Swap Share Give! A blog linky from Down Under

I was lucky enough to be included in a linky with some amazing Australian bloggers and TpT product creators. Bec at Books, Bugs and Boxes is hosting for us - thank you! We paired up, swapped a product, and now here is my post about the awesome product that I got to try, the free products I'd like to share and at the end of the post you'll find a giveaway too!

I was paired up with the awesome Stef from Miss Galvin Learns. She kindly let me try out her product called Hens Love Tens. It is a product all about counting by tens and the pattern that is so important to learn. I didn't use this awesome game exactly as originally intended, which just shows how versatile it is.

Stef made it to be used as a small group card game, and included 'CLUCK' cards. Taking it in turns, each player draws a card and decides if it fits the counting by 10s pattern. If they draw out a 'CLUCK' card all of their cards go back into the middle. In this way it is self-sustaining, and can go on for as long as you want it to.

I used the product a little bit differently. At my school we follow a sort-of-strict outline for our maths lessons. We have to include a warm-up (based on a familiar maths skill), hook (something to get them thinking, could be the materials being used or a YouTube clip for example), tuning in (teaching and modelling the task and coming up with success criteria), independent task and reflection. I love finding different games/tasks to do during our warm-up and I used Hens Love Tens for it last week.

I had a bit of a false start with the cards because I accidentally printed them double sided and confused all of my kids! So, after recreating them (and this time enlarging them on to A3 paper before laminating and cutting them up) we started using them. I had my students sort them as a whole group. On the first day we sorted them into hoops, and then we sorted ourselves into groups based on which card the student was holding. I used the cards for all four maths sessions, and we sorted them each day. It was a great chance to revise that counting by 10 starting from zero means that all of the numbers we say end in 0. We repeated that discussion a lot. It also helped with a few of my kids who still get muddled up about which numeral to look at first in a number with more than 1 digit. They had to identify the last digit in the number, then recognise what the number was and whether or not it was a zero.

These are the original sizes cards printed on A4 and the larger ones which I printed on A3 paper.

 
I loved using this product! It was lots of fun, there are heaps of cards and the clip art is super cute. I'm excited to have the cards in my room for number identification practice, sorting into different groups, and reading numbers bigger than 100 (the cards include 10s cards to 300 and other cards to 209).

Now on the 'share' portion of the link up! A couple of freebies that you might be interested in. On Miss Galvin Learns TpT store there are some amazing free fonts, and my favourite is MGL Free Font - All Write. It's a great font to use for headings and is very clear to read.

Over at my TpT store there is a freebie called Alphabet Chart in Victorian Modern Cursive. It is an A4 letter chart that shows each letter in capital and lower case and a picture from Graphics from the Pond for the initial sound (except for x which has a picture of a fox).

And now for a giveaway!! There are a couple of giveaways you can enter. There is one massive giveaway for all of the products that were reviewed as part of the Swap part of the link-up. There is also a giveaway that I'm running and I'm giving away my product that Stef reviewed and Stef's product that I reviewed. Stef also has a similar giveaway on her blog - feel free to enter all of them!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I've had such fun being a part of this link-up! The community that has been built by teachers who are blogging and creating products is phenomenal. It is a privilege to be a part of it!

And don't forget to pop over to Miss Galvin Learns to read her review of my 100th Day of School Party Pack. And you should follow her on Facebook and Instagram.