Five for Fraturday... Better late than never!

Friends, I am exhausted!  I had the seemingly brilliant idea of tackling a couple of DIY furniture projects today and it was tougher than I thought!  I'll have to come back in a few days and share some photos of my handiwork, but for now it's time for Five for Friday!

1. The phonics program I use in my classroom introduces only phonemes (sounds) in Term 1, with the graphemes (letters) that represent them taught for the rest of the year.  I'm so impressed with the phonemic awareness that my kidlets have this year - they can segment, blend and isolate sounds like champs!  As we revisit each phoneme this term we'll also discover which letter/s are used to represent each sound.  This week was m and short a, so we made monsters and alligators!

To make the alligators I gave the kidlets strips of paper and an example that my TA had made.  They had to figure out how to cut/assemble the paper to make the alligator.  Everyone was successful... although some became more frustrated than others. The occasional problem solving lesson now and then is handy for them. :)

We completed the monsters as a directed drawing activity, and then painted them with watercolours.  I love how each little monster reflects the personality of whoever drew it.  Directed drawing is so great for setting kidlets up for success while allowing them to express their own creativity!

2.  Every second Tuesday we spend half an hour in the Kitchen Garden.  The kidlets plant, weed, water, harvest and cook all sorts of fruits and veggies.  This week they made corn fritters with beetroot cream. Makes my heart so happy to see them learning such important life skills.

3. Group work was back in full swing this week after our Easter break!  The kidlets worked so beautifully in their teams that I was able to stay with my Guided Reading group the whole time.  Perfect for teaching, not so perfect for taking photos as I rush around to check on them. I snapped only a few...

Sight word work was a choice between magnetic letters, writing on the whiteboards or typing words, but these clever cats set their equipment up as an office so they could do all 3 options at once!

Happy teacher moment - one of my reluctant writers had this at the end of group time one day.  She's written 'It is 8 more sleeps'.  Not all sight words, but who can concentrate on them when your birthday is so close! :)

Now that we're working on graphemes it's time to break out the creative handwriting activities.  Shaving cream letters were a hit!

4. During outside time on Friday I asked these two where they were off to:

Their answer? "We're taking our baby to the Blues Festival!"  Oh... of course!

5.  I shared this on my Facebook page earlier this week.  It was saved on my desktop and I've taken to looking at it at least once each day just for a giggle!

Well folks, that's it from me.  I've got a big night of folding laundry ahead of me... doesn't that sound fun? ;)

Lauren