Fine Motor Monsters and Crafty Crabs

A while back, RIC Publications sent me some goodies and I wanted to share with you some of my favourites.   My little Preppies have gotten pretty good at their fine motor skills but this Fine Motor Skills book has a STACK of so many fun ideas - many I'd never even thought of! Activities range from shoulder, wrist, hand and finger strength building games to scissor, drawing and writing skills.

There are 233 pages of wonderful printables and ideas. There are mazes, dot-to-dots and even recipes for paints and play doughs! Yes, you can see my sticky notes that I've placed on pages that I want to try. One of which my Preps did - the scissor skills monster.

I modified this activity a little to include not just the suggested scissor skill work but also pattens. I modelled how to do different patterns in each section of the puzzle and then the kids had a turn on their own. We glued them onto the fabulous paper I bought from Kmart at the beginning of the year and put them on display. Super cute, in my opinion :)

Another one of my favourites was the Awesome Art and Craft book. What I love about this book is the range of arts and crafts. There aren't just simple printable crafts (don't worry, there are still some of these with templates included). They have included crafts that require all sorts of materials. Here are a list of a few of my favourites: "Sponge" cakes Adorably decorated 'cakes' using kitchen sponges. Can you imagine the little kids' excitement? Crawling Caterpillar Thread coloured plastic cups to create a cute caterpillar. Stain Glass Butterflies Who doesn't love using cellophane to create adorable art for classroom windows? Sensory bottles Students can create their own sensory bottle using recycled materials. Plus there are a bunch of really easy and cute paper plate crafts like this crab that my class made. They loved them!

 

The last two of my favourites were the Phonics Fun and Patterns and Sequences Stick Kids Workbooks.

  These are for individual student use and would be great for parents or even for teachers with just those few in their class that still struggle with some of those basic foundation skills. Some of my kids tried the rhyming and dot-to-dot number recognition pages.

Thank you, RIC Publications! I love having a fresh lot of useful teaching resources!

Have you purchased any great finds lately?

2016 Back to School Buys

Hello, friends!   This is my first year teaching Prep (K or Foundation)! 5 weeks in and my head is still above water - hooray !!!   I know I'm completely late to the party but I still wanted to share with you some back to school purchases that I made because.....well, let's be honest, I just wanted to! I spent WAY too much but it made me happy.    I don't do a theme every year but this year I went with bees! Our class are the Prep B Brave Bees!  

Some hands-on accessories for the new classroom: Foam blocks, plastic connecting blocks, wooden blocks and a plastic food playset - all courtesy of Kmart :)

I've seen many teachers that have headbands or hats as a visual to show students they are not to be interrupted (for example, during reading groups). I chose this cute bow headband from the cheap shop.

Some prize box additions!

When your local Riot Art craft shop has a 50% off sale, you stock up!

Thanks to Aldi, my stamp supply shall never diminish! The poster I am going to cut up and laminate.

These books were crazy cheap at Aldi! A nice Australian twist on some classics.

Is anyone else out there a massive Daiso fan?! You just find things there that you can't // don't find anywhere else! Like these amazing magnetic pen holders!

 THESE !!!!

My lovely teaching partner found these at Daiso. They are actually just super cute microfibre cleaning mittens but she has used them for her sensory students. Well, I just needed (yes NEEDED) to have one of each colour :)

 See what I mean??? I've never seen cute memo sticky notes like these before! I love them!

I follow an amazing teacher on Instagram (@smartieeepants) and she made these adorable marble monsters to build strength in her students' fingers and hands. I made some of my own and am in love with them!

I did some handy work (and got VERY sunburnt doing it) and spray painted these perfectly-sized tins for my group tables. I also decided it would be a great idea to spray paint the blue trolley yellow (to fit with my bee theme).

BAD IDEA!

It took forever and was soooo expensive. Not one of my best ideas but at least it looked good.

 I unashamedly went to extreme lengths to acquire one of these Lorna Jane lunch bags. My heart was set on it and I just couldn't let it go. So happy I persevered in finding one!

One last message...

I'll post some classroom pics next post! :)

Some helpful resources!

Hello friends!    It's been a while since I've shared anything so I thought I would kick 2016 off with a few resources that I found useful in 2015, while teaching first grade.
Although teaching shouldn't be centred around nor relied upon textbooks and blackline masters, I feel they still have their place as a useful tool.
I received some wonderful books from RIC Publications last year and thought some other teachers might find them useful, too.

Being in Australia, it can sometimes be difficult finding resources that are linked to and relevant to our curriculum. What I love about these books is that they are all Australian Curriculum linked. At the beginning of the books (and for some, on the side of the pages), it shows curriculum links.

 

 Here is a closer look (I'm very visual and love to SEE things before I understand or make my mind up about it):

 

The Literacy texts are wonderful for whole class and small group instruction. They are a great tool for modelling those essential comprehension skills.

Don't be deterred by the amount of text for the little ones. I projected some of the pages onto a whiteboard and we highlighted sections and discussed the text and questions altogether as a whole class. Some of your more highly able students may be able to complete some of the tasks independently.

 

 

 They cover so many different skills and I found them very useful. Be sure to visit RIC Publications, if you think that you may find these resources useful in your classroom.

I'll be back soon to share with you some of my back to school adventures!

End of Year Teacher Tips

Hello teacher friends!

Here in Australia, we have just started our final term of school for the year. This means that we have about 10 weeks until our summer break commences. It is a fun term for us, filled with lots of exciting activities for our students to conclude their year of learning.

It is, however, often a term that can be stressful and busy. I have teamed up with some online Australian blogging friends to bring you some tried and tested teacher tips that you can implement now (or begin to plan for) to make this term easier to manage.  

 
These tips are simple and relatively easy to implement. Keeping things simple and practical is one effective strategy for easing classroom craziness.   So, what's my tip?
An end-of-year events calender!
Sounds like common sense but it can be an absolute life saver for yourself and parents!
My amazing teaching buddy sends home to parents a calendar that clearly shows important dates for the last few weeks of school. I think it's a brilliant idea and will be doing with my class this year. The end of the school year can be pretty crazy for us teachers but it can also be pretty stressful for parents, too. There are often many events and important dates to remember in the last few weeks of school and a calendar is the perfect visual to keep track of all of these.  

 

  Visit the other blogs in the link up below to find more ways to cruise through Term 4. For continued ideas and time savers, don't forget to also follow me on Facebook and Pinterest!   An InLinkz Link-up  

Class Pets, Painting and Rockets!

Three weeks since my last post - woops!   It has been a very busy three weeks. Let me show you why!

In Science, we have been looking at habitats and minibeasts. I bought the class these hermit crabs to look after. You can imagine the squeals when I put these little guys on the ground and they started to crawl towards the kids! They still aren't named - any suggestions?  

A tropical cyclone recently went through North Queensland, here in Australia. It had downgraded by the time it got to our area but there was still huge amounts of heavy rain so many kids were kept at home. We decided to make the best of the rainy situation and made some butterfly blob prints. They are SO bright and colourful!  

We have introduced the idea of MABs to the kids so I made these cute place value pals from Amy Lemons to put on the wall for display.  

We also have been revising 2D shapes. We made these super cute shape monsters using parts of Kindergarten Smorgasboard's free shape monster pack.  

Last but not least, we need to practise sight words! In my first year I had a wonderful teacher aide that made me a bunch of reading rocket folders. I needed more so I created a few extras this week. I'm so happy with how they turned out. They will be put to use next week!

I hope you all had a lovely week!