Five for Friday!

Holy moly it's been a while since I've linked up with Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday, and I must say I've missed it! Here is a look at our hectic, fun, creative and colourful week (well a mix of this week and last). 

This activity was all about identifying our talents, and the things that make us special. We brainstormed lots of different words we could use to describe ourselves and they chose one to write on their mirror. They then finished the sentence 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am special because...'. 

We stuck the mirror and writing piece onto black paper and hung them up outside our classroom. 

Last week we celebrated Shrove (or pancake) Tuesday. To mark the beginning of Lent we made these super cute pancake headbands. Each child was given four pancakes and on them they had to write a word that related to or described Lent. I was quite impressed with some of the words they came up with (not to mention their spelling choices); prayer, hope, Jesus, Easter, fasting, kindness and sharing, to name a few. They wore them for the day and had a great tim

Last week our art focus was warm and cool colours. I asked the children to think of the warm colours that remind them of summer, fire, the sun etc. Most of them were on the right track with red, orange, yellow and pink, some suggested blue and green, perhaps they were thinking of the water they swim in when its hot...I then did the same for cool colours. After we distinguished the different colours the little wonders divided their paper in half, they filled the top half with curved, wavy lines and the bottom with straight pointed lines. They coloured the top half with warm coloured oil pastels, and the bottom with cool colours. I loooove how bright and vibrant they are! They look fantastic on our wall in between our number line from Kinder Craze, and our months of the year. 

 For show and tell this week one of my little wonders brought in some perfume he'd made at home. He explained that he wants to be a scientist when he's older so thought he'd experiment with making perfume. He soaked the flowers in water, then crushed them up  and removed them from the liquid. You would not believe how amazing this stuff smelt! I was actually blown away. It smelt like Calvin Klein CK One..no joke. Clever little thing!

This week's art focus was on painting techniques. I'd seen this done on Pinterest so decided to give it a go. The little wonders used blown up water balloons to blob paint from their paint tray onto lone side of their paper (which I had pre-folded down the middle). I can't get enough of the super bright colours they used, they look amazing! Once they were happy with the amount of blobs they'd done, they folded their paper over and gently pressed to transfer the paint to the other side of the paper. Once they dry I plan to cut them out and turn them into Blob Monsters similar to the ones on Kindergarten Smiles and Love, Laughter and Learning in Prep.   

I hope you've enjoyed your glimpse into my classroom :)

Happy blogging! 

What's New?

Thought I'd share a few photos of the new things I've added to my classroom in 2015.

Space themed display at the entrance to our classroom.

 Door display on the back of the lockers...because I don't have a door. Loving Krista Wallden's space themed clipart.

 Monster display for our reading groups.

 I kept the pencil buckets from last year. Best. Find. Ever!

 Name tags for tables. Animal clipart and wallpapers from Krista Wallden.

 I transferred my paint into these large sauce bottles at the end of last year. I'll ever go back! So much easier and less wasted paint.

 We made these kites on orientation day last year. I had them up for the first day of school to make my new kids feel at home in their new classroom.

 Daily classroom helper flip charts. I choose a boy and a girl each day to help me with EVERYTHING. Lights, handing out, line leaders, everything! So much easier than having a different person for each job.

 New fuzzy signs. If you don't know what fuzzes are, head over to Mel's Seusstastic blog, I've been using them for the past 3 years as a behaviour management tool and they are awesome!!

 Book covers using...you guessed it....Krista's clipart. 

 Birthday display from Pink Cat Studio, so super cute!

For the past couple of years I've given out crazy straws for birthdays, but thought I;d change it up this year, for little bags of skittles :) yum yum!

Hope you've enjoyed a little peak into my classroom!

Learning to Learn in 2015

We're four weeks into our 2015 school year and I'm exhausted! The first two weeks I felt great, but this week I've hit a wall. I'm sure this happens to most teachers, the sheer shock of going back to work after 5 weeks of absolutely nothing. But enough about that, heres a look at a few of the things we've done during our first weeks back!

One of the first things we do is talk about the things that make a good student. A book that I always read at the beginning of the year is 'The Interrupting Chicken' by David Ezra Stein. 

It's a gorgeous picture book about a little red chicken who asks her papa to read her a bedtime story, but she can't help interrupting and spoiling the ending. It's a fantastic story to reinforce the importance of waiting patiently and not interrupting when people are talking. As a response to the book the children coloured in a picture of a chicken and stuck it in their book. Around it they wrote qualities of a good student, e.g. listening, taking turns, sitting quietly, raising their hand etc. 

One of the first things we do when we start a new year is write our holiday recounts. I found this super cute 'Here Come the Sun' summer craftivity pack from The Teacher's Wife and thought it would be the perfect way to present our holiday writing. I photocopied all the different templates onto coloured card and had it all organised for the first day to save rushing around (after seeing the time it took to do the photocopying, I'm very glad I did it in advance!) I love how bright they are, and think they look great strung up across our room.

Last year I discovered the 'Pout Pout Fish' series by Deborah Diesen and fell in love with the hopeful little protagonist. One of the books is called 'Pout Pout Fish Goes to School' which is a beautiful book about the first day of school, and the struggle to find the place where you belong. Unfortunately I don't have the book, so we watched the song version on YouTube by Gordon True, which, I'll embarrassingly admit, made me a bit teary the first time I watched it. 

As a response to the story my little wonders used water colours to paint a portrait of the brave little Pout Pout Fish. I love how each painting is completely individual, I have some very talented little artists in my class this year. 

Oops, I only took one photo :/ 

I'll take more this week and add them so you can see the extreme cuteness.

I got the idea for the next activity from Pinterest, but for the life of me cannot find the original pin...ugh! If you find it please let me know so I can link back to it.

We used a Venn diagram to explore the similarities and differences between ourselves and a new buddy we made in our class. The little wonders decorated each side of the Venn diagram to look like themselves and their buddy. I was loving how they turned out!

Hope you enjoyed reading, happy blogging :)

P.s. room tour is coming!