Five For Friday

Well what a week.

1. It started in tears. I had spent quite a large amount of time last weekend trying to plan some engaging and relevant literacy work station activities based around creating CVCs for my Kinders and all I could think was FAIL! Was it them or me?

2. It began looking up a little when I took my workstation gear home for my own Kinder daughter to try out.... (will be blogging about this over the weekend)

3. Some gorgeous late autumn weather encouraged us to get outside and talk our dog to the off-leash park!

4. MacDonalds has this awesome treat for a limited time - sour citrus slushie with soft serve=YUM!

and finally 

5. My birthday

Enjoy your weekend! I know I will now my reports have been submitted....that is, until they come back for editing.

An awesome birthday!

Well, today is my birthday :) It started off like this

Then I went to work. It continued like this from one sweet little boy

Then kept going! My two friends at work got me some special things to dress in for the day

And then another beautiful girl popped up with another sweet pressie

I had a FAB-U-LOUS day!

To celebrate my birthday my TPT store will have 20% off until midnight 30th May (US time)

I am lucky to have such wonderful people in my life.

Reports ......

Oh man!

I am so snowed!

Not in.

But under!

Programs were due 2 weeks ago.

Best Start data due last Friday.

Reports due this Friday.

Head spinning!

Be back soon.

When I am not so busy!

Literacy Stations in action!

We are now in Week 4 of our second term of Kindergarten and lit stations are beginning to kick along nicely! Of course there are teething problems (like the one child this week who I busted playing Lego games on the iPad or the other child who just sat with his arms folded for the time) but on the whole, the kids are engaged, learning, working together and I am getting a lot of information collected on how my cherubs are reading, and what they need to do to progress.

Let me share!

This weeks focus was initial sounds, so a few of my activities centered around this idea.

Here we are engaging in some initial sounds clipping fun. This activity had the kiddies saying what the picture was (eg. nest) isolating the initial sound and then clipping a peg on it. You can find my post about this activity HERE, which includes links to go grab it yourself.

These cubes are so versatile! These have clear pockets on them which means you can use them in reading, writing, maths..... In this activity (for my lower students) they were working on letter id and what sounds does the letter make. They would roll the dice, say the sounds and record on their whiteboard. For my more capable groups, I had various sight words and they completed the same activity. I bought the cubes on Amazon and may need to get another set!

Reading an unfamiliar text was one of our groups. They read with the support teacher who does all the orientation to the text, questions etc and then read the same book with me the following week so they can have a chance to demonstrate fluency, expression, pause etc

Here is another initial sounds sheet I made up for the kiddies. They had to say the word, isolate the sound and then match it to the letter on the page. I just concentrated on letters we have focused on recently

And one of the favourites of the week, the iPad/iPod station. We do have school iPads but we are currently setting them up to be available as class sets. This is my own iPad and my husbands iPod. We were playing Eggy Alphabet and Eggy Words. Go and find them in the app store - you wont be disappointed.

Next weeks focus is making CVC words so I will be busy this weekend making some activities for this focus ....that is after I do some work on my reports :)

Happy Friday!

Initial and final sounds

I am now in week 3 of literacy work stations. Last week, as you might have seen on instagram, I had a rhyming focus, with lots of rhyming activities. This proved to be too big a jump for the kiddies, so this week its back to basics with initial and ending sounds.

I *heart* having my very own product tester at home and it is pretty cool that she says and I quote "I love testing things for you Mum!" Wonder if I should be paying her royalties of some description?

This is what you get - There are 48 cards in total (2 for each initial sound) plus 2 blanks. I have even included a black and white version for you if colour printing isnt your thing. All you need extra is some pegs or paper clips or even a white board marker to colour in the correct letter for the sound.

Also notice my dry erase pocket in the background? They are from My Binding. I was sent a pack to use and review.

 First we concentrated on initial sounds. Say the word, isolate the sound and clip it! Easy and fun!

 This was Miss M's idea, to clip it next to the letter. Otherwise she couldnt see the letter she had picked.

 And one more - darling graphics from my girl Mel Graphics from the Pond

The completed cards we were testing :)

Then we used the recording sheet in the dry erase pockets and did the same thing but this time we had to record the letters that made the initial sound. The sheets were great to write on and rubbed off really easily. I love the idea of less copies!

On to ending/final sounds. (can you see the light saber in the background? lol)

 All clipped up and record to see if we understood the concepts.

Ending sounds recording sheet where Miss M recorded the letters that made those sounds.

So what do you think? I usually give one of my new packs away. So just let me know what you would use it for or maybe just how cute you think it is hehehe. I will pick a random number after 24 hours :)

Click on any picture to go and grab it at my TPT store.

Shopped and dropped!

Love me a sale! Love me some teachers!

Combine both!

Awesomeness or for those out there who love HIMYM....

Legend....

wait for it......

dary!

I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin to share my shopping!

CVC Scoops from Annie Moffatt

Geoboard Madness Goodness - First Grade Blue Skies

Cute little vowel clipart from AliMath (no she is not just all about Maths!!)

Maths Funness! from Doodle Bugs

Maths Fluency Pack from Deedee Wills

Glittery Phone goodness from Glitter and Glue **heart** these

and what sale would be complete without a purchase from my girl Mel @ Graphics from the Pond?

Go and share what you bought....or just add some more stuff to your wishlist (like me heehee)

Instagram baby

You have seen it on all the blogs you follow. You may have wondered why (I know I did!) You may have even joined up yourself to see what all the fuss was about....

So if you are on Instagram why not follow me!

And while you are at it, go and link up with Teacher Talk Tuesday. 

Currently and a Sale!

I can't believe how fast these currently's come around!

Is it sad that as teachers we measure our lives in terms, semesters and holiday breaks!

Listening - we saw Wreck It Ralph for the first time last night and at the present moment, we have watched it 3 times and downloaded the game onto the Ipad.

Loving - We are still having some beautiful warm and sunny days. Please dont leave me warmth!

Thinking - As I move into assessment and reporting time, I reflect on how far some kids in my class have come. Lots of them couldnt write their name and didnt know how to hold pencils or scissors. **insert proud teacher face here**

Wanting - enough said. YUCK!

Needing - I think I would like a new cardi for Mothers Day. Hmmmm

No bucket list for me. Just my winter woolies :)

Go link up!

Psssst. Did you know there is a big sale planned for next week?

Click the pic to visit my store

I can make numbers!

Oh.my.word.

Today was my first day back with the kiddies for the term.

To sum it up in one word

exhausting!

It was like trying to teach Kindergarten how to behave at school again as well as try and start some work.

Phew!

Hope tomorrow is better.

We used one of my packs I havent blogged about before -

 I tried out my activity with Miss M last night :)

 

 I grabbed the twenty frames out the pack (there is also ten frames for differentiation), a ten sided dice and a handful of counters.

We would roll the dice and add that many counters to our twenty frame - practicing one to one correspondence and counting as well as forward number word sequence and a little bit of addition (we were talking about how many in the top and bottom row of each ten frame, how many more to fill it etc).

When we got close to the end, we were only allowed to roll the exact number to be the winner - if you rolled more you missed your turn.

She loves to beat me! And I love it when she does :)

It also has a ten frame version for those students still dealing with numbers 0-10 and for working on Friends of Ten activities.

Grab it in the store by clicking any picture and have some ten frame/twenty frame fun in your classroom too.