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!

Update!!

First I would like to thank you all for your lovely comments about my family post yesterday, if you didn't see it you can read it here.

The next thing I wanted to let you know about is a file I have updated, if you have purchased Higher or Lower Place Value game, make sure you head back to your My Purchases page and re download the file. This was one of the first files I put up in TpT and I have to tell you I had no clue what I was doing, it needed a serious overhaul.  So I have updated the graphics, added some extra place value cards and recording sheets. Take a look and click on the pic to check it out in my store.

While you are here don't forget that you have about 5 days left to bag yourself a bargain from educents, head on over to get $138 worth of Kinder Curriculum for only $29.99.  Just click on the pic below to check out the comprehensive packs included.

Great Kinder deal with Educents

Kindergarten teachers... are you tired?  {Silly question right!}  

Well... we know this time of year can be exhausting and yet you still need great resources to keep your students engaged in learning and so I am very excited to share this amazing opportunity for you to stock up with Educents!

Over 1400 pages of activities for literacy, math, and even a little social studies!

 From my store you will get That Cat- A beginner reader  I know you will love it because not only do you get a classroom copy of the reader but also a smaller student copy, some extra printable extension activities and a PowerPoint version to use on an Interactive Whiteboard or at individual computers.

But that's just one product.  With this bundle you get 24 products from some other amazing sellers as well!  So we have linked up blog hop style for you to see what's included in this great bundle from Educents!  So hop on to the next blog to see what else is included!

If you love what you see as much as I do, go ahead and head on over to Educents to stock up!  

  

Gearing up for Back to School

Well friends I have returned from our beach holiday at the Sunshine Coast and I had a fantastic time catching up with my family and friends, I hope you all had a wonderful relaxing break as well.

Now usually it is this time of year that I start thinking of what I need to get done for back to School, however as some of you may know I do not have a contract to start the year with.  So instead I will be concentrating on helping some of you get ready instead! With that in mind I have tizzied up a booklet I would usually use if I had Kindergarten or Prep, it gives students the opportunity to show the skills they already have and allows the teacher a quick assessment of where each student is starting from.  The other great thing I love about using this booklet is being able to send home an identical one at the end of the year for parents to see how much progress students make in Kinder.
Just click on the pic below to go to my TpT store, I will be offering this at 20% off for the first week.

For those friends of mine that are over the pond in the U.S and various other places I will be posting some other items that will be relevant to you as well.

By the way I came back just in time to enter a giveaway from one of my favourite blogger friends Alison!  She is celebrating her 30th birthday (happy birthday) by giving away 3 $10 TpT vouchers.....coool!  Head on over to enter.  She is also having a Sale that ends on the 6th, she has awesome products so head over to bag a bargain!

For now I am catching up on blogs, newsletters, organising my store and job searching! I have to say I have missed blogging and creating and now that I have a bit of time on my hands and a heatwave coming through (43 C today, tomorrow and then 41 C that's 109 F) well what better to do than sit in the air con and get working!
Watch this space.