Our Week in Photos!

This post is brought to you by the wonderful condition called 'Sunday Afternoon Laziness'!  I took lots of photos this week and have lots of fun activities to share... but am feeling too lazy to organise them as anything other than a photo dump with quick captions. I hope you'll still find an idea or two that you'll be able to use in your classroom. :)

Tumbling Chimps is perfect for fine motor fun! I found it at Big W - they have lots of cheap games that would be wonderful for the classroom.

Kidlets used bingo dabbers to dot over a line...

...and if they had time, cut along the line through the middle of the dots.  Fine motor and scissor skills all in one!

 Tracing this week was with our new Scentos markers! Had to remind them not to sniff the pen directly. :) The room smelt so gorgeous all week.

New favourite maths game? Dino Dash!  This super fun game works on early addition concepts, or you can use it as a counting game for those who still need that practise.

We played Beach Bingo (part of Mel's bundle) - working on numbers to 10. 

My kidlets loved making a Flip Strip from Cara's pack!  This week we matched quantities to 5 as our easy review task.

We worked on representing numbers in different ways using counting cubes and ten frames.  I called a number, the kidlets built it and then told me how they had organised their cubes - 6 might be 3 and 3; 4 and 2; 5 and 1 etc.

During Literacy groups we played Stretchy Snake Bingo -  I love this as phoneme blending practise.  The caller says each word as individual sounds, and the kidlets have to blend them together to figure out if that picture is on their card.

It was a bingo kind of week - we played Brooke's Alphabet Bingo, using wooden letters drawn from a bag instead of calling cards.  

Our sight word work was stamping with playdough!

We used the pocket chart to sort Letters, Words and Sentences - this was a whole class activity that will be reviewed with an independent cut & paste task this coming week.

Last but not least - I love these colourful vases of flowers that we made as part of our phonics work.

Phew! That's all from me, friends. :) Enjoy the last of your weekend!

Maths, Sensory Play and Fine Motor for a Cheap 'n' Cheerful Christmas!

Our week of cheap 'n' cheerful Christmas activities has been super fun so far!  Here's a few quick and very easy ideas that we worked on yesterday and today. 

All you need this first fun holiday game is some themed bowls (or cups) and two baubles.  I labelled the bowls with numbers 0-10, but you could use any numbers.  On their turn, kidlets threw each bauble, aiming to have them land in 2 different bowls.  They either added the 2 numbers and gave the total to earn a point, or were given a target total that they had to reach with their 2 bauble throws (this was trickier!).  Each of my groups loved this game (particularly the boys) and I'm not sure why I haven't used this idea before!  It would be great even for something simple like numeral recognition at the beginning of the year (with different themed containers of course).

(Ignore the ugly towels on the table - some of my kidlets were a little wild with their throws and we needed something to keep the baubles on the table!)

Want to know the best way to make your class excited about learning at Christmas time?  Put the materials they will be using in a gift bag! :) I had a little bag of tinsel ready to go for group work time and my kidlets were absolutely busting out of their skin to find out what that activity was.  They had a tonne of fun measuring tinsel pieces with cubes, popsticks and matchsticks and then choosing their own unit to measure with.  We recorded our results and made lots of comparisons and observations.  Christmas maths made easy!

Everyone loves playdough!  An awesome way to make it Christmas themed?  Add peppermint essence (in our green batch) and glitter (in our red batch).  My kidlets just loved playing with this. (It would be perfect to use with my Rockin' Around the Playdough Tub mats! *shameless plug*)  We whip up at least 2 batches of playdough a week, the kids literally cannot get enough of it and it's a great manipulative for all sorts of activities.

Last, but not least, is this great freebie from Mel From the Pond.  Whoever invented pokey pinning is a genius, and so is Mel for making these awesome pages. I love pokey pinning for strengthening those little hand muscles and developing fine motor skills.  Go grab this page, and then go grab Mel's pack to use all year! A to Z Pinning Pages

Phew! I'm tuckered out after all that festive cheer. I'm off to bake cookies and then get some rest, ready for tomorrow's fun. :)

Lauren

What We're Loving Lately!

I must admit that when I finished off my post yesterday with 'I'll be back tomorrow...' it was kind of an idle threat.  I mean, Sunday nights are usually jam packed with planning and prepping and organising for the coming week.  But since I'm all done, sitting on the couch with a cup of tea and a movie on the TV there must be only one reason why: I've forgotten half the things I was supposed to have done. :) Either way, it gives me time to share with you a few things that my kidlets have been LOVING in the past week or so. 

First up is a game that is so simple, but super effective... and my kids are mad for it! In Flip Five/Flip Ten, children aim to find pairs of cards that equal 5 or 10.  At the beginning of the year, we played Flip Five - using only the cards from 0-5.  Now we are playing Flip Ten with all of the cards (0-10).  The rules are easy - turn over two cards.  If they add up to the total of 5 or 10 the kidlet gets to keep them.  Way back, we all used counters to check the total of our pairs (and some of my Preppies still do), but this game has been amazing for helping them remember facts to 5 and 10 (and everything in between, because they have to figure out the total regardless of whether they get to keep the pair or not!).  Grab this game from Growing Kinders on TpT.

Our second favourite Maths game is one that I came up with when we were just starting to learn about teen numbers.  I call it 'Chook Champs'. :)  Each child needs 2 ten frames made from egg cartons, and to play all you need is a die and some counters (we use unifix).  On their turn, children roll the die and add that many counters to their ten frames.  They tell the group how many they have altogether (without counting, just using their ten frame knowledge) before the next player rolls.  When a kidlet has 20 cubes, they swap them for a chook card (which is just a cute picture of a chicken).  Whoever has the most cards at the end of the game is the 'Chook Champ'!  My kids literally cheer every time I tell them they'll be playing this game - it is a great way for them to practise recognising teen numbers as a group of ten and some more and also develops addition concepts (although I'm not sure that's why they cheer!).

A precious few of my kidlets are still working on recognising number words to 10, so last week they used Mel From the Pond's Match Me!  There's 3 cards for each number: the numeral, number word and dot pattern.  Go and grab it immediately - it's a freebie! :)

We gave our new letter beads a try to spell out sight words - and they were more of a challenge for some little fingers than I thought they would be.  Lacing the letters on so that they were the right way around was also tricky.  At the end of this group, all of my kidlets were super proud of their little line of words. :)

We're at that lovely stage of the year where reading is becoming more natural.  My kidlets have blitzed their sight words and know just when to use their Eagle Eyes, Stretchy Snake, Lips the Fish or Chunky Monkey strategies.  They could happily while away as much time as I let them reading with a friend or a Reading Buddy.  

Well, that's one week all wrapped up.  Let's start all over again tomorrow! :)

Lauren

Five for Friday! 11/10/13

I'm so late to the linky this week that my post is really a Five for Fraturday... but hey, better late than never! :) And please excuse my terrible photography skills this week - I was having a shocker!

1. In Maths groups this week we revised addition concepts with our pool noodle beads.  We practised representing number stories with the beads to find the total, counting on and my sweethearts even practised telling their own addition number stories.  One kidlet exclaimed 'This is the funnest Maths group ever!'... The simple things in life are often the best, I guess! :)

I have permission to publish photos of these two cuties.

2. Sight Word Slam - new favourite game! The rules are easy - be the first to bounce a ball on the word called and you get a point. 

3. I couldn't resist sharing this photo of one of my sweet kidlets reading a story to one of our Reading Buddies.  

4. Conversations this week almost always started with this exchange:

Person A: Pretty hot today!

Person B: Yeah - stinking!

Which is the Queensland way of discussing the warm weather! We had temperatures in the low 30s and sunny skies all week.  Yesterday I opened my (air-conditioned) classroom door and it honestly felt like I had opened an oven, the air outside was so hot.  The kidlets enjoyed running through the sprinklers at lunch time to cool down. :)

5. I'm excited to turn this gorgeous fabric from Ikea into some cushions for my couch!  And by that, I mean that a lovely friend is going to sew them for me. :) I'm planning another Ikea trip to buy some more fabric in a different pattern - there's heaps of designs and most are about $9.99 per metre. (That sounds like an ad - I promise it's not!  I'm hot and cold with Ikea, but love this fabric.)

Happy weekend everyone!  I'm off to Doodle Bugs to link up and check out the other Friday Fives.

Lauren

Monday Made It!

I've always wanted to link up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for a 'Monday Made It', but because I'm not super crafty I usually feel like my DIY projects will be embarrassed to be linked up with all the other wonderful made its. :) I'm sharing this one because it was super duper easy, and I know it could be a cheap-n-cheerful resource for other classrooms.

With a bread knife and some pool noodles, it didn't take me long to make a whole heap of these giant, soft beads! So far I've just used them during Discovery Play time and as part of our fine motor activities, but I've got plans to use them for patterning and addition/subtraction.  For lots of my kidlets threading these babies will be much more exciting than moving counters around, and because they will be laced together it will be easy to see and count each colour and the total.  (Don't you hate it when simple number stories aren't solved properly because a wriggly body has knocked a counter into hiding?)

I used 6 noodles in 2 different colours and some thin rope that I found in the storeroom (you could buy something similar quite cheaply from the hardware store). I taped a popstick to one end of each piece of rope to stop the beads sliding off and also popped a bit of tape on the loose end to stop the rope fraying.

There you have it folks, the easiest DIY ever!  Let me know if you found this idea useful. :)

Lauren