Teaching Adjectives with Monsters!

If you're looking for a fun way to help your kidlets practise using interesting adjectives, you might like to try this easy painting and writing activity.  Bonus: it makes a gorgeous classroom display!

As with most painting activities, it's best to do this part of the activity in small groups.  We all know how messy kids can get with paint when they're not closely supervised! :) To start, give each child a large piece of paper and have them fold it in half.  Near the crease on one side of the paper, place some blobs of paint.  I like using bright, neon colours but whatever you have is fine.  Have kidlets fold their paper again and use their hand to gently smooth and spread the paint as far as they can towards the edges.  Unfold and let dry!

Now for the best bit!  When their paintings are dry, give each child 2 eyes (I used paper circles, but you could use googly eyes if you have them on hand, or they could be drawn on with marker).  They should glue the eyes onto the page in a way that makes their picture look like a monster!  I cut around the edges of the paint to define them a bit more, but that's totally optional.

Spend some time talking about what each monster might be like.  Discuss their colours and features (do they have horns, polka dots or sharp teeth?) as well as what their personalities might be like.  From this discussion, each kidlet writes a sentence and uses an adjective to describe their monster.  Of course, you could extend this task and have them write a few sentences or a paragraph if that's more appropriate for your grade level.  You might also like to use this as an opportunity to work on the concept of symmetry, too.

I love this activity because it has everyone using their imagination and applying their knowledge of adjectives in a really engaging way.  If you put the monsters on display it's a talking point for anyone who comes into the room! I hope this is an idea that you can use with your learners soon!

Punctuation Clip Cards!

I'm not sure about you, but I find that teaching punctuation can sometimes be at bit, well... boring.  Particularly when you're working with little learners who prefer hands on activities.  It was this problem that led me to creating these punctuation clip cards!

The idea is easy peasy - read the sentence and clip the most appropriate ending punctuation!  Choices include a full stop (period), exclamation point or question mark.  The cards are perfect to use as a small group activity once you've done some whole class teaching around punctuation.  Make them self correcting by placing a sticker or marker dot behind the correct answer - children can clip their choice and flip the card to see if they are right!

This resource is designed for beginning readers - lots of high frequency words and others that can be read using simple phonics.  To save on ink, print two to a page to create smaller cards - that's what I did for the cards featured in these photos.

Click on any of the images to see this pack in my store!

Let's Use 'Spaceman Spaces'!

OK, let me start by sharing a painful memory from my childhood.  I'm a leftie (don't worry, I have very neat handwriting!) and spent my early years at school being taught to use 'finger spaces' when writing sentences.  Doesn't sound so bad?  Do me a favour - wherever you are right now, pretend to write with your left hand, use your right as a finger space and then attempt to do the yoga move you need to be proficient with to get your pencil over your finger, ready to write the next word.  Tricky, right?  Fast forward 20ish years and here I am giving my kidlets the same spiel 'use a finger space between each word'.  Apart from the leftie trouble, let's face it - that's a super boring way to encourage children to evenly space words in their writing.

That's why in my classroom, we use 'Spaceman Spaces'!

To get started with 'Spaceman Spaces' I do a whole class lesson that highlights the importance of appropriate space between words.  We test out 'Baby Steps', 'Giant Steps' and 'Spaceman Steps'.  Wouldn't you know it - 'Spaceman Steps' are just the perfect size!  Once that's established I introduce the 'Spaceman Spacer'.  Be prepared guys, this is a high-tech tool...

Look at those chubby fingers!

Yep, that's a picture of an astronaut glued to a craft stick!  Having the spacer right there as they are writing is a great visual reminder - and there's no twisty arm movements for right or left-handers so their handwriting isn't affected at all.  Each kidlet has their own, and I have some in the Writing Corner and at my small group teaching table as well.

To further encourage kidlets to consistently use 'Spaceman Spaces' I make a bulletin board, with an astronaut displayed for each child after they have independently used 'Spaceman Spaces' 5 times in a row.  They also receive an achievement certificate!  Towards the end of the year it becomes second nature for words to be spaced evenly, and spacers are no longer needed. :)

Please excuse the light and outlet right in the middle of my board. Honestly, who put them there?!

If you would like to use 'Spaceman Spaces' in your classroom, I've put together a pack with everything you'll need to get started (including an overview of the whole class lesson I mentioned earlier in this post):

I hope this is an idea that you'll be able to use in your classroom.  Let me know if it works for you! :)

Five for Friday!

I'm not sure about everyone else, but when I actually do my Five for Friday post on a Friday I really feel as if I have my life together! :)  Here are some random moments from my week.

It's that time of the year when I really start to see some lovely progress with my kidlets' writing.  We've been using our Spacemen Spacers to make sure our sentences are easy to read and I'm seeing more kidlets spelling 'tricky sounds' correctly in their words.  I also love that full stops are appearing at the end of sentences instead of between random words :)

Next step is to make sure we're choosing interesting and exciting words in our stories!

Every time I walk past the garden near my classroom and see the gorgeous sunflowers blooming there my heart lifts a little.

Sunflowers must be the most cheerful of all the flowers!

This morning we played a new 'game' my teaching partner found on TpT.  Spelling CVC Words - Can you beat the computer? was a HUGE hit!  Each slide shows a picture, and the aim is for kidlets to write the word correctly before the letters appear on the screen.

This was great practice for my little learners who are still working on their segmenting skills, and a speed challenge for the others.  I love that the photo shows two kidlets cheering because they beat the computer. :)

This morning I saw a post on Facebook that made my heart skip a beat... 'The Magic Faraway Tree' is being made into a movie!

I really, really, really hope that the characters and magic lands live up to the ones I created in my imagination when I was growing up!  My greatest wish when I was about 9 was that one day I would get to climb the Faraway Tree myself - I was convinced that Silky and I would be best friends. :)

Because I am such a party animal I'm spending my Friday night doing laundry and finishing off a pack for TpT.  Here's a sneak peek:

If you've read my blog before you'll know that I love combining hands-on and fine motor activities with literacy and numeracy concepts.  This little ditty focuses on digraphs and as soon as I've added cards with words as well as pictures it will be ready to upload!  Fingers crossed I don't get distracted by 'Say Yes to the Dress'!!

~Update! I did get distracted by Friday night TV but got this pack uploaded today. :) Check it out here!~

Thanks so much for popping by!  Be sure to visit the linky to see what everyone else has been up to this week. :)

Phonics, Grammar and Writing Fun Inspired by the Green Sheep!

Do you read Mem Fox's 'Where is the Green Sheep?' with your class?  I love it!  Not only are the illustrations just gorgeous, but it provides perfect teaching opportunities for a number of concepts.  This week we enjoyed this story as part of our phonics work (learning about the digraph /sh/), to work on grammar (learning what an antonym is) and as a prompt for some very cute writing.  Today I've stopped by to share a few photos of our Green Sheep inspired fun!

We started by reading the story together.  I always love how enthralled kidlets are with a good book, even when they've heard it a million times before! :) I then explained that to discover our sound of the day they needed to search around the room to find the Green Sheep that I had hidden.  Don't forget that the Green Sheep will be sleeping - we crept silently around the room so as not to wake them.

After each kidlet had found a Green Sheep card, they brought them back to the carpet and read the word printed on their card to me.  This is when we discovered that our phonics focus for the day was /sh/ - although I'm not sure it was much of a state secret!! :)  We added the words to a poster and finished off with our Sound Waves workbook page.

Later in the day we revisited our favourite woolly friend with some work on antonyms. Coming up with engaging ideas to teach grammar to 5 year olds is sometimes tricky, so I gave myself a little pat on the back when I thought of using this book to help! We revised what an antonym was, and found some in the pages of the book.  

Then we made a list of our own.  Warning: If you like to make sure all posters and anchor charts in your room are pretty and cute you might like to skip over the next photo.  I don't want to upset you!

Then it was time to put our writer's hats on and get to work creating pages for a class book!  I explained that each kidlet would write two pages, one for each of their sheep.  The idea was that they would stick to antonym pairs, but I wasn't too fussy with this.  I absolutely love how these pages turned out!! I still have to pop them in a display folder with a cover so I can add our cute sheep to the class library.

Our last bit of Green Sheep fun was with games in reading groups.  Kidlets had been playing Fox in the Hen House to practise reading /sh/, /ch/ and /th/ words during their guided reading time with me, and I added an old favourite as a fast finisher for those who got their sight word rotation done quickly. This game is my best seller - it's in Queensland font with our high frequency words, but a Dolch version is coming soon!

In the past I've also done a directed drawing art activity using markers and watercolours, but we ran out of time for that this week.  Here's a pic of last year's creations:

I hope you were able to grab an idea or two to use in your classroom with 'Where is the Green Sheep?' - I'd love to hear from you if any work for you. :)

The Pout Pout Fish!

Hi all!  Have you missed me?  I've been a very slack blogger lately and I do apologise (if you follow me on Facebook you would have seen the giveaway I'm running to make up for my lack of posts!).  I'm here today to share with you a cute craft and some writing my kidlets did last week after we read 'The Pout Pout Fish'!

If you don't read this book to your class - you should!  It's a gorgeous story about a fish who blubs about spreading the dreary wearies, all because he thinks he is a Pout Pout Fish. All of a sudden he realises that maybe he was a Smooch Smooch Fish all along - so he changes his game to start spreading the cheery cheeries instead. :)

We made a simple paper craft using this template from TpT.  I used light blue card and also gave the kidlets some navy circle cut outs to embellish their Pout Pout Fish with.  They are proudly displayed around the room with the very cute writing that we worked on to tell about times that we spread the dreary wearies and the cheery cheeries!

I spread the dreary wearies when people be mean to me.

I spread the cheery cheeries when people be nice to me.

I spread the dreary wearies when people ignore me.

I spread the cheery cheeries when I get special treats.

I spread the dreary wearies when the next day is Monday.

I spread the cheery cheeries when it is my birthday.

I hope you are having a wonderful week with your kidlets!  

Lots of Fun that is Funny (inspired by The Cat)!

What better way to work on rhyming (amongst other skills!) than with 'The Cat in the Hat'?  This week we've had lots of fun that is funny so I thought I'd stop past and share!


The first activity we did after reading the book was to discuss what we knew about the Cat character based on the clues in the story.  We brainstormed a list that included the adjectives funny, helpful, messy, tricky, naughty, fun, energetic, disruptive, happy etc.  The kidlets then chose the two they thought best described the Cat and wrote them in a speech bubble for him to say.

Don't ask me why the colouring in is so random on these two! 

The next challenge I set for the kidlets was to create a new character with a name that rhymed just like the Cat in the Hat.  I was really interested to see which of my treasures could successfully manage this, and was so proud of their ideas and the way they chose words that rhymed.

The Five in the Hive

The Fly up High

The Bird in the Herd

My absolute favourite is this last one, just look at the way she has visualised her character!  I love the faces watching the stage (complete with lights!), the boy with his hands to his face in astonishment, and the girl's twirly legs. :)  I can't wait to see it when this sweetie has coloured her work in.

The Girl Doing a Twirl

We wrote about what that cheeky Cat might do if he visited us at Prep:

The Cat in the Hat would break all of the glass.
(Please excuse the grammar error - it wasn't me I promise!)

He might knock down all the things, like some rubbish bins or some toys.

And of course, we couldn't let the opportunity of making a hat pass by!

Before I go, I should let you know that I'm having a 'pin it to win it' giveaway of my newest product - a fine motor fun with numbers pack - on my Facebook page! Pop over to check it out. :)

Lauren