Back to School! - And a couple of FREEBIES!

Hello out there! Wow, it feels like it has been AGES since my last post! So let's kick off the term with a look at what we have been up to in Prep C this week, and with a few FREEBIES!

Every morning in Prep, we start off with Circle Time, and I decided to kick the term off with a good dose of kindness!

We began the week by reading 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today?' by Carol McCloud. We created an anchor chart together using a FREEBIE from Scholastic and some bucket pictures I found online. You can download these by clicking the link below. We also talked about ways we were kind to people on the holidays and recorded them on a mind map on the board. We referred to this throughout the day.

Another day we read 'Pig the Pug' by Aaron Blabey and brainstormed all the ways we share in the classroom.

Finally on Friday we watched an online reading of the beautiful story 'Chrysanthemum' by Kevin Henkes and completed an adorable activity I found on Pinterest by 'Keepin' it Kool in Kinderland.' I showed the children a large red heart cut out of cardboard and explained that this was Chrysanthemum's heart - full and happy. Throughout the story we folded it over and over again each time the other mice hurt her feelings. At the end we unfolded it and talked about how even though she felt better and her heart was back in the right shape, we could still see the creases from where she was hurt. We stuck a poem in the centre and hung it up on the wall as a reminder to think before we speak. You can grab this FREEBIE and read more about Khrys' lesson by clicking the link below.

FREEBIE Link to Bucket Filler Anchor Chart - Scholastic 

FREEBIE Link to Heart Poem - Keepin' it Kool in Kinderland

Our sound of the week this week was the 'Long U' sound. As a class we built an anchor chart of the sound, completed a spelling sort and even made our own unicorns after reading a class favourite 'Thelma the Unicorn' by Aaron Blabey!

We made did puzzles, built words and completed a handwriting sheet in our rotations.

If you click on the image below you will find a document with some FREEBIES to teach this sound in your own classroom - including the template for the adorable unicorn craft! Just add some foil for the horn and hooves, and coloured paper strips for the mane and tail.

We reviewed our phonics skills with these super fun letter punch cards from Doodle Bugs Teaching, and Syllable Fluency and Fitness by Tickled Pink in Primary. $2 hole punches from Kmart and it was well worth the little mess they made!

For number sense in maths this term we are focusing on how to show numbers in different ways. On Wednesday we completed an 'All about the number... 8' activity on the whiteboard, then later in the week we worked on tally marks in particular. We worked together to play 'Puppy Pick and Match' and matched tally mark bones to puppies. This was such a favourite that I left them out for the kiddies to play with during free choice math groups. Afterwards, we played another Fluency and Fitness game from Tickled Pink in Primary for number sense using tally marks. We sat on the carpet and write each number we saw on whiteboards and at the end completed the fun fitness activities - and LOVED IT!

If you click on the image below I have also shared my 'Puppy Pick and Match' activity for you all!

Finally, we also kicked off our new Health unit this week. We will be learning all about being safe in different places and situations throughout the term. This week we started by reading 'Monkey Needs to Listen - A book about paying attention' by Sue Graves from the 'Behaviour Matters' collection.

(Can I just say - this collection of books is AMAZING!!! I purchased the set through Scholastic Book Club and I can tell you now, they were well worth the investment! This particular book I have read 4 or 5 times with this class alone and they still love to hear it. And a heads up, if you have the new TBS Book Club catalogue, you will find them in there. I highly recommend them. If you want to check out the other titles just search 'Behaviour Matters Books' in Google and you will find them.)

Anyway, back to our unit. Before our story we looked at our own classroom rules and discussed how we have rules for lots of reasons - getting along, working, playing and most importantly, for safety. After we read our story, we talked about how when Monkey made the choice not to listen, he put himself in danger and spoiled a very fun activity for all of his friends. We then completed a sort of safe and unsafe choices we can make in the classroom which I then turned into an anchor chart to display and refer to throughout the term. At the end of the lesson, the children drew a picture of themselves doing something safe in the classroom. This was a great way to start back at school after 2 weeks off to review our classroom rules, and recover WHY it is important that we follow them.

If you click on the image below, you will also find a document with this safe/unsafe choices sort for you to use in your own classroom.

Well it has been a long short first week back and I am now off to do some well-earned relaxing!

How was your week?

Math Buddy Game FREEBIE

Hello my lovely teaching friends!

As my fellow Queensland teachers and I head back to school tomorrow, I have a happy little freebie to share with you. You may recall seeing this on my Instagram account a few weeks back (YES I have made the leap to Instagram! If you have not yet found me please do! I am @teachingoutsideofthebox)

The activities are pretty self explanatory - Building towers, roll a die and cover, and roll and hand write numbers to 6. You can download each of these resources by clicking on the pictures below.

I hope all of my fellow Queensland teachers have a lovely first week back, and for those still on holidays - cherish the peace and quiet!

I will be back at the end of the week (that's the aim anyway) with some cute dinosaur fun to share :)

Happy teaching!!

Back to School - Prep C Style!

A big hello out there to all my fellow teachers, and congratulations to those Aussie teachers who have survived their first and second week back at school for 2016! Today I would love to share with you what the Cubs have been up to in Prep C!

Last Wednesday I finally got to meet my brand new cubs! I feel like this year I will be in for a good few challenges but I am looking forward to it. Besides, even if it is a tough term, if the days fly by as quickly as the last 8 days have, it will be Easter holidays in no time at all!

I started the term by snapping a photo of each of my little ones holding our 1st day of Prep C sign (and I couldn't resist snapping one of myself!)

The first few weeks of Prep are most certainly all about setting up expectations and building social skills. Over the last 2 weeks I took some time to sit down with my cubs and discuss classroom rules, and what they would look like in our classroom. I then went home and put our ideas together into some posters and we refer to them every morning during Circle Time. I also have a set posted up on the wall.

In our first week we read the book 'The Kissing Hand' which the Cubs really enjoyed. It was a bit of an effort to build our 'sitting on the carpet' expectation but we are making progress. After we read our story for the first time we talked about how Chester felt on his first day of school, and compared how we all felt on our first day. We drew faces on a piece of paper to make a chart and I then printed of pictures to create a display version. This is an activity we will do each week for our book of the week with a different theme.

We also started working on letter knowledge. Having started some mini checklists with my Cubs over the last week and a half we will definitely be doing everything we can to add in more time for letter recognition and sound knowledge!

So far we have started work on the letters b, m and s. These are a few activities we have been working on over the last few weeks. We have been building words with matching beginning letters with Wikki Stix, building letters with play dough, handwriting letters in our mini books, and working on letter matching and recognition.

The picture in the top left corner was of an activity we played in our Circle Time one day this week. As I stated a letter name, three of my Cubs threw beanbags into the matching hoop. The remainder of the activities here were done during Literacy Rotations. We circulated around the room whilst the Cubs worked and had them tell us the letters they were working on.

This week we moved onto reading 'The Rainbow Fish' - one of my all time favourite books! Again we build up our poster for out theme of sharing. We brainstormed all different things we can share with our friends (funnily enough the things kids seem to share most didn't make the list - head lice and bugs! haha!)

Later on in the week we worked together to create a display of rainbow fish in our room. I cut up coloured patty pans into thirds and we stuck them over a fish template which I printed onto white card. As they worked I wandered around and handed out one silver scale (aluminium patty pan cut up) to each child. They looked fabulous when they were all finished!

During our math block the last few weeks I introduced my Cubs to number sense warm ups, which worked a treat! I have thrown a few photos together below of all the different games we played. Some days we even wrapped up math rotations a little early and had a second game before lunch which nobody objected to. You may notice that I have used my animal number posters in every game so far! These are working posters and I use them in just about every math lesson! They are especially great fr practising number formation because I can hold one up in the air facing my kids and trace over the numbers with my finger. 

We had a go at Apple Picking where we raced to collect as many apples (scrunched up red paper) as we could to place them on our trees, counted them up and placed the matching numbers beside them (missed this shot!). We built collections of frogs in our pond. This was made from A3 card cut into a pond shape and stuck to green card. 

We went fishing for numbers twice! One day we used snap cubes to show the numbers pulled out in front of us, and on another day we wrote the number on our whiteboards. One day our doggy hid his bone under cones and we have to find it by guessing the number it was behind. Once we found the bone we had to write the number on our whiteboards.

On Friday we practised subitising to 3 by turning over cards and identifying how many animals we could see. We then had to find the numeral and write to on our whiteboards. After our warm up on the carpet, we then went to our desks and practised rainbow writing our numbers to 5 in coloured pencils - We need lots of work on number and letter formation!

  

Our Math rotations we full of back to school themed games (which will be swapped out at the end of next week). We build towers, matched number representations, counted collections and identified matching numerals, and built numbers in ten frames. We also tried out a few finger gym activities to build our little finger muscles.

This term in Prep we are learning about plants and animals. Over the term we will be looking at all different kids of Aussie animals and how they live in their habitats. So far we have begun by talking about our 5 senses, living and non-living things, plant parts, needs and how plants grow. We even made our own people and plants which look amazing in our room! As we learn about a new concept I add new displays to our Science Wall. All these displays I have made with adorable clip art from Krista Wallden.

Well that about covers the bulk of what we got up to in our first few weeks :)

How were your first weeks back?

Finger Gym Fun! - Fine Motor Activities

Before I start... MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

I know it seems a little sad to be writing a blog post on Christmas day, but I have been so preoccupied looking up finger gym activities the last few days, I thought that if I finally put it together it would relieve a bit of tension (not sure exactly how but I will try!)

It is about now that new graduates are starting to get the jitters - "Where do I start?"

One really important aspect of learning in an Early Years classroom is fine motor development. Handwriting is a very intricate process for little learners and their fingers need all the help they can get!

I have been doing some surfing for fun fine motor activities to set up a 'Finger Gym' rotation during my maths rotations throughout the year, and have compiled a collection of links to share with you all.

If you would like to see how I integrate fine motor skill activities into my math rotations with number work, you can check out my post on 'Beginning Math Centres' - with FREEBIES included! - by following the link below.

Now, onto the fun!

I have hyperlinked each picture to its original publisher where you will be able to read more about each activity.

 

Lacing and threading are brilliant ways to build fine motor skills. My little darlings absolutely LOVED my Melissa & Doug lacing cards (below) when I brought them in this year, but you don't need to spend big money to do this. How cool are these superhero lacing cards?? Just choose your pictures (I just love the idea of using superheroes!) and print them onto cardstock - the larger the better, laminate them and use a hole punch to add holes around the outside of each picture. Cheap and easy, and you can personalise them to suit your students' interests.

Of course, you can easily integrate threading into your literacy rotations with letter beads and shoestrings, or throw in some colourful beads and practise making or copying patterns. 

This is another quick and easy threading activity that doesn't require a great deal of prep. Clay or play dough, skewers or spaghetti, and pasta - Simple!

Similar again - this time as a colour sort. Coloured matchsticks and a bucket!

Another quick and easy one. The aim of this one is to have the kiddies balance the marbles on the golf tee's. 

This example is from 'What Do We Do All Day?', and shows just how simple fine motor practise can be - just draw some lines on paper strips and add some scissors and a scrap bowl!

Little tip - ANYTHING WITH TWEEZERS! If you can add tweezers to an activity - go for it! You can pick them up fairly cheap and they are totally worth the investment. 

Oh - and pegs! Pegs are GREAT! :) (Links to image only - no host site :( )

You know those little toys you can get in the $2 stores' party sections? The little spinners, and jumping frogs, and mazes - guess what? Use them! Like I said, anything that gets their little fingers moving is perfect!

By the way, how adorable is this Finger Gym set up from Jessica Webb?? LOVE IT!

Padlocks and keys - yep! This picture is from 'ABC Does' and I can just see lots of little kiddies keeping busy with this.

Copying patterns into a sand tray is always a winner like in this picture from Atendiendo Necesidades - and a great step towards pre-writing. (And if you have a spare hour this site is most definitely worth a look!)

And I just had to include this one from Hip Hop Hen! How many of your boys would go nuts if this was a 'learning' activity?!

Well I hope this has given you a few ideas of how to incorporate fine motor skills practise into your early years classroom. I have saved these pictures onto my USB as inspiration for my own 'Finger Gym' activities :) I promise I will post photos early in the new school year of my own set ups to check out!

Got your own 'tried and true' fine motor games and activities? I would love for you to share :) Or fellow teacher blog-authors, if you have a post along the same lines, please comment with a link for us to check it out!

Until next time...

Beginning Math Centers

This time last year, I was seriously freaking out. I had been told I would be moving to Prep after spending my first 2 years teaching Grade 1. Yep - I was scared!

Where do I start? What do I do? What if I screw up? How do I know what to teach? 

And the worst, knowing what kids need to have to begin Grade 1... 

How the HELL do I teach these kids all they need to know... IN UNDER 12 MONTHS!!!!! 

I was extremely lucky when I started and had a fabulous mentor teacher who was very open and helped me out a great deal. So now, I would like to pay it forward and maybe help some new beginning teachers the best I can, starting with my favourite part of the day - Math Centers!

I know it can be very overwhelming, thinking about how to begin everything. Math Centers or Rotations are an integral part of my day. It allows my Munchkins to play, explore, and make connections with Maths. It is amazing to hear them talking Maths, and interacting with each other socially.

I have put together some resources I have created for you to access for free to use in your own classroom. All of these have been made with the very beginning of Prep in mind and are easily differentiated to suit different ability levels. Click on any of the images below to access the PDF for each game.

There are also some FREEBIES I have found very useful in the early weeks of school with links to their original pages.

Tens Frame Mats

When you begin Math Centers, make sure to include lots of number work - like, lots! Tens frame mats are a great way to start and you can find freebies all over the place! In the beginning, mats like these with a visual representation of each number are great. You can start my having the kids place a counter or manipulative over each picture, then move those into the tens frame - Don't assume they can count out counters straight away. I always start right at the beginning and move up from there. Make it fun - mix and match different materials, add in sensory materials like play dough or kinetic sand and let the kids play!

Fine Motor Tracing Lines

Another one kiddies need lots of - fine motor! Cutting sheets, tracing, colouring, threading - anything that gets those little fingers working! Cards life these can be laminated and then used with whiteboard markers as write and wipe cards. You will be surprised how engaged the kids get with things like this!

Paper weaving, bead threading, and even q-tip painting are great rotation activities to provide plenty of practise for tiny fingers.

Found on babbledabbledo.com

Found on erin-specialeducation.blogspot.com

Tower Mats

More number practise (plus add in a little bit of fine motor by using snap, unifix or multilink cubes too)! These mats come in a range of different themes, and in 3 different levels - Mats with numbers -3, 1-5 and 1-10. Easy differentiation, and great number practise!

Counting Clip Cards

Numbers - TICK! Fine Motor - TICK! See how easy it is to integrate??? These cards are great for early number and a good way to check to see if your kiddies can 1) subitize, 2) count with 1 to 1 correspondence, and 3) match collection to numerals.

Link it up!

Links are fantastic for working of fine motor skills, plus your kids will love them! These little cards come in 2 different sets - one with the numeral only, and another with a tens frame as a guide beneath each number. Kiddies just make a chain of the correct length and feed it through the holes in each card. Alternatively, if you do not own links, you could have your kiddies clip pegs to the cards instead.

Roll and Cover

 This is a great was to help kiddies practise their number knowledge. Just add a die and some counters (or blocks) and voila! A ready to go station.

Number Match 

Very straight forward, and this can be a great assessment tool to see how well your kiddies can recognise numbers in different ways. In the early days you might just use the fingers, tens frames, blocks and numeral, then slowly add in tally marks and number words as they are ready.

Show me!

Very basic cards which can be used in multiple ways. throw these cards in a tray along wth various manipulatives and see what your kiddies can do! Again, I have included a second set with tens frames on them to support those who need it.

The Measured Mom

The Measured Mum is a BRILLIANT home school site run by Anna. She is just fabulous, and loves to share her creations with fellow teachers :) The 3 products below are all downloadable from her site and have links embedded in the images, along with a zillion other resources - Seriously, check it out!

 

Pattern Block Puzzles are great for Math Centers all year round! Kate from picklebums has compiled a list of links to a huge variety of free pattern block puzzle templates. Click on the picture below to view the links :)

I hope this post has helped you out a bit, and that the resources here are well used!

If you are beginning your teaching journey in Prep I wish you the very best of luck. Remember, Prep is the introduction to school for your 20-something kids - make it fun, and do your very best to teach them to love learning!

I will also be making a post very soon about what the first few days looks like in my classroom with more links to FREEBIES. Keep your eyes peeled!

Until next time, enjoy your Summer break!