Five for Friday

Thank God for the weekend! My week has consisted of benchmarking, report comments, progression points and wet days. Boy do I hate wet days! Now don't get me wrong, I love the rain! But when the little wonders are stuck inside all day and can't get out to run around, I'm not such a big fan. You all know how kids get when they're cooped up, they get restless, and that means no concentration, no focus, chatting, and dobbing! But with the 'not so good' comes the 'good'. 

Julia Donaldson is by far one of my favourite authors of children's books, and the kids love listening to her stories. As our library activity this week we read Julia's book 'The Gruffalo'. The little wonders loved the bright illustrations and the catchy story line. As a response to the story we made our own Gruffalo masks, complete with orange eyes and green warts! 

As far as I know, every teacher on the planet it obsessed with Pinterest, and I am no exception. My favourite use for Pinterest is to find lessons for my classroom. It is a treasure trove of fantastic ideas! I especially love it for art projects that I can do with my little wonders. I found this great idea, based on Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'.  We looked at his original painting and discussed the importance of it in the art world. We also spoke about the techniques he used to create movement in the sky and water. We then had a go at drawing out own versions of the famous painting. 

On a non-teaching note, look who I found in my classroom Thursday morning! I'm not sure if he was in there all night, or wether he flew in through the door that morning. He must have been trying to get out for a long time because he was exhausted when I attempted to catch him, hence my success! I had to take a photo to prove to the little wonders that I really did catch a bird with my bare hands.

The were very impressed to say the least!

A shot I took today, just messing around with my camera while my little ones worked away on their 'Scream' art work. These are one of my favourite items in my room (its always the small things). They are my pencil buckets, purchased for $2.80 each from a discount store in Melbourne. Shout out to my friend Emma for a great find! 

A few weeks ago we went to Hamilton for a PD on 'The 7 Steps to Writing Success', which turned out to be a fantastic learning experience. We have been implementing these steps into our writing lessons and they have proven to be fantastic ways to engage the children in the process of writing and identifying various parts of a text. This week we focused on 'pebbles, bricks and boulder', which is a way of classifying the problems in a story. Pebbles are small problems, bricks are medium size problems and the boulder is the big problem/tension scene. We read a big book called 'Rose Rat and the Scary Plant' and drew the pebble, brick and boulder scenes. I absolutely love how the children illustrated each problem from the text, and was especially impressed with how quickly they were able to grasp the concept.

I hope everyone has had a great week, enjoy your weekend!