Five for Friday!

What a term! The past 9 weeks have gone so fast, I can't believe we've arrived at school holidays already. We (myself and my students) are most definitely ready for a break though. Term 1 is always very full on with setting up a routine, testing and getting to know each other.

I'm linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Click here to check out what other bloggers have been up to this week.

I picked up these super cute Easter books from Aldi at $5 each, bargain! The kids loved reading them this week, and the Pepper Pig and Spot books were easy enough for my struggling readers.

These super cute Holy Week posters were in a pack I purchased from Anne Hoffman's 1st Grade TPT store. They feature clip art from the amazingly talented Kari Bolt. This is the second year I've put them up during Lent to help teach my little wonders about Holy Week. They were a great visual reminder of the days involved in Holy Week and what occurred on each day. 

The little wonders created these beautiful cross silhouettes this week in our art lesson. They used chalk pastels for the background, and we talked about using colours that are touching on the colour wheel or in the rainbow. They practised smudging and blending their pastels, which I will admit, ended up in chalky jumper and pants. I am so happy with how these turned out, I think they look fantastic! I got the idea for this from Mrs. Ehle's Kindergarten Connections.

We made these suuuuper cute Easter baskets out of paper plates as something a little different to the usual paper cut out ones. They have a pocket on the back made from another plate flipped around, as a space for their eggy goodies. They required a fair bit of help with stapling and hot gluing, but it was worth it.

 At the beginning of this Lenten season, we made a Lenten prayer chain. The little wonders wrote a prayer on a piece of paper and we linked them together to make a 40 link chain for every day leading up to Easter. They wrote prayers for animals, their classmates and for people who were sick, travelling or poor. We read one (or two depending on how many we had to catch up on) every morning during our daily prayer. The kids really enjoyed this.

Hope you've enjoyed a peek at my week.

Happy blogging!

What a Whirlwind!

There is no way we're half way through term 4 already....where has the year gone?!

I've been a very slack blogger lately, with uni assignments, reports and a job interview, I've struggled to find a second! But I've collected quite a few photos over the last month or so of things I want to share with you all, so I thought I'd sit down on this 30°c day and finally do it. 

So let's get stuck in!

For the first 4 weeks of this term we focused on persuasive writing. I started looking last holidays and found so many AMAZING resources on Pinterest. My team also purchased some super cute picture books that help teach persuasive language and techniques. 

We got: 

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Joe Scieszka 

I Wanna New Room by Karen Kaufman Orloff

and Hey, Little Ant by Phillip Hoose

My little wonders loved reading the stories and did a great job of identifying the different ways people persuade and the reasons behind it. Some of my favourite activities we did was for the book 'Hey, Little Ant' came from a pack by Casey Hallett at Mrs Hallett's Happenings called Opinion Writing and Graphic Organisers - Hey Little Ant. If you're teaching persuasive writing to grade 1 or 2, I highly recommend you check this pack out!

The following activity came from  The First Grade Parade. After we read the book I asked the children what they thought the kid should do. I was actually surprised to find that they unanimously agreed that he should NOT squish the ant. As a class we wrote the kid a letter outlining the reasons why he should not kill the ant. They then used these ideas, and some other ones they came up with, to write their own response. They accompanied it with this SUPER CUTE little ant and shoe (click here for the template). I was very impressed with the effort my little ones put into their presentation, they look fantastic! 

This next one is one of my favourite library activities that we've done. Whenever I hear or say the word 'craftivity' I immediately think of Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies. She has THE BEST craftivity packs in my opinion! We used her Little Red Hen Book Companion pack to create these adorable Little Red Hens. The children had to write why they couldn't help the Little Red Hen, needless to say their reasons were very creative. They were making their own bread, having a sleepover, going on a holiday and practicing their dancing. 

Sooooo I went a little Halloween clipart crazy this year. I went from having nothing, to about 5 sets of clipart, all of which are from...you guessed it...Krista Wallden :) I cut out and laminated some to use as inspiration for our spoooooky halloween stories. Mind you, I had to tell the kids what candy corn was.

During the week leading up to Halloween we read 'Froggy's Halloween'. Having read 'Froggy's First Kiss' on Valentine's Day this year the kids were excited to read about Froggy's next adventure. I got the template for this activity from Rhonda at Classroom Fun. It's no longer available in her TPT store but if you contact her (like I did) she might be able to send it to you!

I got the idea for this next activity from Lindsay at 'For the Love of First Grade'. My little wonders had to write clues about who was hiding under their ghost sheet. We showed them at our assembly and had the crowd guess what who or what was underneath. I was glad to see some of them using the information they had learnt about bats to write some clues. 

Here's a photo of the bat tree chart we made to write our information report about bats(inspiration from Kristin at A Day in First Grade). We then used a template from Jodi's Nonfiction in October pack for our writing. 

Keeping in the spirit of Halloween we created these bright spider web drawings using chalk pastels. We use pastels a lot in our class so the little wonders know how to use them well, aka don't lean your arm on the page, use sparingly and smudge, blend complimentary colours, keep one hand clean for holding the page, and blend with your fingertips. I showed them how to draw the spider webs (this took a few demonstrations) and spiders. They did such a good job, all of their webs turned out great!

I hope you enjoyed having a peek at what we've been upto. We've certainly been enjoying ourselves. Happy blogging everyone :)

Show Us What You Bought Linky

ATTENTION FRIENDS!

If you haven't yet been to TPT and put everything on your wish list into your cart, and checked out...then go and do it now! They are currently holding a Back to School sale and there are huge saving to be had. 

I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' to share some of the amazing resources I purchased on sale. Enjoy :) 

As I was trolling my favourite blogs, as I do at the end of the day, I saw Mel from Frog Spot bought some super fun Sight Word Pattern Block activities from one of my favourite sellers (and bloggers) Jennifer, from First Grade Blue Skies. So I clicked on the link and BAM! the grade 2 version is mine. 

I've had this Tie-rific Father's Day craftivity in my card for aaaages! I thought today was the perfect time to finally put it through the checkout. It's soo super cute, I can't wait to do this with my little wonders. 

I saw this Editable Pendant Banner on Jennifer's blog when she took some photos of her classroom projects. Love, love, love the bright colours, and the fact that you can write the students' names on there!

I also saw this one on Frog Spot in Mel's 'Show Us What You Bought' post. 

They are Ice-cream Math Centres by Doodle Bugs. Such a great resource for small groups, and for early finishers. 

Like I need an excuse to buy more of Krista's clipart. I will however use the TPT sale as one! 

Im obsessed with her cute style and bright colours. 

I picked up her Ocean Animals, Scuba and Mermaid clipart set, which I'm already thinking of ways to use in future resources.  

 

Well I'm off to checkout what everyone else got.

Happy shopping and blogging everyone!

TGIF...or should I say TGIS??

Happy weekend everyone! For the next two days I have no plans and am looking forward to doing absolutely nothing....except reading blogs and watching youtube hauls and tutorials. 

In my opinion there is no better way to celebrate the week than to link up with Doodle bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. So here are 5 things to share from my week!

Incase you didn't know, 'Healthy Bones Action Week' is coming up (the 3rd-10th August to be exact) and to get my little wonders thinking about their bones and ways to keep them healthy and strong, we did a super cute craftivity where they made a skeleton out of cotton buds and wrote a response to

 'My bones are brilliant because..'

They turned out so cute. It was good to see some of the children create skeletons with jointed arms and legs. Clever little things!

Our writing focus at the moment is procedure writing, which always results in making fun and often yummy treats to write about. This week we made milkshakes and wrote a procedure for it using a template from my Procedure Writing Template pack (which is available on TPT).

We made chocolate and strawberry flavoured milkshakes. One guess which was more popular!

I have the most gorgeous photo of one of my little wonders with a milk moustache that I wish I could show you!

 One of the activities we complete in Religion this week was to create a family tree for Jesus.

We've been reading a lot of stories about Him as part of our 'Life of Jesus' unit which the children really enjoy. Building up their bank of scripture stories is a real focus in this unit. 

 (I don't know how she managed to spell Jesus wrong! lol)

 This little wonder always produces the neatest work, ruled lines, perfect circles and beautiful handwriting. I'm forever using his work as an example for the other students. 

Our art focus for the week was watercolour. As I was scouring Pinterest for inspiration I came across a blog post on Kids Artists (original idea from Use Your Coloured Pencils) that used watercolour to create David Hockney inspired art.

First the little wonders drew themselves in their bathers floating. They then used oil pastel to colour their picture in, and using a white pastel, drew wavy lines in a grid pattern all over their page. 

After they completed their picture they used a mixture of green and blue watercolour paint to wash over their entire page. They looked fantastic! The white pastel lines looked like the tiles on the bottom of the pool. 

If you know me or read my blog then you know I have a completely normal HUGE obsession with clipart, namely Krista Wallden's clipart! I had been waiting months for Krista to release her Zoo Animal Clipart set, and when she finally did I bought it the very same day and created a transformation activity for our maths focus on flips, slides and turns. Before we did this activity some of the little wonders had seen the sheet on my desk and were constantly asking when we were going to do it. I was overjoyed to see that they loved it just as much as I did! They took so much care in their colouring, and just like Krista, used light and dark versions of the same colour to create contrast.  I'll admit we spent more time colouring in than doing the actual activity, but hey...gotta practice those fine motor skills right?

I hope you've all had a great week, wether you're at school or starting to get ready for the new school year. 

Happy blogging everyone!