Free 2D Shapes Game

One thing I love to do during our two week breaks is to try and get ahead for the following term by creating a few resources. I like to think that Future Kylie will be happy that I've reduced my workload during the term!

Here is a game I made to review 2D shapes. You can download it for free on TpT. 

Halloween Math Centers for 2nd-3rd Grade

I saw this on Pinterest today and just had to share:

 Source

Hehe, this is so me when I'm supposed to be working and get distracted on Pinterest or Instagram!

Even with the distractions, I've managed to finish a Halloween math pack filled with lots of hands on activities for my kids to complete after the holidays. 

 

It comes with 13 math activities for multiplication, division, graphing, area, time, transformations, directions, skip counting, arrays and measuring. You can find it in my TpT Store. 

Hundreds, Tens and Ones Place Value Bingo

Just a very quick post today to announce the winner of my giveaway. Thank you to those of you who entered. The lucky winner is, would you believe it, Kylie! I've sent you my Hooty Fun 'oo' pack and you still get to choose 5 more products from my TpT store!

One product that has been requested over and over and which I've had done for ages now and just haven't uploaded is my Hundreds, Tens and Ones Place Value Bingo. 

Like my Tens and Ones Bingo, it has 4 sets of calling cards (standard, word, place value and expanded form). You can grab it from my TpT Store :)

I take it back...

In my last post, I was hoping to get *just* sick enough to justify having a day off because I was so exhausted. I wish I hadn't written that! By midday the VERY NEXT DAY (Monday), I could barely talk. I had to whisper Tuesday because my voice was gone and I started to get a cough. Wednesday and Thursday I had to have off because I couldn't talk or stop coughing. Never in all my years of working (even before I became a teacher) have I ever had to have more than one day off. But they weren't the lovely, relaxing days off I envisaged them to be. Nope. Basically it was wasted time. I didn't get any marking, planning or creating done. I sat at the computer for a long time though, mostly just staring at it, wishing I could feel motivated to do something... anything.

Friday was tough. I had a coughing fit of two (or three...) when I couldn't stop coughing for a few minutes. My poor kiddies were so concerned. I had a lovely reception though when they saw me come out the door in the morning! Even the parents noticed! It's Saturday evening and my voice still isn't perfect. It starts to get croakier if I start talking. I had TWO naps today. 

At least now I know why I was feeling so exhausted last weekend - I was coming down with something! Hopefully those naps will rejuvenate me and I'll be 100% tomorrow. 

I did get this pack finished today. You can click on the pics to see it at TpT. It's 20% off, as always, for the first few days.

 It has 5 math centres/centers:
1. 1 page of word problems with addition, subtraction and multiplication scenaries (10 problems).

2. Autumn Number Order (3-digit numbers). Comes with 6 sets of 6 cards to place in order and a choice of 2 recording sheets (record in ascending or descending order).

3. Greater Than/Less Than Leaves - 2 sets of cards (2-digit and 3-digit numbers) and recording sheet.

4. True or False Equations - Sort the addition facts onto the True and False mats and record. Some facts require students to mentally add multiples of ten and then the ones (e.g. 22+17, 32+15).

5. Apple Place Value - Sort the apple cards onto the Hundreds, Tens or Ones mat according to the underlined number. Students record the value of the underlined number on the recording sheet.


Have you ever wished for something and had it come back and bite you on the bum? I'd love to hear your 'be careful what you wish for' story! Even if you haven't got one, leave a comment below and I'll give this pack to a person or two sometime tomorrow.

Recent Purchases

This girl is EXHAUSTED! I need me a break big time! We have just finished Winter here in Australia and you'd think I'd get sick at least once in that 3 months and be able to have a day or two off but NO, I didn't get sick it all. Either did my boy, so I couldn't stay home with him. I would have liked to get *just* sick enough for a day off! Oh well, we still have 12 weeks of school to go in our school year. There's still hope. And holidays in 2 weeks. Please let me get through these 2 weeks!

One of the reasons I'm so exhausted is that I have soooo much on after school. Look at the coming week for instance. 

• PD after school Monday on Cued Articulation from 3-5pm. I miss our weekly year level meeting to go to this. Visit my nephew in hospital until visitation closes at 7pm.
• PD after school on Big 5 comprehension skills Tuesday from 3-4pm. My boys footy training from 5-7pm. 
• Staff meeting from 3-4pm Wednesday. Woohoo, early day!
• PD Thursday on problem solving in math from 3.30-4.30pm. My boys footy training from 5-7pm. 
• Friday - P-2 staff meeting from 8.00-8.30am. Come home and sleep (as is my weekly routine!).

This schedule has been going on for ages too. The  comprehension and math problem solving PD's go for 5 weeks each. The cued articulation is only this week and last week. 

I shouldn't complain though... I signed up for all the PD's since I haven't really done anything this year and as my fellow Aussies know, we are required to do 30 hours each year.

Oh well, 10 school days and I'll be on holidays. 

Anyway, to get to the title of this post, I've also done a bit of shopping. Last Wednesday I went to the Scholastic Warehouse Sale and nabbed me some bargains. See those green stickers - $1! I've now got a book for each of my kids for their end of year present by buying the $1 books. I LOVE the Australian Geographic magazines you can see in the corner - I buy 6 of each title whenever I see them and use them for guided reading groups throughout the year.

 This is my most recent Scholastic book order. I also got some chapter books for my boy and new pocket charts, Aboriginal paper etc, but these are just the books for my class.

 This is the huge box of books I've got hidden in a corner of my lounge room so that I can see it all the time. It's the books I desperately want to contact so I can take them to school. I slowly make my way through them and contact them while watching TV but then I go and buy more and it fills up again. My garage is full with other boxes like this, but those books are so urgent.

These are some that I've just contacted. My  boys and girls are going gaga over these books. I had to make a new label and tub for Super Hero books. I'm so good at covering the books in clear contact, I hardly ever get any bumps! The corners of the books don't get all dogeared either - books I've had since I started teaching in Year 2 still look new!

Talking about tubs, I've been picking up a few of these new ones the last two weeks whenever I see them. I found these cute containers too - I don't know how I'm going to use them but they are in my colours and they have polka dots - how could I resist??  You hear me, right?!

 

I picked up these glasses from the cheapie store too - they are great for the 'oo' sound. The idea is from the Teacher Wife and she has a set of glasses as a freebie. You write 'oo' sounds like 'look' around the rim of the glasses. I LOVE the idea, but I prefer to use these because they are funky and sturdy and the kids don't have to try and cut out the middle so they can see!

So that's probably it for another week, I doubt I'll have time to post again until the weekend. 

Oh, I am giving away any item from my store at a giveaway over at Coffee, Kids and Compulsive Lists. You have 4 days left to enter!

Peek at Last Week

We've been comparing and contrasting like crazy lately. We've compared food, clothes etc of traditional Australian Aboriginals with us today in SOSE, characters/settings/plots in English, insects in science and shapes in math. We've used Venn diagrams, comparison matrices and double bubble maps.

 Totally pinterest inspired!

We're finishing up our unit of procedural texts. Here are two charts we made earlier in the unit. 

 

Because I don't have a lot of wall space, I hang a lot of charts up on string going across the room. But sometimes a gust of wind will come in the windows and blow the charts up and they hit the fan... tear! rip! So I fold sticky tape around the edges of the chart and it stops them ripping. 

I'm always too busy during math to take photos, but some of kiddos have had a lot of trouble counting money, so we've worked on that the last week.

   

I've updated my Word Family, Blends and Digraphs pack with about 30 more cards. You can go to your Purchases page to redownload. 

I also made up a Fast Finishers board freebie based on a request. The lady wanted a similar style to my CAFE board cards. You can grab it in Google Docs here.  

I also uploaded a Fall writing craftivity that my class did earlier in the year. You can check it out here:

Oh, we won the Green Gnome for our garden too! :D

Classsroom Makeover!

..... on the outside!
I mentioned in my last post that I'd been working on a garden outside our classroom. Well, it's finally finished. This is what our portable classroom looked like at the start of the year. My room is the first one. This picture was taken before I'd gotten into the room during our Summer off. The grass was much greener then! We've had a very dry Winter....bring on Summer thunderstorms!

And this is after! We did all of this in the last 4 weeks!

This guy showed up as well, thanks to a wonderful mum! There's a little joey in the pouch too! The same mum made the bees, butterfly and ants!

I LOVE the pallets that are up against the building. We are growing some succulents, climbers, herbs, lettuces, flowers and a whole pallet of strawberries! Love the bee at the end too!
The butterflies and ants are super cute!

This area between the stairs to the classrooms used to be overgrown with weeds and rubbish would end up down there. Not anymore! This is our gnome garden.

 

My teaching partner has had the 3 little pigs put up camp in the space down the end of the building! The green fenced area is for potatoes. He is a very creative teacher!

 

I think the No Wolves sign is absolutely adorable!

As you can imagine, the kids LOVE it! We've had to make a new class job - Gardener! We haven't really had to do anything with the upkeep of it yet, the plants just need watering each day. We can't wait until we can harvest what we've grown. 

We started the garden because our science head has initiated a Green Gnome award. Each class was to take responsibility for an area around the school or their class - keep it rubbish free, the garden clean, make our school greener etc. We've also gotten in more rainwater tanks, recycling bins for the playground - they even trucked in heaps of soil for our gardens etc. The teachers have really taken it onboard - we've got some lovely gardens popping up, areas are looking tidier, some have started compost bins etc. The Green Gnome will be awarded to a different class each month. We don't want to be overconfident or anything, but my wonderful mum also made a lovely throne for the Green Gnome to sit on if we win him this month!

 

What does your school do to encourage a cleaner, greener school? 

Oh, and here's a little, itty, bitty photo of me as Camilla Cream....