Five for Friday!

It feels like an age since I've linked up with Doodle Bugs and shared a Five for Friday post! Time to jump back on the bandwagon and start 2015 with some photo randomness. :)

I'm not usually the type of person who makes resolutions at the beginning of a new year... as a matter of fact setting a goal usually makes me feel stressed (is that weird?!). But this year there's a few things that I already do that I just wanted to make more of a conscious effort to stay on top of - so I made my self some New Year's Reminders!

I made a little subway art inspired print to frame both here at home and for my desk at school so I can see my reminders every day.  Most of them are pretty self-explanatory, and they're also things that should be very easy for me to achieve.  Here's hoping! :)

I'm right in the middle of Summer break and have been taking advantage of the sun and blue skies to spend some time at the beach.  It's been umbrella city down there this week!

I just love seeing happy kidlets with sun-browned skin and tangled hair running on the sand and jumping in the waves.  That's the way childhood should be here in Australia! :)

When I posted my Currently earlier this week I shared a photo of my Christmas present to myself.  I had a gorgeous green amethyst and diamond ring made with some of my TpT earnings!  

I've been checking out the #becauseoftpt posts on Instagram and am totally grateful to be part of a community that can change people's lives in so many wonderful ways! Although jewellery is a pretty frivolous way to spend money, I was able to treat myself without worrying about penny pinching to get my bills paid or groceries bought.  Thanks TpT! 

Lately I've been spending a tonne of time on Pinterest, collecting new ideas for when school goes back in a few weeks.  You can follow my boards if you like!! Here's my recent favourites!

I loved these two ideas that work perfectly together! I plan to make the "It bugs me when..." craft first, and follow it up with the "When something is bugging me I can say..." poster.  I start my kidlets working in groups right from the first day of Prep, and if I expect them to get along and work nicely with each other then I need to teach them conflict resolution skills!  The craft was pinned from The Learning Tree but the pin for the poster goes nowhere - if you know where it's from please let me know!

I always struggle to find exciting, engaging ideas for teaching positional language so I was so excited to find this pin! I'm going to take photos of my kidlets in the playground, label them with the positional language and then make a class book.  Thanks to Chalk Talk for this very clever idea!

Can't wait to make a set of 'Sight Word Stars' for my little learners to use while searching for sight words in their books.  How simple to add words as you teach them, and what a perfect (independent!) activity for those kidlets who just need a little more practise recognising sight words in context.  This was pinned from Kinderdi.

I wish that every time I pinned something it magically appeared in my classroom! Sadly that's not the case, so in the next few days I'll have to get myself motivated to tackle some school projects.  So far I've put the kidlets' scissors through the dishwasher to get the glue off...

...stocked up on Scentos...

...and thrown everything that needs to go to my classroom into a box that's currently blocking my hallway.

Productive, right?!

Before I go, I should let you know about the bundle giveaway happening on my Facebook right now! My newest products are part of my best selling 'Link It Up' series - this time with a word families focus.  Pop on over and pin it to win it!

Happy weekend, friends! Thanks for stopping by today. :)

Swap, Share Give!

I am so excited that it's time for round two of the Swap, Share, Give linky!  A bunch of Aussie bloggers have teamed up to bring you honest reviews of products to help kick off your school year in style, or for us Aussies - to finish off the year well.  We've also got freebies to share and a huge GIVEAWAY!





I was very lucky to be paired up with the lovely Brooke from Teachable Moments for a product swap.  I absolutely love her products and use many of them in my classroom - they are always top quality, effective and cute!

As I scrolled through her store one product caught my eye.  All year I have been wanting to spend more time teaching Health - it's part of our curriculum but has been pushed to the bottom of the priority list most weeks.  There's so important many real-life skills that are learnt in discussions about food and activity choices, and I just didn't feel I was doing this subject justice.  Until now!

Brooke sent me her awesome Healthy Choices unit and straight away I knew that my health lessons were sorted - probably for the rest of the year!  This pack includes a tonne of options to use with your kidlets - charts, posters, information passages with matching activities, cut & paste worksheets, meal design tasks, a writing prompt... phew! Let me show you what I've used so far. 

We started by discussing healthy foods vs. sometimes foods using the pie chart guide in the pack.  We listed foods on a chart that I blew up to A3 size to use with the whole class.  

In our next lesson we revised our charts and then completed the cut & paste activity to sort healthy foods and sometimes foods.

Brooke has provided a cute template for each meal - breakfast, lunch and dinner - for kidlets to design a healthy plateful of food.  Instead of drawing foods, we did a magazine search.  My class loved this because their plates were so bright and colourful when they were done!

I'm so excited to keep using this pack!  I plan to print the information passages and posters and add them to a display folder for our class library - and I can't wait for my kidlets to design a Super Fruit Man!  Check out the Healthy Choices unit in Brooke's store.

Now it's my turn to share a freebie!!  If you're starting back for a new school year I'm sure you will be spending lots of time teaching behaviour expectations.  I love using dollar store bubbles to teach kidlets what it feels like to use self-control.  I do this activity at the start of the year, and then again whenever we need a little reminder! :)  Click on the picture to download this for FREE!

Is there anything better than an awesome giveaway?  Nope, didn't think so!  Enter for a chance to win ALL of the products swapped as part of our Swap, Share, Give linky.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you have time to check out the linky hosted by the lovely Bec to find a heap of wonderful products made by my very clever Aussie blogger friends!  I'm off to walk the Noosa National Park path  in the glorious sunshine. :)

Hey Presto! {Pin it to win it!}

This year my class is full of very high energy, exuberant characters.  I love them to bits... but boy are they tricky to find resources for!  They love games and hands on activities, and seem to really be motivated by competition... with fickle attention spans! What's new for 5 year olds, right?  Combining all this with the fact that many of them need to become much more fluent with their reading (at various skill levels) sent me on a mission to create a set of games that would allow them to read, play and win! Today... my mission was completed. :)

I have kidlets in my class who are working on reading CVC words, some who are ready for trickier words, and some who need practice reading simple sentences.  I wanted to make games that were essentially the same concept (similar to Bang!-type games) so that when each new pack was introduced the format was familiar to my kidlets while still focusing on their ability level.  I started by making Shark! (CVC words) and then moved on to Fox in the Hen House! for digraphs and Shiver Me Timbers! for sentences.  Today I finished Hey Presto! and am so excited to use it for my little learners who need to practice reading long vowel 'Magic E' words! :)

I'm so hoping that these resources can be of use to others!  How about a giveaway? Pin any of the below images to WIN the game of your choice!  Pin more than one image for extra chances to win. :) (Don't forget to leave a comment with the link to your pin.)

Happy Thursday, friends! I hope you are enjoying cable TV and the good wine like I am... but then you might not be at your parent's house. :)

New Products to Give Away!

I've been very busy this past week or so whipping up some products that my kidlets need to practise some important concepts and skills.  I thought I'd quickly share them with you in case they will come in handy in your classroom too!

The first is a simple game to practise CVC reading fluency.  I love using card games in the classroom because by keeping the format similar the kidlets can play them independently even when the skills being developed change!  This one is easy - children choose a card and if it features a friendly sea animal they read the word and keep the card.  Watch out for the shark though! If he is on the card that player must return their cards to the pile.  The kidlet with the most cards at the end is the winner.  The pages are organised by medial vowel sound and words have been chosen to use a wide variety of consonant phoneme combinations.

Check it out in my TpT store here!

I'm always looking for ways to integrate fine motor development with curriculum areas, and have also been trying to think of ways to use the giant container of plastic chain links I bought and have rarely used.  After doing some assessment and discovering that some of my treasures needed some more practise with number recognition I whipped up this activity.  It's proven to be a huge hit so far, and I love that it combines fine motor with maths!

I'm planning on making a lot more activities like this one. :)  Find 'Link It Up 0-20' here.

Last but not least is a noun, verb and adjective sorting activity that I plan to use in my pocket chart.  The pack includes some bonus recording worksheets.  

'Sort it Out! Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives' is designed in a similar way to one of my best selling products - 'Sort it Out! Letters Words and Sentences'

Now time for the giveaway!  Simply make sure you follow my TpT store and then pin any image from this post!  Leave a comment with the link to the pin and I'll come back tomorrow afternoon and choose 3 random winners to receive the product of their choice. :)

I'm linking up with Teaching in a Nutshell for Sell It Saturday! 

Lauren

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