Our indoor garden

To use the term "I have been a bad blogger" would be an understatement.....I can't even promise to do better, all I can say is that when I can, I will.  Big thank you to those who have stuck with me!

Currently I am on holidays for 2 weeks and I popped in to school today to update our home corner. We have been looking at Biological Science and with the end of term being super busy we didn't get a chance to finish it.  So I have decided to keep it going for Term 4 (before we head into Christmas activities....oh yeah we are heading there people)  We will be adding in some real plants and talking about what living plants need to stay alive and compare this to our investigations into what animals and humans need to stay alive.  I will also be using this area for some measurement activities and literacy ( I need to add in my books about gardens and plants as well as some of our words for our word wall).

So here are a few pics of what it looks like!

I moved our seasons tree into the "garden" and I have added a tent which is a time out/sensory escape for one of my students.  Inside the tent will be a timer and a flickering tealight  to help with calming.  The table has paper, straws, pipe cleaners, glue, scissors, drawing and writing utensils as well as a bunch of other craft stuff so the kids can create and add to our garden.

The glavanised tubs have brown rice, stones and lavender added as well as some plastic flowers for them to start the garden.  How cute are those flamingos!!

Some of the "tools" they might need, gloves, hose, watering can and small garden shovels.  There is also a chalkboard for them to write messages about the garden.

Here is a better look at what is in the tubs.

I'm really looking forward to the creativity and learning that will happen in our "garden" this term and what better way to celebrate spring!

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!

Spring Fling Linky

I am linking up with Tracy at A Perfectly Poetic Page for her 50 followers Spring Fling Linky Party.   Hop on over to find some fabulous free and paid items ready for springing into Spring!  Even though we are heading into Autumn here in Australia, Spring is one of my favourite times of the year, I have added my Build to 10 and 20 Butterfly addition pack.  This is Tracy's first go at a linky so show her some bloggy love and link up!

A students milestone!

I had an awesome day with my class today, not even Daylight Savings and up and down weather could bring me down! 

This is how it started....during Daily 5 I was reading with a group and one of my littles was having a struggle with one particular word, I waited and observed the strategies he was attempting to use, then the little girl next to me pipes up with "Coaching or time?"  I was so stunned I didn't really have an opportunity to jump in, the little boy replied to her, "Coaching please."  

She said, "Maybe you need to try some other strategies, what about flip the sound or chunking?"  Together they worked out the word, went back and re-read to Check for Understanding, all without too much input from me!  Remember this is Guided Reading, not Read to Someone.

I was almost superfluous, she also decided that she needed to give the students some positive feedback, like " *insert name* you read a little bit like a robot, but I really liked the way you used expression!"  I was blown away......then.....the other students decided that if she could do it so could they!   The positive feedback was flying thick and fast, the strategies were being suggested and used!  

It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! 

The fantabulousness ( I think we are allowed to make up words because we are educators)  did not stop there.  After lunch we worked on finding keywords in math word problems to identify what algorithm we were going to use.  Then they had to solve the problem and explain how they did it.  One little said for this alogorithm  12 + 15 + 17 =  ......" I just used the split strategy, 10, 10 and 10, that's 30...then 5 and 2 is 7 and there is another 7 so that is 14, 30 +14 is 44!"  Woooohooooo.

But wait there's more!  We completed our Spring Wattle trees, here are the pics...

I think they are too cute and I love the green and gold!

The best was to be the last of the day! 

 My student with special needs (hearing impairment, visual impairment and intellectually disabled, you can read about her here and here )  made a huge breakthrough today.  Keep in mind that she is in a Year 2/3 classroom and operates at a pre-kinder level....well today she drew a picture and "told" (she signs so I had to adlib a tiny bit) me a story about her picture.  This is the first time she has ever done it!  Previously she has only traced and copied words, letters, sentences etc, she didn't seem to get the concept that she had to explain her pictures.  I am going to be very indulgent here as I am a very proud teacher today and here are a few pics to show you her achievement!

These are the 3 pics she did today!

This is a close up of the first pic she did.  She signs my name as MP 

Cats are one of her favourite animals

 She usually signs just the first letter for peoples names, this is her Teacher Aide.

I guess you can tell how proud I am of her!  I must admit it was a bit difficult to hold back the tears and many of the other kiddos were giving me a bit of a strange look, but were very quick to compliment her on her hard work.  I was a blubbering mess and to help her celebrate I sent her to visit the Principal, who promptly came to see me and joined in on the blubberfest.  We are hoping this is the beginning of her writing journey and I am so privileged to have been there when it started for her.  What a magnificent day to be a teacher!

 

I hate Daylight Savings!

We have been back at school for two days now and sadly we have not got a lot done! My kiddos are really tired, they look like vacant zombies with dark smudges under their eyes.  The culprit of course is Daylight Savings which meant on the weekend before we went back to school all clocks were moved forward by an hour.  Not so bad at night (apart from the fact that it is difficult to get the kiddos in bed and settled at bedtime) but for some of these wee ones getting up an hour earlier is a killer.  Some of my darlings have to travel an hour on the bus to get to school so they already get up early and having to wake up at 6:30 (which is really 5:30) has been a real struggle.
So with that in mind I have had to wind back on our big start to term 4....seriously I had one of my boys tell me today that u makes a yuh sound.  He is in year 2 and he is an average reader, so I'm thinking maybe he's a little tired. Very few of my kiddos could follow directions and their behaviour has really been off.  I am hoping that when their body clocks have adjusted we can get back to task.  Needless to say I am not a fan of daylight savings in Summer, shouldn't it be in Winter or better yet let's not have it at all ( I miss you Queensland ).

Apart from that we have been reviewing some of our basic concepts and getting ready for our Spring Garden Fair next Friday.  At our school each student creates an artwork and we sell it to the parents for a gold coin donation (1 or 2 dollars), so our class has been making Spring Trees using their hands and thumbprints, I was inspired by some of the fall trees that I have seen on Pinterest

















and I did see one on someone's blog and I can't remember who it was.  (Please tell me if it was you so I can properly credit you!)  Well I adapted it so that the students made wattle trees which are very prolific in our area
                     
 (achoo, thank you hayfever.)


They used green and yellow paint, not everyone is finished so will have some pics to share tomorrow.   Well I'm off to start dinner for the ravenous hordes who are apparently starving!

 

Clip Art Freebie

Well I have been very productive on these holidays.....just not in the school sense.  I have been out in my vege garden and I am happy to say we will be getting some lovely crops of tomatoes and lettuce among other things.  I have cleaned out the garage with a little help from the other half and I have spent time with my actual kids.  I have spent hours blogstalking and catching up on what everyone is up to I even updated my blog button so now everything is matchy.

One thing I have been playing around with is some clipart.  Now I do not put my self in the same bracket as Mel From The Pond, but I am happy to share with you my creations and hope that you can use them.  I have noticed lots of Fall items going up on TpT and on blogs and that got me thinking about the weather and seasons and how happy I am to be welcoming Spring.  So I started creating some Spring images that I will be using in my packets that I will be making in the next week.  Here are some of them...

I have also made a few different cliparts for the other seasons as well and you can get them all for free here

I would love to know if you use these and if you feel like crediting me, that would be nice as well.  Hope you enjoy!

Please let me know if the link does not work.  Just checked and link is not working....will update and let you know when it is working...watch this space...thanks for watching, you have to download each image individually as dropbox only doesn't download folders.  If you really want these and the download doesn't work, leave your email and I will send them to you.  Oh my Lord, the end of this post is just rambling...sorry