Swap Share Give - A linky for all seasons

I am very lucky to have made some Aussie blogger friends over the past couple of years. Last year these friends held a Swap Share Give link-up that I was part of (my first link-up like that) and we are doing it again! We have been paired with another teacher by the lovely Tania. The pair has swapped a product, used that product and will write a review about it. We each also have a freebie to share, and there will be a giveaway of all the products that were reviewed! Pretty cool.

I'm very lucky to be paired up with Alison from Teaching Maths with Meaning.

 She has amazing products, and I own pretty much all of them! For this link-up I am reviewing her Number Detectives product.

I printed it, laminated it, and chopped it up ready to use. I decided to use it as our maths focus wall, and I have one number up each week. As part of our Monday maths lesson (or sometimes Tuesday) we take down last week's number and put up the new number. I love it, and the kids love it! You get heaps of different elements to display which you can see in this picture:

I have had some excellent opportunities for incidental teaching with the clock face, the tens frame and the odd/even word cards. I have also touched on reading skills when we try to find the number word. During the week we look for things that show our Number Detectives Number, and either discuss it or add it to the wall.

As well as using it as a focus wall, you could also collect some of the bits and do a sort. For example, the focus number might be 2, so you would find all the representations of two in the bundle, and put them together. It could be a maths groups activity or a warm up activity.

I love the clear graphics, and the easy to cut out shapes! My students love the birthday candles, and regularly walk past the display to blow out the candles.

The product I have as a freebie is a play dough mats set all about teen numbers. It has a spring theme, and it is bright and cheerful. Each of the bloggers who linked up has a seasons-related freebie, some are Spring-based (currently in the Northern Hemisphere) and some Autumn-based (which is the current season in Australia).

You get 10 play dough mats with the numbers 11-20. The mats are bright and clear, and students are asked to make the number out of play dough and make the number on a tens frame with play dough. But you could use counters instead of play dough, or you could use whiteboard markers on them once they have been laminated. The mats are really focused on the concept that the teen numbers are 10 plus some more.

          

Alison is reviewing my product ABC Foldable Readers (available in Victorian Modern Cursive and print font) on her blog. Go there now to check it out!!

Now for a giveaway! Enter below to win each of the products that were reviewed.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up

New product: Word Family List Worksheets

I've just uploaded a new product!

This product has six worksheets all about word families. Each page covers two different word families.

Students colour the words in the box at the top. The words from the same word family are coloured in the same colour. Then students write the words from each word family in the boxes below to make a list. There are a few extra words that aren't in the word family so that they have to be attentive to the letters in the words. At the bottom there are some words to trace in Victorian Modern Cursive.

The word families included are:
-at / -og
-ed / -op
-ot / -ip
-it / -en
-in / -ap
-ig / -et

I'm giving three copies away, so if you're interested in trying out this product leave me a comment and I'll email it to you!

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.
 

Two Freebies at my TpT store!

My blogging frequency is getting better. And so is my product-making! I've uploaded three new things in the past couple of days. Today's two new ones are FREE!!

The first is a pack for the digraph /ng/ but only focusing on words with 'ing at the end (not as a suffix). For example, it includes the words sing, swing, wing, ring and king. There is a worksheet, a set of five puzzles and a Clip It style set of cards, where you clip the picture the has 'ing at the end.

I will be using this pack this term, coupled with my Sh Ch Th Digraph Pack. We have finished learning the letters of the alphabet and next we learn these common digraphs.


The second is a product called Alphabet Monsters Spin the Wheel Spelling or Phonics Task. You print two pages, laminate them, and then attached them together with a split pin. This means you can spin the front wheel around and only show one picture at a time through a chunk cut out of the front wheel. Students could use it to practice initial sounds, final sounds or spelling tricky words. The two sheets are different because one covers the letters A-P and the other is K-Z.

I have a set of cards similar to this that I inherited from the previous teacher who taught prep at my school. I have absolutely no idea where she got them from! If you have seen something similar please let me know, I'd love to give credit where it's due. I use this as a reading group task later in the year when my kids are ready for a challenge in their spelling and thinking about phonics.

These are free, so check them out! I'd love to hear any feedback about these.

Freebie product - Is this a triangle?

I've just uploaded a new freebie to my TpT store. It's a worksheet to help students revise the rules for a triangle.

Celebration Freebie - Alphabet Chart

To celebrate the new blog design and starting a Facebook page I have put up a new freebie on TeachersPayTeachers! It is an alphabet chart in Victorian Modern Cursive, with clipart by Graphics from the Pond.

Thanks for supporting me!