It's Currently November!

I'm always surprised at how fast time flies - November already?  Popping in for a quick catch up with Farley's Currently!

It's Spring here and the temperatures have been unusually hot - getting up towards 30+ degrees C every day! (That's close to 90 degrees F for my friends from the US!)  Today we also had ridiculous humidity so I'm really hoping we get a good thunderstorm tonight to break the heat.

Only 4 and a bit more weeks with my Preppies!  After that we have 2 days of assessing next year's crop before our Summer holidays.  This year has gone soooo fast, but I am ready for a break.

Next Saturday is my birthday and my family is coming up for a day at the beach and then I'm having a bbq with friends.  I'm really looking forward to relaxing!

I'm definitely having an end of the school year energy slump... Why does that always happen when there's still so much work to do!!  I think I might have to resort to a morning Berocca for a kickstart each day.

With report cards looming on the horizon I need to get my assessment started this week.  Some is done from last term, but I know that if I don't get onto it I'll be panicking at the last minute.

I have a book on my night stand that has been there for a while, it's called 'Catching Air'.  I try to read a few pages each night but to be honest it's taken me so long to read it that I'm not really engaged with the story.  Hopefully over Summer break I'll be able to get some good stretches of reading time in! :)

That's all from me - time for dinner and Sunday night TV.  Have a wonderful week friends!

Happy Snaps Sunday!

I just love Shanyn from Classroom Chit Chat's Happy Snaps Sunday linky.  It's a chance to share any random photos from your week that have made you smile.  My pictures this week are from around my house!

This weekend I did some serious spring cleaning and as a reward I treated myself to a new lamp! I really, really want a standing chandelier floor lamp, but they are really expensive. I found this cute little one that satisfies my yearning for crystals until I can splash out and buy a bigger one.

I had a few frames that needed photos, so I finally got around to having some printed.  My favourite is this old one of (from the left) my cousins Emma and James, me and my oldest friend Kristy.  It was taken at one of our birthday parties when we were about 4.  All of us were born within two months of each other and have always been close even though now James and Kristy both live in Canada. I have a similar photo of us when we met in Seattle a few years ago - Emma was travelling through the US with her now-husband and James, his wife, Kristy and I drove down from Vancouver to meet them for a few days.  I love this photo because of all the happy memories it holds for me.  I'm so glad I get to see it every day now! :)

It's Sunday night here so I'd best get to organising myself for another early morning start tomorrow.  Mondays are terribly persistent!

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. :)

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. :)