Learning at home using junk mail

As millions of parents face the reality of home schooling I can feel the anxiety in the air peaking! Never fear Classroom Ponderings is here to help you shoulder the burden. Your school may or may not have provided you with lots to do already but here are some activities that might help you with your kiddos at home just using magazines, newpapers or junk mail.

1. Use old magazines or junk mail brochures for cutting practice. Use the pictures to create a collage picture, if you have writers they could write a story to go with the picture. If you have littles that need cutting practice draw shapes around the pictures or different kinds of lines that they can cut along.

2. Use the magazines to do a word hunt for spelling. You can choose a spelling pattern (your school may have already provided you with a list) or words beginning or ending with a certain sound. Find words with 1,2,3,4 or more syllables, find compound words, find rhyming pairs, extend this by asking the children to add more on to the list. If your little is still learning about letters and sounds then start an alphabet wall/chart that can be added to over time as you find pictures and words that start with that letter. Limit it to learning 1 letter over 2 days.

3. Shopping brochures are great for learning about money and numbers in general! Give your child an amount they can "spend" and have them cut out the item with the price. They will need to work out a total and then how much change. This activity obviously needs to be leveled accordingly and helps with skip counting, if you have toy money around that is great to use, if you don't maybe use some coins to make rubbings and then cut them out. Make paper notes by drawing and colouring them in. (yes I guess technically this could be counterfeit but hey we could also be going into a global financial crisis, we need to prepare ourselves!) If you raid your recycling bin for boxes and other bits and pieces you could set up a shop area with shopping lists (writing), labelling, signs, pricing and of course social distancing rules in place.

4. Cut out the numbers to use for place value. Make a place value mat with the hundreds/tens/ones columns, you can of course extend this to thousands or beyond if your little is up to that. Kiddos can place numbers in each column and draw MAB to represent them. MAB's are hundreds, tens and ones blocks that represent the value of a number. You could ask them to make a number greater than or less than a particular number and using a blank number line ask them to place it on the number line according to its value. For littles who are just learning about numbers, cutting them out and putting them in order is a great way to start fluent counting, they could then count objects such as rocks or sultanas to represent that number or draw how many it could be.

5. Give your kiddos one page of the newspaper and tell them they have to make the longest paper chain they can with that one piece. Talk about how they could do it, then measure how long it is against another person. This teaches them about length, comparison, problem solving. Get them to do it more than once so they can see if they change their strategies can they make it longer!

These are just a few ideas to start with, I will be back with more in the coming days! Wish me luck I will be homeschooling a Grade 10!

Fine Motor Activities- Rock it!

Hi Friends!

I wanted to talk a bit about the importance of fine motor in our classroms, we know that it is a vital part of getting our students ready for reading and writing but sometimes it can feel a bit overwhelming right?

This year I am running a Perceptual Motor Program and combining it with some other gross and fine motor activities as well.   I have 4 classes that each acess this 4 times a week for around 30 minutes.  Early reports back from classroom teachers are saying that it is making a HUGE difference in comparison to when we could only manage twice a week.

I have made some Fine Motor Activity mats that I have been using with decorative glass stones and my kiddos have loved them! 

You know the ones I am talking about?  My kiddos love running their fingers through them and say that they are pirates treasure heehee.

Students place the stones along dotted lines, pathways and around shapes, don't have any stones?  That's ok, use counters, buttons, pom-poms or playdough.  When I have used pom poms I get my kiddos to use tweezers or pegs to pick up them up.  This pack is about precision and carefully placing the stones so that they touch each other.

Their all time favourite one is definitely making a bridge for the dinosaurs to cross the river.....

however the flowers in the garden are a close second.

I have included a mat that students can write how many stones they have put on the flower.

Like what you see?  Check out my TpT store and click on preview to see what other mats are included.



I will be back next week with some more fine motor ideas for your classroom, till then.....

Learning Update

No I am not dead nor have I joined a cult that forbids the use of blogging as a way of communicating. I am just busy getting my butt kicked by a bunch of 5 year olds.

Seriously guys this year is HARD!  I am struggling to fit everything in and that includes blogging :( please forgive me!

On the other hand I have been super busy in the classroom and I wanted to share some of the things we have been doing while I have an hour to myself (yes I know I should be writing reports.....but I don't want to).

We have been all about trying out new technology in our classroom.  We are very lucky to have received and Osmo and some Touchtronics letters and numbers for our Prep room.  The kiddos love how interactive it is and it has now become a favourite hands on ipad activity.

We have been heavy on counting activities as well!  We have used lots of different objects to count below you can see our counting penguins which the kiddos love. 

  

counting penguins

Adding "river rocks" to help dinosaurs cross the river

Another favourite activity was laying river rocks across a river to help dinosuars cross to the other side.  The kiddos loved it so much I had to leave it out for over a week.  The kiddos rolled a dice and then laid the glass stones end to end, only one dinosaur could cross one bridge so they had to do it multiple times.  The aim was to get as many dinosaurs across as they could.

Threading washers

I also had some bolts, washers and nuts out in a tinkering tray, the kiddos had to thread the washers onto the bolts and then put a nut on to the end to secure it, they then had to pass it to a friend to check, have you noticed the fine motor practice I sneak in heehee.

Balloon Pop!

The last activity I wanted to share with you is a game I made called Balloon Pop to 10, this is great for counting forward to 10 and backwards from 10.  Just click here or on the pic for your free copy.



As you can see in this next pic, we love reading to our Book Buddies :) we do this multiple times during the week in different contexts.  These littles are reading their take home readers prior to them going home, we also use our book buddies during guided reading and free choice reading.

I hope to be back in a week to share some more fun learning from our classroom......who am I kidding, see you in a month haha. (unless I join a cult)

Making sense of numbers!

Hi friends!  I went back to school this week after our two week Winter break which I happily spent in my pyjamas on the couch  :)  It was difficult but someone had to do it!  Seriously people it was cold, there was snow on the mountain.....it was cold.

Well while I was on the couch I whipped up a lovely freebie for you and finished off a file that had been sitting in my To Finish File.  Here they are just for you!

There are posters, number cards and number lines that can be printed and laminated for displaying in the classroom.  I have used the cards for a read the room activity which my kiddos love!

There are easy no prep printable as well which include some interactive flip the flaps and number puzzles that can be copied on to card for students to put back together as well as number puzzles that students can fill in the missing parts.  I have also fit in some partitioning, numbers before, after and between.  Oh not to forget odd and even numbers!  Whew, that is quit a list......but wait there's more!  A set of steak knives, heehee, I jest.  You get a bonus game called Balloon POP to 10.  My kids love playing this game and it can be used for counting forward, backward, addition, subtraction, count on and back 1 or 2.  The list is endless.  Just click on any of the pics above to get your copy.

Fun at the Fair

This post is a little late but this girl has been busy!  I just wanted to give you a look back at my week last week.  Lucky me I ended up getting work EVERY day, thanks to one of my teacher friends who's house got flooded, boo!  So I was lucky to have her beautiful kiddos for a couple of days while she sorted out her soggy house.

So here are a few random things we did.
One of my favourite stories is Stellaluna, I just love how much you can do with this book.  I often get sub work in this grade 2 class so I always pick up where we left off with Stellaluna.  Previously we have done a compare and contrast, a character analysis and a retell of the story.  This time we looked at the bat facts we could find in the story.  We used this bat freebie from .  Here is the link and we wrote our bat facts on this cute bat paper from A Cupcake for the Teacher

We also used this Roll-a-story from The Teacher Wife it is from her Reading Comprehension Activities.  I love this pack for sub teaching because you can use the sheets for almost ANY story.  Did you see the container I have put the dice in?  You bet I got that idea from Pinterest!

 The next day found me in a Prep class we made towers of ten using dice and counters.  The aim was to be the first to make a tower of ten by adding the number of counters.  You have to get the correct amount to finish.  It.Was.Fun!

We also watched Stellaluna using Storyline Online and used THE SAME bat and paper to complete some writing.  This time the Preps wrote their favourite part of the story on the paper, we then did some brainstorming together to come up with a list of bat facts that they wrote on the wings.  I love how they came together.

Finally we came to the School Fair!  We certainly filled up on fairlyfloss, popcorn, hamburgers, but it wasn't all about the food (it was for me) there were lucky dips, singing, bands, raffles, laser tag, go karts, huge slide... you get the picture.  I was so busy at our stall I didn't get near enough pictures but these are a few I did snap.....

Yes, these are snakes, big, big, venomous tiger snakes and yes that man is handling them.  I was so creeped out I had to stand way back to take the photos.  We only have 3 types of snakes in Tasmania and they are ALL venomous,  these ones are the most common. The kids (and a lot of the parents) were fascinated, I have a major fear of snakes and at one point I saw all these people running....well you know I thought they had escaped and I immediately started looking for high ground.  Thankfully none escaped, phew!

Here's my boy loving jumping up in the fire truck, there were also police motor bikes there for the kiddos to climb all over, they loved it!

The teacup ride was a huge hit as well, here is my daughter and her friend laughing about getting all dizzied up!

Anyway to say that last week was busy is an understatement!  Now on to this week which includes a 9th birthday party, boy oh boy these years seem to be going by faster and faster!

Have a great week all!

Magic beans and ten frames freebie!

I just thought I would share a little fun activity I have been doing with my Year 2's that need Friends of 10 practice.  

Back when I started teaching we didn't have those cute double sided counters that we have now.

I used dried cannellini beans and called the activity magic beans.

 

I bought a packet of dried cannellini beans and painted one side gold and left the other side white.  Children would get 10 beans, a ten frame card and a white board to record.  Then they would roll the beans  over the floor, separate the gold ones form the white ones and then arrange them on their ten frame card to show a friend of 10.  So if they had 6 with the gold side facing up and 4 with the white side facing up they would arrange the beans then write on a whiteboard 6 + 4 = 10.

For some reason they just loved it!  I have been using the red and yellow counters last week and felt inspired to make some cute ten frames cards that had a bit of colour, just click on the pic below to get your FREE copy!

New item on TpT

Just posted a new game on TpT!
Mr Clown Pants is a great game to encourage 1 to 1 correspondence when counting to 10 and can also be used as a subtraction game.  I have played this game with my kids from kindergarten to Year 2 and they love it!  Obviously you differentiate for the ability level that you have.  An example of this would be for my Yr 2 kids I would write numbers with a marker into the circles and they would have to throw 2 or more dice to get the amount in the circles.  Another example is getting the Yr 1 kids to record the addition or subtraction as they progress through the game.
Well take a visit to my store and enjoy!