :)

6. Hungry, Hungry Hippos!

Another game just made for maths groups. After each round of marble chomping, kidlets count how many their hippo has eaten. Whose hippo ate the most? Whose ate the number closest to ten? Using two different coloured marbles extends this game further - six red marbles and two yellow marbles makes eight in total etc.

7. Connect Four!

Connect Four can be used to work on turn-taking and critical thinking skills straight from the box.  By using a marker, some dot stickers or painter's tape you can also modify it to use for lots of other purposes! I've mostly used it as a sight word game by writing words on the chips.  Kidlets choose a chip from a bag (otherwise they'll just pick the words that are easy for them each time!) and add it to the game if they can read it. Put all the red chips in one bag and the yellow in another. The winner is still the first person to line up four of their chips before the other player.  You can see how easy it would be to modify this to suit any skill you're working on - write letters for recognition or phonics practise, numerals or number words, CVC words (or whatever words suit your phonics focus), shapes etc.

Now you might be thinking - this all sounds great but seems like it could be expensive! It's ideal to have the games differentiated and ready to go whenever you need them, but that means having two or three of each in some cases.  I'll be honest with you and say that I've paid full price for very few of my classroom games! The easiest way to get them for free is to pop a note on your classroom door or school newsletter asking for donations.  There's always families looking to declutter their toy cupboard who are more than happy to share the love and donate to little learners.  You might get a few that are missing pieces - combine them to make a full set.  The next best place to look is in second hand stores, or garage sales.  If you'd prefer to buy new from the store, keep an eye out for knock-off versions that are less expensive.

I hope I've inspired you to raid your board game cupboard and find a few treasures to use in your classroom! 

Valentine's Day Inspiration - with a freebie!

Looking for some easy peasy ways to celebrate all things Valentine's Day with your little learners? You've come to the right place!  Today I'm going to share a few simple ideas that I've made with my little ones this weekend, as well as some links to a few other great activities.  I've just uploaded a new freebie to my store too, so keep reading to the end to grab the link. :)
First up is a super cute footprint craft that I made with Little Miss Two today.  We painted her feet red and printed them onto some pink paper. I made up a template for her to glue the heart onto, but you could easily use this idea for Valentine's Day cards made by older children - and of course it doesn't have to be for Daddy. :)

Taking a little more time (and patience!) was this gorgeous collage craft.  It only took Miss Six about 10 minutes to glue the paper pieces down to the template.  I'd cut the paper for her, but this would also be great as a paper tearing activity.

I've also got plans to make these super cute and simple 'Love Bug' headbands on Valentine's Day.

Hopefully we'll also have time to make these cute Valentine's Day leis, made from wool, paper hearts and pieces of pink straw.

During the week we'll work on these gorgeous cupcakes - a freebie from Mel at From the Pond!  I love that these are so simple but really give kidlets a chance to share about things that are important to them.

This simple name puzzle would be perfect for kidlets who are still working on recognising the letters in their name and spelling it correctly.  I made mine with clipart, printed and laminated it, but for a whole class I'd just use a marker and pink paper before chopping the names up.

I love this counting activity that's perfect as a DIY! Just write numbers on paper hearts and provide kidlets with pom poms (or anything cheap'n'cheerful!) for them to count with.

Last (but not least!) is a number puzzle freebie that I've just uploaded to my TpT store.  Click on either of the images to download 'Broken Heart Number Match' - numerals and number words from 0-10. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

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. :)

Our Week in Photos!

This post is brought to you by the wonderful condition called 'Sunday Afternoon Laziness'!  I took lots of photos this week and have lots of fun activities to share... but am feeling too lazy to organise them as anything other than a photo dump with quick captions. I hope you'll still find an idea or two that you'll be able to use in your classroom. :)

Tumbling Chimps is perfect for fine motor fun! I found it at Big W - they have lots of cheap games that would be wonderful for the classroom.

Kidlets used bingo dabbers to dot over a line...

...and if they had time, cut along the line through the middle of the dots.  Fine motor and scissor skills all in one!

 Tracing this week was with our new Scentos markers! Had to remind them not to sniff the pen directly. :) The room smelt so gorgeous all week.

New favourite maths game? Dino Dash!  This super fun game works on early addition concepts, or you can use it as a counting game for those who still need that practise.

We played Beach Bingo (part of Mel's bundle) - working on numbers to 10. 

My kidlets loved making a Flip Strip from Cara's pack!  This week we matched quantities to 5 as our easy review task.

We worked on representing numbers in different ways using counting cubes and ten frames.  I called a number, the kidlets built it and then told me how they had organised their cubes - 6 might be 3 and 3; 4 and 2; 5 and 1 etc.

During Literacy groups we played Stretchy Snake Bingo -  I love this as phoneme blending practise.  The caller says each word as individual sounds, and the kidlets have to blend them together to figure out if that picture is on their card.

It was a bingo kind of week - we played Brooke's Alphabet Bingo, using wooden letters drawn from a bag instead of calling cards.  

Our sight word work was stamping with playdough!

We used the pocket chart to sort Letters, Words and Sentences - this was a whole class activity that will be reviewed with an independent cut & paste task this coming week.

Last but not least - I love these colourful vases of flowers that we made as part of our phonics work.

Phew! That's all from me, friends. :) Enjoy the last of your weekend!