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. :)

Swap, Share, Give: A blog linky from Down Under!

I'm super excited to be a part of an awesome product swap linky and GIVEAWAY!, brought to you by a bunch of very talented Aussie bloggers that I am very lucky to call friends! 

At the bottom of this post you'll find a link up featuring everyone who participated in the swap... do yourself a favour and make sure to read all the product reviews because I know you will find a few that you must have for your classroom. :)  To make it even better, enter the giveaway for your chance to win ALL of the products that we have swapped!

I was very, very lucky to have been paired up with the amazingly talented Mel who is the creative mind behind From the Pond as well as Graphics from the Pond... honestly, she is a one stop shop for classroom resources or graphics to create your own.  I literally felt stressed choosing a product from her store, there were so many great ones that I didn't know what to choose!  I finally decided on her Sentence Maker pack!

This product immediately appealed to me for a number of reasons:

1. I teach Prep (Kindergarten), and the confidence my kidlets have with writing can sometimes be very low.  This pack lets them experience success every time!

2. By using either the cut & paste, copy or write versions of each worksheet you can scaffold children towards independent writing.  No more throwing them in the deep end!

3. Each sentence reinforces sight word recognition... bonus!

4.  Same task, 3 ways = easy differentiation!

5. As soon as I saw the pages in this pack I knew they would be perfect for my Writing Corner.  A few of my kidlets are desperate to spend time there independently working on some writing, but they just don't have the skills necessary to successfully write a sentence (or more) by themselves.  As soon as Mel sent me this pack I printed a bunch of the pages and popped them in my Writing Corner... instant hit = happy teacher!

Because this was a new format for my kidlets, I introduced it in Literacy small groups.  Each 'team' completed the task based on their own ability levels.  Some cut and glued, some traced, some copied!  I only had to explain the task once, which was a bonus. :)  We worked on the 'I see a mouse' sentence, because that fit perfectly with the sight words we learned this week!

I love that there's a bit of cutting practise involved in this task... my kidlets this year need it!

Assembling sentences is very serious business! 

Holding your breath and wearing funny glasses while tracing sentences is not necessary, but does make it more fun. :)  And yes, we are working on this poppet's pencil grip.

I am so glad that I got a chance to use this product in my classroom, because now I'm not sure how I ever went without it!  Keep an eye on Mel's store because a little birdie tells me that there's plans for a few Sentence Maker packs with different themes - but I bet I snap them up before you do!!

Because Aussies are such kind and caring folk, we thought it might be nice to share with you a freebie or two that you could use in your classroom.  I'm going to share 2, one from me and one from my product swap buddy!

If you've read any of my previous posts, you'll know that I am a huge fan of sensory play experiences for kidlets.  I put together a collection of my favourite recipes for easy and fun sensory play in the classroom.  Perfect to give to parent helpers to make at home, or for your own easy reference.  Simply print and pop in a display folder!

Click here to grab it for free!

Match Me! is a freebie that I use in my classroom all the time!  Mel provides ideas in the product pages... but most recently I used the cards as an awesome whole class activity.  

I shuffled the numeral, dot and word cards and handed them out to my kidlets.  They then had to silently organise themselves in to groups of 3 according to the number they had. Of course, as I was handing the cards out I made sure that each child had a card they could decode.  This task was perfect for a group of cherubs who struggle with a) keeping quiet and b) being problem solvers. :)

OK, now time for the giveaway!!  For a chance to win Mel's Sentence Maker pack, leave a comment on this post!  I'll choose a random winner.  Easy peasy.  Even easier - for a chance to win ALL of the packs featured inn this linky, enter the Rafflecopter below. :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Not sure about you, but I'm off to check out all of the other bloggers who have linked up to share about some awesome products.  I hope you find lots that you can use in your classroom! :)

Lauren

An InLinkz Link-up