Counting with Truck Driver Bob

This week the little ones and I have been revising counting patterns. I'm currently learning a new math program that connects concepts to reality and am really enjoying it so far.

I decided that for counting patterns I would create a 'scenario' for the kids.

Queue Truck Driver Bob.

'Truck Driver Bob' was on a delivery and had an eensy weensy, non-fatal, itty bitty crash.

Oh no!

It's alright. He's OK...BUT now the items he was supposed to deliver have spread ALL OVER THE ROAD! :( AND he has no idea how many of each item he has....and you know...he NEEDS to know...


Ruh roh!

***This is where the kids came in***

It was their job to find out how many of each item there was that had been 'spilled all over the road' so that we could report back to 'Truck Drive Bob'.

There were 5 stations:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

I set a timer and they had about 7(ish) minutes to complete each station. I had group leaders who were in charge of keeping noise down, cleaning up at the end of each activity and making decisions.

As they completed each activity, they had to fill in the following recording sheet.

PS I was devastated at not being able to find cute 'crash' clip art and had to settle for what I could find.

Click here to get your copy!

Font by Jen Jones
Truck by Ashley Hughes
Border by Coffee, Kids and Compulsive Lists

Truck Driver Bob made a return 'appearance' today. Come back in the next few days to find out what we did ;)

Back-to-School is better with Friends Blog Hop!!!

About a year and a half ago, I discovered the world of blogs and quickly became obsessed with reading the teaching lives of others from all over the world. It didn't take long for me to join in on the fun and what you see as you read this is a product of my obsession!

Over the past year, I've continued to be inspired by the amazing things teachers do in their classrooms but the most rewarding thing, for me, has been the new friendships I've made.

I have 'met' some crazy talented teachers and people through blogs and TPT and I truly believe that they have helped me become a better person and teacher, simply through their encouragement and inspiring words.

I've teamed up with some of my amazing new bloggy friends to do a Back-to-School is better with Friends Blog Hop.

What do you need to do? 
Visit all the blogs on the hop (there are only 7!)

What do you get?
At each stop there will be a Rafflecopter for you to enter and win a value of between $10-$20 to spend at that person's store.

Is that it?
Well no!

Then what else?
The bonus of visiting each blog is that you will be able to collect a free file. Once you have collected all the files, you will be able to piece them together and create an awesome BTS Welcome Poster/Wall Display for you and your kiddies to colour!

Click here to see how to assemble and what it will look like! (Thanks so much to our girl Mel at Graphics from the Pond)

Anything else?
You are a bit demanding aren't you? Well there is one more thing.

What?
At the final stop of the hop, there will be a special rafflecopter to enter. There will be two winners. One will get a $50 Tpt voucher and one will get a $50 Amazon voucher to help get their school year off to an awesome start!  

So what are you waiting for? Enter my Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Make sure you click the picture below to grab your free file and hop on to collect the rest!

 Enjoy Back-to-School with your Friends!

Five For Fri......Sunday....

Umm, yep. I'm a little late to the party. Better late, then never!

I've been doing lots of fun things in my classroom lately but always forget to take photos! I'm anxious to put pictures of kids and their work on my blog so I try to do what I can...

1. In Science, we are looking at life stages of living things. We drew our own life stages using the template below. Click on the images to get your own copy!

 

We are observing the growth of mealworms. I know. Not the cutest thing to watch grow but the kids LOVE it! We had to buy wood shavings and the mealworm larvae. We keep them in a little plastic container and feed them bits of carrot.

 

The picture below shows the larvae on the left and the pupa stage on the right. I think they look like little aliens...

2. We learned about homophones and made these adorable 'pair of pears' from Sarah Cooley's homophone packet.

3. I'm trying something different with my rotations this term. Monday and Tuesday I do 'Writers Workshop' rotations with 3 different levelled groups.

I don't run it like the typical Writers Workshop. I have three activities - Teacher Time, Handwriting/letter formation and Journal writing. For Teacher Time, I decide on a focus for the two days. It may be a genre, it may not. The past couple of weeks it has simply been 'stretching sentences' where we look at starting with a simple sentence, making it descriptive, then compound and complex (for those smart cookies).

My TBB (Teaching Buddy Bestie) in third grade came up with the most FABulous idea!

1. Write a word on the board for the 'theme' of a sentence. For example, I wrote 'beach'.

2. Tell the students they can write any sentence they'd like, as long as it is about that theme. Some will write simple sentences, some will write compound, etc.

3. Have them swap books and rate each other using the following: (1) They used a simple sentence. (2) They used a compound sentence. (3) They used a complex sentence.

4. As a group, discuss their sentences and provide feedback.

5. Students give books back and then get a chance to earn more 'points' by changing their sentence.

6. Swap back and rate books again.

4. At the end of last term, we did some reflection of the things we learned so far this year. We made these super cute ice-cream scoops. They look great hanging in the classroom. Click on the pictures to check them out.

5. I don't have a picture of this one, but to link with our Science we are going to be creating our own insects for Technology. My teaching partner's student teacher found this super fun YouTube clip to teach about the different parts of an insect. For some reason the YouTube clip isn't working through Blogger, so click on the image below to go to it :)

After we watched this, we go down on the carpet and created 'human insects'. As we revised the different parts of an insect, I had some student create that part with their bodies. There were many laughs and they had so much fun!

That's it! I'll hopefully be back soon with some more useful posts ;)