Classroom update and a SALE!

I worked in my classroom yesterday (Saturday) for a few hours because I needed to rearrange some furniture. Where I had my SmartBoard meant that it had sun glare on it for most of the day, and that's just not good enough when you're trying to watch GoNoodle!! Here are some photos of my newly rearranged room:

View from my teaching chair.

View from my door. My stuff is hidden behind the SmartBoard.

TL: My teaching table. TR: Rearranged the tables. BL: Looking toward the door. BL: Laminated cellophane to block the light.

New teaching space with new displays. I couldn't decide whether to display the numbers with 10 at the top or the bottom.

I also gave my SitSpots a wash. They are looking bright and shiny, and ready to be used again!

Washed them in warm soapy water. Gave them a good scrub with a scouring sponge. Then soaked the for a few minutes in some disinfectant. We had a little wee accident on the carpet, so I thought it best to give them all a clean.

Also, there is a TeachersPayTeachers Sale coming!

From May 5-6 my TpT store will be have a 20% off sale, and then you'll get extra off when you use the Coupon Code. Go and fill up your Wishlist now so you can grab some awesome sales!!

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

Peek at my Week - Addition week

It's been too long since I've blogged. I get so excited to blog, then I forget or something comes up. I missed last week's link up, but I had a few photos from the week before that I wanted to share.

We worked on even and odd numbers, so I used the Even & Odd Sorting Centers product by Kelly Witt. My kids loved the pictures!

We also used the worksheet in the pack, and students had to sort out the numbers provided into even and odd.

During the week we also made a book to take with us when we went to visit the local kindergarten. It was called School is Awesome: What we love about school. Our kinder kids are all starting transition ready to start school at the end of January, so we thought they'd like to know what is fun at school.

This is one of my little preps who tries SUPER hard, but is still struggling.

So, onto this week!

I'll link up with the awesome Deedee Wills!

Here's what my week will look like.

I'm looking forward to it. On Thursday morning while my preps have buddies with the 1/2s I am running the first transition session for our 2015 preps! I've very excited to meet them. This year I'm the coordinator (for the first time) so I'm a bit nervous about making sure it runs smoothly. I love seeing how little they look in comparison to the current preps.

I have also just added two new products to my TpT store (I'm using them this week, so I'll have photos next week).

The Dinosaur Addition and Subtraction Mats are free!! Go check them out.

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!

October Currently

The year is going by so quickly! By the time my birthday comes around (7 October) I know that the year is almost done. So nuts! A new month means a new awesome template from Farley for Currently. Love them.

 

Listening - I came across the band Walk off the Earth when they did a cameo in a tv show called The Listener. Loved the music, so looked them up. My favourite song by them is this one:

Loving - It is Saturday night on the last weekend of the Spring school holidays. Only Sunday left, then back to work. I've had an awesome break, and I'll write a bit more about it in my (late) Five for Friday post.

Thinking - Term 4 is 11 weeks, which means I only have my preps for 11 more weeks. They have made huge progress this year, but there are still things I want to do with them. Term 4 also includes the school swimming program, report writing, and lots of Christmas/end of year stuff - it's a busy term!

Wanting - I went away these holidays and before I left I made sure I cleaned out the fridge (I was gone for 6 nights). I got home two days ago and I still haven't done the groceries. I have basically no food left in the house...

Needing - I am the report coordinator at school and I have a bit of work to do to get everything up and running for the other teachers to get their reports done. Lots of admin hours coming up.

Treat - It's my birthday on Tuesday so I'm going to put my entire TpT store on SALE! 20% off everything starting tomorrow (5th October), and ending on Wednesday 8th October. Grab a bargain!

Now, go link up with Farley! And read the other Currently posts.

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.
 

Sale Time!

Teacher Pay Teachers is throwing a Back To School Sale. While in Australia, where I am, we are half way through the school year, in the northern hemisphere teachers are gearing up to get back into the swing of it. But, like most teachers, regardless of what stage you are at in the school year a SALE is awesome!!

For August 4th and 5th all of the products in my store will be 20% off! Grab yourself a bargain and pick up some awesome products.

If you're wondering who else is joining this sale have a look at the Blog Hoppin' Linky Party. There will be some incredible products on sale judging by the amazing teacher sellers who are joining in!

New products: Monster Truck Matching!

Two new products in my TpT Store! They are called Monster Truck Matching! with lower case and capital letters and Monster Truck Matching! with numbers, tens frames and dice faces.

You get 52 letter cards, capital and lower case letters, in Victorian Modern Cursive with awesome monster truck clip art on each card. Students need to match the capital letter with the lower case letter, then record the letters on one of the two recording sheets provided.

I used these this week with my students (forgot to take a photo!) and I punched holes in the two sides of the cards, gave the group Counting Links and they had to match the cards and then thread them both onto the links. This added some fine motor skills work to the task as well.

This activity contains 63 cards with monster trucks on them (21 each of number, tens frame and dice faces). This could be used as a quick maths activity or stations activity for matching numbers 0-20. The product is made using Victorian Modern Cursive and fantastic monster truck clip art! It includes one recording sheets that has the numbers on it already.

You could even punch holes into the cards and use Counting Links to join the matching cards. This adds a fine motor skills component.