A peek at our Week

Hey friends, hope this week finds you well and rested.

I wanted to share with you a few things that have been happening in our Prep class.  We have spent the first few weeks of school getting to know the routines and procedures in the classroom and we are finally settling into some serious learning.

We have been doing lots of work around patterns, clapping patterns, making patterns with people, finding patterns in our classroom, building patterns with blocks and peg patterns.  I loved this activity because it also incorporated a little bit of fine motor as well.  Most kiddos did an AB pattern but I did have a couple that did and ABB pattern which I was pretty happy with.  This inspired me to create a Peg Pattern file which will be up in my store very soon!  I will keep you posted

 Sorting was another fave activity for my kiddos this week.  I got these containers at Big W in the party section and just poured some random buttons in the centre.  Kiddos had to justify and explain their reasoning and then draw their sorting into their books.  I kind of think this looks like a flower don't you?

Our Summer tree :)

The change of season to our Autumn tree!  Our tree is also used to display what our sound focus is for that day.  Currently it is Ll, the kiddos collect the letter from the letter nest and we find names, words and pics to put in the tree, I love it because it is constantly changing.

We also found some pics in magazines to identify foods, clothing and activities that would show the season of Summer and Autumn.  Next week we will be making Autumn handprint trees.  

That is it for now, this tired teacher is going to take a Nana nap heehee

Holiday Randomness

Well friends I am in my second week of holidays and I have finally gotten out of my pyjamas :) No seriously I did get out of them a bit earlier last week.  I have not been as productive as I wanted to be although I have really invested A LOT of time with Pinterest.

Having said that this is what I have done so far on my hold, remember it is Winter here in Australia and I do not under any circumstances LOVE Winter, of course this is why I live in the most Southern state of our nation (Northern Hemisphere folks, please realise this is the state nearest to Antarctica).

After getting out of my pyjamas last Wednesday :) I got a bit of a prune on my hair.  I went from this

to this

I hosted a dinner for 12 at my house...ummm it was delicious!  On the menu was Drunken Teryaki Roast Lamb with roast vegetables and mini raspberry cheese cakes with raspberry sauce and berry sorbet and a few vino's to finish it off and perhaps to start it as well.

By the way if you are interested in getting your dinners organised or some new recipe's don't forget to check out my new page Healthy Eats for Teachers.  I will be adding some weekly menus and organisation when I head back to school next week.

I put up this little freebie for you all!  It is a 5 senses poem template we did in out last week of school. The one we did at school was not as cute as this because the idea quickly jumped in my head when I was trying to figure out what we could do in the last week.  Oh I also accidentally printed off 241 copies of the ugly 5 Senses template because I forgot to delete the 1 when I was printing from my computer.....there goes my photocopy budget for the next term.  Seriously....gone.
Just click on the pic below to get your FREE copy!

Had a lovely lunch with some of the gals from school, so nice to catch up without rushing past each other or moving along in the photocopy line (which you won't see me in next term).

Anyway I just thought I would catch you up with what has been happening (or not happening), the rest of the week will see us up at our Conservation Block clearing gorse!

Five For Fraturday

I feel like I am getting my maths groups under control finally!

This group is working on some addition games on imaths

This is my small teaching group.

This group is games

This is an independent group working on the Multiplication Station from Shelley Gray.  I purchased this in the TpT sale last week.  It. Is. Awesome!  

It is a self paced practice with the students tracking their progress.  I had to be very specific about how to use it and we still had some kiddos put things back incorrectly.

So Maths groups running smoothly at the moment, of course that will all be screwed up next week with our national testing.  Boo!

We had the first snowfall for the year.  This is what greeted me Tuesday morning walking in to school.  It has been bitterly cold all week and the kiddos had many inside playtimes.  Not good for our sanity people.

This is some art work I have been doing with my Year 2's we call this Autumn leaves in a puddle :)  I am going to do a blog post on how we did this in the week coming  I love how these turned out!  

I have a little who is having trouble with recognising shapes in different formats so I am whipping up a shapes packet for him to work on.  I hope to have it finished this week!

Tomorrow is Mothers Day, we made some gorgeous cards that I forgot to take photos of!!!  I am looking forward to a brunch made by my daughter (pancakes with fresh berries and yoghurt) and son.

Happy Mothers Day to all the Mummies out there for tomorrow.  I hope you get loads of cuddles and love.

Place Value Pumpkin Patch

This is just a quick post before I go and do laundry...this is actually me procrastinating about doing the laundry..but it is important that I do this post so the laundry can wait!

I have had this file on my computer half finished for a couple of weeks now, so thought I would get it up and running while I have a couple of days off (yay for subbing!)  Anyway I plan on using this in my year 2 classroom this week but wanted to give you a sneak peek!

I plan on using the cards to put up around the room then having the kiddos wander around and record the matching cards

These 2 sheets are going to be an extension.  The first one is a fold and flip book where students can fold, then snip on the dotted line, write a number in the pumpkin, then record a different way to show that number.  I will leave this up to the students as to whether they will use expanded notation, base 10 or another way to show the number.   The last sheet is a number expander, all you need to do is snip on the black dotted line, then fold on the grey ones to hide the words after you have recorded your number as an expanded notation.  When you unfold it the number expands.

I will definitely have some photos of this pack in action next week, but for you I have put it in my store for only $2 for the next 24hrs!  Just click on any of the pics above to check it out in my store!

How far does the apple fall?

Well Sunday night here and over this last week I have really been feeling my creative mojo pouring back in, I wish I knew why because next time I lose it I will be able to find it again.  Maybe it is because I had a day off, if so I will be wishing for another one but so far the signs are not looking good.  So I have another file that I have just uploaded for you to check out.

This game has 3 different ways to play and I will be whipping this one out for my little strugglers to have a go at this week.  Just click on the pic to check it out!