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!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

...in my classroom anyway! 

Oh how I wish we had a white Christmas in Australia.

We have been SUPER busy at school list term. With swimming, reports, school athletics carnival and testing, it has been full on! As of last week Christmas officially hit my classroom, and I absolutely love it! We've been doing Christmas writing, Christmas maths, Christmas art, Christmas cooking and Christmas reading. 

I've got heaps to show you, so I'm linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday. Enjoy!

At the start of the week we received a super special delivery all the way from the North Pole! 20 eager faces watched as we unwrapped our parcel and found that it was our elf on the shelf! Needless to say my little wonders we all very excited! Inside the parcel we found our elf, a letter from Santa, a DVD and a candy cane for everyone. He spent the day watching us from his box, making sure everyone was working hard. This year he has been named Mr. Bauble (let's be thankful it wasn't Trevor or Simon as some of them suggested).

The next day we found him on top of our smart board, looking very cheeky indeed!

This has to be one of my ABSOLUTE favourite Christmas keepsakes I've made with any class, and will be one I do every year from now on. The little wonders coloured in and cut out five characters from the Christmas story (courtesy of Kari Bolt). They laminated them and put them onto a clear mobile that I purchased from Zart Art (an art supply company in Australia). I cannot say how happy I am with how they turned out.

I received a beautiful message from the mother of one of my kids, saying how special it was.

How flippin' cute are these guys!! 

These are our 'Snowmen Catching Snowflakes'. My little ones cut out all the parts of the snowman, including his arms, nose and scarf. They then stuck some gorgeous snowflake sequins above his head and drew on a perfect dotted mouth. We did catching snowflake self portraits last year with oil pastel, and I think this is a great version of it. 

There were a few different versions of this art work that I found on Pinterest, but my main inspiration came from We Heart Art.

Can you believe we ran out of snowflakes on the last one! One of my little wonders had to use silver stars instead, he didn't mind :)

One of our writing activities this week was to imagine Santa was stuck in our chimney. I played the song for them on YouTube and then we brainstormed ways we could get him out. 

I found a pin for this writing activity about 2 years ago. I found the brick pattern and Santa's boots on google images and made up the writing temple myself. 

Click here for the free template. 

I use to hate glitter! I would absolutely dread getting it out. Now I don't know what's changed but  I seem to be more and more game to get the glitter out. My little wonders used guided drawing to create these super cute reindeer. They painted them with brown paint and used stippling to create texture in their fur. After they dried they outlined them with black markers, added cheeks, eyes, a mouth and a nose, and put red or gold glitter on their nose depending on wether they had a red or brown nose. As you can see, red was a much more popular choice. 

Mind you we did realise afterward that we'd forgotten the ears! Oh well. 

I hope you've enjoyed my Christmas themed Five for Friday! 

Happy Blogging.

TGIF - big time!

Thank the lord that it's Friday!

This week has been a loooong and tiring one. We've stuffed so much learning into the last 5 days that I'm left feeling exhausted! Today was one of those days when something (usually a misbehaving munchkin) makes your mood change from cheery to grumpy. I left work today feeling a little low. But looking back on my photos from the week, I'm glad to be reminded of all the fantastic things my little wonders have done this week. 

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Here goes!

(Be sure to click on the picture below to check out the other fantastic bloggers who have linked up)

This week we were learning all about probability. We used a great pack from Secondgradealicious that contained this activity. My little wonders worked in small groups to sort the events into the categories - certain, likely, unlikely and impossible. As I walked around I heard some great discussions about why or why not an event belonged in a category. They especially loved the one that said 'Your teacher will turn into an ant'. 

 Staying on the topic of maths, we also looked at the probability of selecting a certain object out of a group. I found a super cute pack by Jane Feener which uses gumball machines to pose questions about probability. One of the activities involved putting 12 cards around the room, and the children walked around and answered the questions. They had fun trying to find all the cards and it was a good way to see which children still needed a bit of support. 

This month is Mission Month in the Catholic calendar and as something a little special, I decided I would give my little wonders a secret mission. I thought up 20 acts of kindness that could be done at home or at school, and put one in an envelope for each of my kids. I also included a 'Secret Agent' badge and a letter explaining their secret mission. The children were very excited to receive their own envelope and badge, and were eager to get started. The Secret Mission pack is available on my TPT store. It isn't linked directly to Mission Month, so it can be used by anyone who would like to promote random acts of kindness within their class. 

For art this week we made some beautifully colourful parrots. They look fantastic and brighten up the otherwise dull (and ugly) area above my sink. I had some early finishers so they made some chain link vines to add to the 'tropical-ness' of the display. 

I found the idea and template for the parrots at Squish Preschool Ideas.

Does anyone else do Cosmic Kids Yoga?

My kids loooove it! The videos have a story line that the kids can follow, and are very engaging. Today we did 'Babs the Beaver'. It's a great way to help children relax and calm down, and also gets their wriggles out at the same time. 

Thanks for taking a peek at my busy, hectic, exhausting, fun, jam packed week!