Simple Mother's Day Craft

Thanks to Pinterest, we were able to make this cute bookmarks for our mums this year. 

 

 Pinterest Link.

I didn't get any photos of ours but they turned out really cute! We backed them on pale blue card and laminated them.

We also made these cutie patootie flower bouquets using our hand prints! Our classroom looked so bright with these sitting on our desks! Super cheap and easy to make - simply trace 6 hand prints (my kiddies chose whether they wanted to mix colours or use all the same), cut out, roll up and sticky tape to a straw. Tape all 6 'stems' together and wrap in tissue paper with ribbon. We also glued down a heart. I saw this idea on Pinterest, but can't find the link :(

I've taken a photo of each student and one of the whole class holding their flowers. I'm sending off a Smilebox Sunday morning with our flower photos to wish our mum's a happy Mother's Day. 

I have to say y'all (I've always wanted to say that!), this was so simple and cheap to put together! I had all the items on hand and just bought some more ribbon in case I ran out. Simple but oh-so-cute!

To all the mum's out there, I hope you have a wonderful day! My son woke me up with breakfast in bed this morning, not realising that Mother's Day is not until Sunday! I'm looking forward to it again tomorrow!

FIve For Friday

Today I'm joining in with Five for Friday since I haven't posted for so long! These pics aren't from this week though, they are before we went on holidays. 

This photo was from quite a while ago. We were representing teen numbers in different ways - with bundling sticks, tent cards (which when pulled apart shows that 16 is 10 and 6) and with the 20 bead string of place value beads (made using a pipe cleaner and beads).
This was from the first week or two of school this year (you can get the Rosie's Hen pictures here).The kids sequenced the pictures and then wrote what happened during each part.

 

The string went around Rosie's leg and then the flour dropped on the fox's head and the fox ran to the next section. 

 

Rosie went under the bee hive and the fox went in the trailer and knocked the bee hive and the bees chased the fox away.

I took this idea from Sparkle Box. The kids had a lot of fun making the settings and writing labels for We're Going on a Bear Hunt.

Since we were learning about healthy animal habitats in Science, we had a go at making a simple butterfly habitat in Art (I got this idea from another teacher in my grade level). We made flowers for butterflies. The brown wool down the bottom is meant to be roots for the plant. The kids got to choose the materials they wanted to use. I like how the second one used sheer fabric and paper doilies for the butterfly. 

This one is just showing off some of my beanie babies! The kids are just loving the beanie baby reading strategies I'm using this year!

See what everyone else has been up to or link up yourself at Doodle Bugs.

-in Word Family Pack

Just a quick post today to show off my new pack - I really like this one! It is 70 pages covering the -in word family. This is about 20 pages more than the -at and -an word families I've already posted, but I'll be updating them soon to include the extras I've included in this pack. 

 

There are 17 Word Word activities in total with a good combination of "print in color and laminate" activities and "just photocopy" worksheets.

I have a few more in the works and then I'll be giving a set away. If you don't want to wait, you can find -in here (20% off at the moment), -at here and -an here. Once I update -at and -in with the 20 extra pages the price will go up slightly so you could grab them now and get the updates for free!

Differentiating for Special Needs

I've mentioned before that I've got 2 little sweeties in my room who have special needs. Both are intellectually impaired with one also having global development delay. His development in all areas is around that of a 2 - 2.5 year old. Obviously, everything we do has to be modified for both of them. I thought I'd start sharing some of the things they're doing in class in case you are looking for ideas for your own class. I'm also on the lookout for new activities, so please share! 

Today, I'm going to share some staples that we use almost every day. 

Bowls, beads and teddy counters. We use these for colour naming, sorting, matching etc. When naming colours, we also use non-verbal gestures (e.g. red is touching the chin). We use the beads for threading to develop our fine motor skills. We also use the bear counts for counting.

Here are some more things I've bought to develop their fine motor control. The smaller tweezers can be held with the pointer and thumb (like a pencil) to pick up poms, cotton balls or any other small manipulative. These are a little hard for my two to use at the moment though. The bigger animal tweezers are a little easier. We use the tweezers to move the manipulative from one spot to another and to drop into numbered cups to help with counting  (this is mostly done verbally since number recognition isn't there yet). We also attach pegs to the black tub and to the numbered cups for counting.

The sand trays are used for hiding pictures and objects in (so far this year we are learning the letter s and m) and for letter writing with our fingers. 

What do you do with kids who need to develop basic skills and concepts? I hope to share more of what we are doing soon.

B2S Classroom Photos

Yesterday I promised to show you photos of what my room looked like Friday for parents and kids to come in.

I am disappointed that my room is not finished but I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. It is student ready and I'll probably move things around the first few weeks anyway so I'm not too concerned. 

You can basically see the whole room in this pic and the next one. This room is smaller than my last portable/demountable room and the odd shape makes it difficult to arrange things. Ignore the boxes of baggies on the front desk - I used them to hold spare supplies that the kids brought in on Friday. I don't do communal supplies (I do provide extras from my own money) but I don't pool the kids' supplies together. I want them to learn to take responsibility for their own belongings so they have their own. I store their extra pencils, erasers and glue in the baggies in the cupboard for them to get when they run out. The blue containers were on the kids stationery lists this year - they are their pencil cases. They fit into the tidy trays but most kids prefer to keep them on their desk. Because they are clear, they can see their pencils, erasers, glue etc to retrieve it quickly and there's no rummaging in desks searching for missing pencils!

I love the banner I made to add colour to that awful concertina door and my polka dot alphabet posters!  
 This is from the back looking towards the front.

 

Here's the little alcove next to the angled wall. I've used it to house 3 of my computers (one is connected to the interactive whiteboard). I've got my whole brain teaching rules here because it's the only bit of wall I've got in the room. On the left near the entrance is a glimpse of my small group area. 

Here's another view of the computers. Look! I've got some cupboards! A big bonus after 3 years without any storage space!

I've got my other two computers over the side of the room. I haven't dug out enough chapter books to fill the rotating rack on the side, but I should be able to find them early next week! The shelves hold a lot of my math manipulatives. On top I've got tubs of pencils, crayons and permanent markers so I can get ready making charts. I was thinking of having my Author in the Spotlight on top, hence the lamp. The tinted window looks into my office.

 

 These little chairs are next to the shelves and the door to go outside and the storeroom door.

 

This is a view of the back whole group and library area. I love the big book holder thing on the right hand side - it literally holds hundreds and hundreds of books (which I've organised alphabetically by author surname) and therefore saves tonnes of shelf space! I've still got boxes of book to unpack but I put out enough to get us started. I think I'll get rid of the box of cushions or find somewhere else to put it. I'll use the board for charts we make and a pocket chart.  The clock won't stay there!

Here's another view. The bookshelf holds some book boxes and tubs of scholastic reader type books.

 

I've got another group area down the front near the interactive whiteboard. I've put my rocking chair down here. 

Besides the interactive whiteboard, this this is the only whiteboard I've got. It is above the rocking chair. I'll probably change what is up the top (I can't write up there being only 5ft 1) but I wanted something up there to add some colour.

 

The blue tables are near the sliding door entrance. The pink frame from Target will hold notices and messages, the green rack has phonics readers, the pink tub on top holds our school student diaries (which are required to come to school each day). Underneath are tubs. I think the blue one will hold homework folders (our homework only comes in once a week). I'm not sure about the pink ones yet. I'm actually thinking now I'll get another two pinks ones for the other side...

 

This is on the other side of the yellow half wall divider above. You can see I'm missing a drawer :( I've still got labels to add and things to add on top. Through the left hand side of the purple wall is our shared kitchen (for myself and my teaching partner).

On the sliding doors I have added our word wall, mainly because there was nowhere else large enough to hold it! This is part of it.

Here is the start of my small group area. I've got a shelf on the left hand side that can't be seen to hold my small group supplies. Those posters are awful but we are required to have them in every class (they are QAR posters). Ignore the pink paper that is hanging outside the yellow border too, I'm waiting for some blue (and pink) scalloped borders to be delivered to put on the outside to make a double border, but they haven't arrived yet.

Like I said, my room is not finished and this is it until I return to school with the kids on Tuesday. I've got a whole storeroom of boxes of games, manipulatives, stationery and other things still to set up somewhere. I'm so sad it's not finished, but once I can get a security code for the building I'll be in on weekends finishing it off (I know I'll be WAY too tired after school for the first few weeks!). Even writing that, I know it probably won't happen until the Easter holidays!

I was very anxious when I left Friday knowing that the next time I set back in the room my new little firsties will be on their way! I'm so excited because they are all little cuties! I think I'll have a lovely class this year!

Sorry for another mammoth of a post! Good luck with your first week back!

B2S Classroom Photos

Phew, has this week gone by fast and been exhausting! I've had a lot of problems with getting my room set up for school that starts next week! 

I went into school Monday and Tuesday to set up since Wednesday to Friday were teacher days and I'd be in meetings and PD for most of the time. We also had parents coming in to drop off school supplies Friday morning and knew that 2-4 hours on Wednesday and Thursday would NOT be enough time to set up the room!

I kept mysel busy Monday and Tuesday scrubbing the walls because they were so filthy the white walls looked a blackish colour and were covered in blu-tack. And I don't know what was wrong with the blu-tack because usually it comes off easily when you rub over it with another piece of blu-tack but all it did was smudge! So I spent quite a bit of the 2 days on my tippy toes of the top step of a step ladder trying to clean off smudgy blu-tack! I collected 3 tennis ball sized balls of blu-tack and my back ached from being down on the floor cleaning the lower walls!

Here are some before pictures. This is what my room looked like Tuesday afternoon after I'd spent two days cleaning walls and removing blu-tack.

 

I've mentioned my weird shaped room before. This is the actual shape of it!

I've removed the rest of the craziness that was my week.

 How did your classroom preparation go this week?

Summer Lovin

Sorry I haven't posted for so long.  I haven't been doing anything special, just really lovin our Summer break. I think I'll need all the R&R because once we go back I'll be stressing. Why? Because we only have 2 DAYS to set up our classrooms. Yep, we all had to hand in our keys before we left and we only get them back on the Monday, 2 days before we have to return to school for teacher days (Wed thru Friday). And the 'planning time', which is always 'get room set-up time' is always just the last hour of the day BUT we are expected to have our rooms 'student ready' on Friday morning as kiddos and their parents drop off their things then. 

Anywho, since I'm not at school I don't have anything really to post about. I did make up these READ things that everyone has now. I want to hot glue some thin black ribbon around the outside still.

I've also started making some Word Family packs to work on with my new firsties. I'm making the 'a' word families in pink (so I can mix them up later for review) and the other vowels in a different color.

Each pack has 11 activities and centers and about 50 pages of word family fun! Here's what I've printed and have ready. 

We'll be using magnets to make words in the first pic. The first set of cards students will just need to add the beginning sound or blend. In the second set, students will need to make the whole word. We'll also make flip books and word slides. The color copies I've made up to work on word families during guided reading and I've also included B&W copies for students to make, color and keep for themselves (I've only printed off the B&W flip book). 

The second pic here shows the self-correcting -at Word Family puzzles. The kids are going to love them! The first pic shows just about everything. I've included some flash cards/word wall cards, Roll and Write graph, letters to make words at the pocket chart, a play-doh mat, a word family min-book, a Fill in the Blank cloze worksheet and word search.

I'm working on other packs at the moment. I've got a list a mile long of things I want to work on to save time during the school term but I don't think most of them will happen!

If you're in the southern hemisphere, how is your break going?