Remembrance Day craft activity

Remembrance Day craft activity. We'll watch a YouTube video called The Poppy Story, then listen to the poem In Flanders Field. They'll make this craft to take home, hopefully knowing a bit more about why we recognise Remembrance Day. 

Beautiful poppy pictures for Remembrance Day. I love that each of them is a little bit different.

Five for Friday (whoops, it's Saturday...)

What a busy week!! It was lots of fun, too. There has been a few changes in my class, so to bring everything back together and put a bit of excitement into the weeks of testing leading up to reports we had Pirate Week! It was awesome. Time for ...

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I made it Pirate Week this week. It was inspired by our Science curriculum, actually. One part of Science this term for Foundation at my school is to look at maps, so what better way than to make some pirate maps. That was last week. I continued the idea into this week by having a week full of pirates. My kids had heaps of fun, and one of my EAL (English as Another Language) kids loved walking around the school at playtime and going up to students to say "Aaaargh!!" It was very cute.

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On Monday morning we started Pirate Week with some writing. I made up a sheet for my students to use, and they had to finish the sentence "If I was a pirate..." There were some excellent answers! I have quite a few students who are struggling with writing so for them I use a light coloured texta to write what they dictate to me and they trace my writing. They still have to be able to read back what I have written for them.
We also wrote about treasure, and we did a pirate listening task. The listening task was really interesting. Some instructions had two steps, and it was surprising to see how many students didn't cope with that. For example, it might say "find the pirate with the map, colour his shoes brown" and some students would colour both the map and the shoes brown.

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I came across this awesome game from the lovely Lauren at Love, Laughter and Learning in Prep. My students worked in groups of three. Each student had a 10s frame and a 'treasure chest' (we used Pirate themed cups). They shared a bowl of 'jewels' for the counters and had a 'pot of gold' full of gold nuggets to win. Students roll the dice, and add that many jewels to their tens frame. Students take turns, and add to their own frame. When the 10s frame is full, they exchange their jewels for a piece of gold. I absolutely love this game!! My students were totally engaged with it. But, more than that, the amount of maths happening was incredible. It works on the sense of ten-ness (as my maths coach would say), they had to say what number they rolled and how many jewels they still needed to fill their frame (tens facts), I also asked students what number they would want to roll for their next go so that their frame was full (if they had two spots left they would like to roll a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, but couldn't roll a 7 because that is not on the dice, and wouldn't like a 1 because it wouldn't fill the frame). Even though Pirate Week has finished, we're going to play this game again next week - I LOVE IT!!

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We did a bit of craft, too. On Tuesday my students made hats and hooks. The hat was just the pirate hat shape glued on to a strip of paper (a bit like a crown). The hook was made with a paper cup and a straw that was rolled up in aluminium foil. They loved playing Pirates. On Thursday they also made maps and telescopes. I wasn't in class on Thursday so I don't have a photo of them.

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I bought some SitSpots! I installed them Thursday night, and my students weren't at school on Friday, so I'm excited for Monday when they get to see them for the first time! I chose to use different shapes and colours for the rows. I plan on playing some instruction games with them (eg. step on the yellow circle, then the green square; or what colour is the square, and what shape is the pink shape). I love the bright colours!!

We had a very busy (slightly stressful, for me) week. I am my school's reports coordinator, and reports are due in two weeks so I had a busy time setting the reports up for our teachers. It is the first time I've had this role, so there was lots of new learning. I'm excited for next week because it is Education Week and we have our school Open Day. We have special events on everyday this week, so there'll be lots of photos to post!!

Five for Fri... Sunday... whoops!

Week 3 of term 2 was a tough week. Yep, that was last week. My new student has some difficult behaviours so it threw my class through the ringer. I was emotional, too, because it had taken me ten weeks to get my class settled (I have an eclectic mix of 22 students, and only 6 girls!). But we made some inroads towards the end of the week, and I'm looking forward to a fresh start to week 4! We will be on day 55 of school for the year, so we're moving along.

I'm the Reports Coordinator at my school. This is my first year doing it, so I went to training on Wednesday and it totally freaked me out - there is heaps to do! I just have to get a handle on things, and I will.

So on to more fun things:

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I run a Craft Club for prep-2s twice a term. This time we made 3D collages. It was tricky, but they did a great job! They got to experiment with cellophane, aluminium foil, bubble wrap, tissue paper, foam shapes and ribbon. Oh, and lots of sticky tape!

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On Monday we focused on counting backwards in Maths. My students made rockets, and added the countdown numbers. They were just adorable!! I basically just modelled how to make one, then handed the paper over to them and let them create it the way they wanted to do it. One of my little guys put his hand up and said "Miss Luck, I've already got a picture in my head of my rocket!". Love it!!

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For Mother's Day my students made flower pictures, gift vouchers and cards. The flower pictures were gorgeous. They had to cut out three different sized "circles" in different colours, and layer them onto the paper. Then they got to add a sparkly diamante sticker to the middle of each flower. I love how bright they are. I got the idea somewhere on Pinterest, but I can't find it at the moment. (not all of the them chose to use black paper, but I happened to mention that bright colours look great on black paper, so a few went that way)

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I got a new Wantable box this month. I don't love it, and I think I'm going to cancel the subscription. But it was fun to try!!

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I've kept this plant alive since before Christmas!! It was a gift from one of my students last year. But I have no idea what it's called. Anyone??? So far (thanks to Instagram) I've found out that it is a succulent. I don't know anymore than that.

I've got a four day week with kids, then a Curriculum Day on Friday. I have decided to theme the whole week around Pirates!! I can't wait. I will take lots of photos and post them at the end of the week.