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!

They marched

Hi friends!

I feel as if I have neglected this little blog of late but I have been busy enjoying the holidays and catching up on some reading.  So I thought I would pop in with a bit of a catch up post, here is what I have been up to.

This is my very proud children with their Dad at the Anzac Day ceremony and march.  We were in a little town outside of Hobart, my husband's unit travels to some of the smaller towns that may not have military members.  It was a beautiful day weather wise and the ceremony was conducted wonderfully.  This was also the first time my Mother in law got to see her son march as we don't usually live near enough to family for them to attend, so it was a very special day for our family.

What else have I been doing?  Reading, reading, reading.  I save up all my reading for the holidays that way I won't get interrupted with life and school getting in the way of a good book.

I have also carved out some time for working on TpT and have gotten a companion pack to my Alphabet Robots  up and running, it is matching numbers to number names to 20 and is called Number Robots to 20. (such a creative title!)  I have also bundled them so you can get both at a discounted price.

I still have a week left before I head back to school and will be doing LOTS of things with the kids, swimming, bushwalking, shopping and a quick trip away.  Oh and then I might fit in some planning.....maybe

ANZAC Day

I have taken a little break from blogging over the last week while I have been on holidays.   I have been enjoying spending time with my kids, walking at our local beach, surfing the net and shopping for clothes for the coming winter (for my kids, not me, seriously they do not stop growing!)
BUT!.....  I wanted to pop in to remind all my Aussie readers about a couple of previous posts that I have done about ANZAC Day, which will be tomorrow for us.
As many of you may know my husband is in the military BUT....my father and father in law were also in the RAAF, both my Grandfathers served in WW2 as well as my Grandmother, so you could say tomorrow is a BIG DEAL in our house.  We will be attending the dawn service and then the march, then out to lunch with some friends (also in the military).

Anywho, you can read about my post where I visited a War Cemetery in France and found my Great Grandfather's war grave here as well as some poppy art I did with my kids here.

So while you are enjoying reading those posts I will be putting my feet up enjoying my holidays and reading a book!

Treasure found

I ummed and aahed about whether I was going to do this post or not, it is not teacher related and is completely about my personal life.  In the end I wrote this 3 times and deleted it twice, so if you are reading this I got through writing it.
I have been a bit MIA this last week because I made a very unplanned trip to a little outback town in Queensland, it was 2 plane flights and a 4 1/2 hour drive.

Why would I go to such lengths you may ask? Well to meet my "new" eldest sister.....46 years ago my parents were forced to adopt out their first child, unmarried mothers were not given much choice back then. They later married and had 4 more children, but for the last 20 years or more they have been looking for each other, last week we found her, 3 days later we were all on a plane to meet her and her family.  I cannot begin to describe the joy when we all met, it is amazing to look into the face of a person you have never met and instantly know they are family and they are a part of you.  The next amazing thing is the overwhelming love that bubbles up inside you.

When I look at these pictures it just feels like she has always been there.

 The first meeting of Mum, Dad and daughter

 The family together at last

Sisters... from left, my younger sister, me, my older sister, my eldest sister, the only one missing is my youngest brother who unfortunately could not get there.

I can tell you right now, there was NO denying she is part of our family, I see each of us in her face, mannerisms and the way she talks.  

Again I know this is more about my personal story, but when I started this blog I started it for me and this last week was such an amazing experience for all of us I just could not keep it in.

The most wonderful thing is that when we found her, we also gained 2 granddaughters/nieces and 2 great grandchildren.....that makes me a great Aunt......I am preferring Awesome Aunt, makes me feel less old :)

Anyway that is the wonderful reason why I have been a bit out of touch and I am so happy to have this wonderful person in my life now.

I want to say a big thank you to my bloggy friends who went through this with me, you know who you are and I am thankful everyday that I had your support.

I have read many blog posts about people who are thinking about adoption or are currently in the process of adopting.  I need to say that although we haven't had the chance to meet here adoptive family we are so thankful that they brought her up in a loving family.  

So I will finish this post with a big thank you to those people who adopt with love in their heart, you are very special people.