Happy Snaps Sunday!

Hello lovely friends!  My friend Shanyn from Classroom Chit Chat has recently started a fabulous linky called 'Happy Snaps Sunday'!  The idea is to post photos you have taken or seen in the last week - for no other reason than they make you happy. What a wonderful idea to spread a little sunshine around the blogosphere. :)

This week my most reluctant writer was excited to write a story about a boat (our phonics focus was 'oa/o_e/o).  I reminded him that for sentences to be a story "something has to happen".  Here's what I read when I came to check on him:

"On Sunday I went on a raft.  I went to an island.  Something's happening." I just love this little treasure. :)

During our History work we've been thinking about families.  How gorgeous are kidlet drawings?!

One of my closest friends had twins recently and her little man is just to die for.  I could eat him up!!  

And finally, who doesn't love a bit of Grumpy Cat?  This pin gave me a good chuckle.

That's it from me today! Be sure to link up with Shanyn and share your Happy Snaps, too. :)

Five for Friday!

Hello lovely friends!  It has been such a long time since I've visited the blogosphere and I must admit I have really missed sharing ideas, chatting with followers and reading about all the wonderful things happening in other classrooms.  I hope you won't mind if my Five for Friday this morning covers more than a week?  I need to catch up. :)

My plans for Spring break this year involved staying close to home, getting my house cleaned and organised, making a heap of resources for my kidlets and having afternoon snoozes.  Instead, I booked a last minute vacation and spent some time in the Hawaiian sun with a couple of friends!

We stayed at Waikiki and enjoyed long days of beaching, eating, drinking and shopping.

What a treat to have a whole week to relax!

After a public holiday on Monday I had a short week with my kidlets.  We got straight back into the swing of things and did some number revision in Maths groups.  You probably know that I am an advocate for getting little learners up and moving whenever possible, so we played Gone Fishin'!  Using a magnetic rod we caught numeral and number word fish and matched them up.  Next week I'm going to use the ten frame and tens block fish in number line activities, and we'll complete some recording sheets as well.  This week, though, we just had fun casting a line! :)  

I love, love, love all of Marsha's resources and we used her 'Constructing Numbers' pack this week, too.

Loved hearing the kidlets sing the relevant line from Harry Kindergarten's Numbers in the Teens/Twenties songs to remind themselves about groups of ten and extra ones.

We had lots of fun in guided reading this week... although we only spend a small amount of the time playing a game I know that it's my kidlets' favourite part of our time together!  Depending on the needs of each group we worked on different skills.

'Magic E' practice.

Working on letter recognition and common sounds.

It's official - we have a new favourite GoNoodle brain break!

Dancing Robots has been put to the side for I Like to Move It, Zumba style!

If you could see into my storeroom at the moment you would most likely faint from shock.  It is a giant mess!  Had to spend some time yesterday afternoon sorting out resources that I should have put away properly weeks and weeks ago!

After sorting and rubber-banding everything back together I popped all of our word family resources back into the concertina file I keep them in.

Each word family has it's own labelled pocket with all of the master copies of worksheets kept in a plastic sleeve.

I keep the laminated display and activity cards in a ziplock bag - it's so easy to take out the whole bag to use during the weeks we are learning and revising each word family.  I usually use laminated envelopes to keep my resources in, but this pack from Marsha needs a whole filing system of it's own! I really need to buy some more of these concertina files to keep sets of worksheets in - it would make my life so much easier if everything related to the same concept was in the one place. :)

I hope you have had a wonderful week and are enjoying some weekend time relaxing and resting!  I'm off to do the same. :)

A sale - just because!

Font, border and cute kid from Graphics from the Pond!

Hello lovely friends! Just a very quick post today to let you know that I'm having a SALE in my TpT store.  I'm popping over to Waikiki for a week and wanted to celebrate by discounting all of my products by 20%.  That will bring pretty much everything down to about $2.40 - and considering most of my best sellers are games that you can use over and over again that's a bargain! :)

The sale is for 3 days only, starting on Sunday (28th September).  You've got until midnight on the 30th to snap up a great deal.  Visit my store if you're in need of a shopping fix.  :)

I'm hoping to share a holiday snap or two on my FB page while I'm gone.  See you all in a week!

Gone Fishin'! Hands on math FUN!

Hi all!  Long time no see.  Since the manic pace of the last week of term I've been enjoying a few days of 'nothingness' during my Spring break - which has basically involved lying on the couch watching TV.  But this morning I dragged myself into a vertical position and decided it was high time I updated this old blog of mine. :)

You know how I love hands-on activities for my kidlets - if you popped into my classroom most times of the day you would find that at least some of my little learners were working on a task that had them up and moving, using playdough/sensory materials/fine motor tools, or perhaps playing a game.  I truly find that this is the most effective way to engage 5 year olds, and it's also the best way to make sure that the learning 'sticks'.  Anytime we can link touch/movement/competition to a new (or old!) concept is a good thing.  (Sorry... I'll jump down from my soapbox now!!)

I needed a fun way to revise number recognition and number sense (particularly for a few of my kidlets who are still struggling with numbers to 10) so I whipped up Gone Fishin' - a pack designed to be made into a magnetic fishing game but also perfect for all sorts of matching and ordering tasks.  Numbers from 0 - 20 are represented on fish cards as numerals, words, ten frames and dot patterns (to 9) or tens blocks (10 - 20).  I've included 6 differentiated worksheets for kidlets to record their learning by cutting & pasting, matching or writing.

If you have a toy fishing rod from one of those commercially made fishing games all you'll need is some paperclips and you'll be good to go.  Otherwise, here's how I turned some random bits and pieces into a cute fishing game:

First up you'll need a dowel rod (or a stick from the garden would work just as well!).  Tape a length of string/wool/rope to one end.  Hot glue a magnet to the other - I used ugly fridge magnets and just pulled the magnet bit off the back of them to sandwich the string in between.

Once you've printed and laminated the fish cards you want to use, slip a metal paperclip on each one near the mouth.

Put the fish cards either on the ground or in a large container and let your kidlets fish away to their hearts content.  My plan is to use this activity in a container with some blue cellophane strips to add to the realistic fishing experience!  :)  I've provided bucket mats to sort on, or you could label buckets or cups to pop the fish in.  Depending on the group that's going fishing I will use numerals to order as a number line, number words to match with dots/blocks or numerals to match to ten frames etc.

Use any of the recording sheets you feel are relevant for your kidlets.

Cut & paste.

Write.

Match.

Have a lovely day, friends!  Another cup of coffee and hopefully some Real Housewives is my plan for the rest of the morning. :)

Five for Friday!

Hooray!  It's the weekend!  There's only one more week of school left before our Spring break - I can see those two weeks of glorious rest and relaxation on the horizon.  Before I get too excited about that, here's a glimpse into what's up with me this week. :)

We had lots of fun this week using one of Marsha's freebies - Dinosaur Bone Diggers!  My plan was to grab some sand from the sandpit and mix it with some pebbles we use as counters for the kidlets to dig in, but when I arrived at school on Monday it had been raining so we used our rainbow rice instead.  Kidlets took turns to dig up a card and read the word, deciding if it was a real or nonsense word.  

As with all of her resources, Marsha has allowed for this one to be differentiated - one of my groups worked on CVC words, while the others read CCVC/CVCC words.  I love this activity as a way for kidlets to practise their 'sounding out' skills.

When each group came to me for their Guided Reading time this week, I introduced a new reading fluency game!  We l-o-v-e these as a way to warm up to reading, or as a fast finisher when we're done. We had lots of fun reading 'Magic E' words with 'Hey Presto!'

As usual, the 'freebie' cards (in this game, a rabbit in the magician's hat) were highly prized, but we had lots of fun calling 'hey presto!' when the magician had made our word (and as a result, all of our cards!) disappear.  The top photo shows me winning - the kidlets love it when I join their game and especially when they beat me! :)

Speaking of 'sounding out' and reading practice...

...I saw this pic on FB and it made me giggle, just because I can relate so well!!

Twelve days into Spring and the weather here has certainly warmed up!  After school this afternoon the lovebird and I went on a long beach walk and then enjoyed a drink on the patio.

To get ready for my morning on the beach tomorrow as soon as I've finished this post I'm off to paint my nails Essie 'Plumberry'.

I love this colour for warm weather!

Thanks for sticking with me through a pretty random Five for Friday.  Happy weekend, friends! :)

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. :)