Five for Friday - May 31

Its Five for Friday!!! Thanks Kacey at DoodleBugs

 1. I got my very own guided reading table on Monday and immediately built it, ready for groups on Tuesday. The kids are loving it! And so am I. So easy to monitor each kid and I think it is helping with the focus. It is from IKEA and has adjustable legs so we can always make it a standing table too. The model is HISSON cashew shaped table.

 2. This week we were working on counting forwards and backwards - specifically the language of before and after which a lot of my kids are struggling with. they had to roll a dice, write that number, then write the numbers that came after (for 2 days) or before (2 more days).

 3. This is a great idea I saw last year sometime on Deanna Jumps blog and I have been anxiously waiting for my kids to be at that point! Blending CVC words with magnetic counters and magnetic wands! These fantastic CVC cards are From the Pond and they are fantastic!Click HERE to find them. So many differentiated sets to choose. I am going to do a little video of using this activity over the weekend and post to the blog. 

4. Our letter of the week was E! This cute craft was so much fun and let the students show their creativity! It is Elmer the Elephant. I found the free outline HERE

5. Yesterday was my birthday. My friends at work always spoil each other. This was what I saw after work on Friday when I thought we were just going to have some drinks - my very own 1 Direction party. (And no, Im not some super obsessed fan....its like our running joke!) But it was awesome and we ended up drinking Moet champagne from 1D paper cups. A great end to my birthday :)

Jack in the Box - Tuesday Art Linky

My sweet friend Mel has a fun weekly link up.

I wanted to share this craft we made last week for our week on 'j'.We made Jack in the Box (es)

It is actually a craft from Mels pack Craft Projects - 26 Fold and Create Paper Crafts

I took the clown template and gave it a bit of adjusting (as all good teachers do).
And taadaaa.......

How cute are they?

Lots of different skills involved including colouring, cutting, gluing, folding and peeling and sticking stickers.

Took us forever but the outcome was totally worth it :)

Graduation Bands - FOREVER FREEBIE!

I know a lot of you are coming up to the end of the year.

And the end of the year gets expensive!! Craft, student and teacher gifts.....

So how about a fun, easy and no prep way to celebrate?

It is all on one piece of paper. Just print, colour, cut and glue! Easy and fun :)

And the best part is I have made them from PreK up to 6 so you can use them for years to come.

Click the pic to go and grab them from my TPT store and I would love if you left some feedback.

A peek at the week

I had a bit of a rocky week which started with me having 2 days off with tonsillitis. I probably should have had another day to recover, but teacher guilt got me! Here are some of the things we squeezed into 3 days!

It was 'p' week! We started off brainstorming p words - the kids came up with so many, I ran out of room!

We learned how to correctly write p. This is a handwriting booklet we use every week with our focus letter. You can find it in my TPT store, but in a more generic font (the font pictured is my state font). Click HERE to see it

We looked for p words in this fun activity Beginning Sounds Color It from Lavinia Pop

We had an indepth look at number 8 (another one from my TPT store) Click HERE to see it

P sequencing - each week we read a 'big book' with the same word pattern and different words subsistuted on each page. This week was "I can see the ......" I chose pig because I thought it was a great word for sounding out. Look at the super cute pictures! I am so proud of this writing - after only 9 weeks at school :)

We tried some sight word writing as a group with my pocket dice.

On Friday, we went to the circus on an excursion in the morning which was so much fun for the kids :) Afterwards back at school, we tackled our letter of the week craft - Pink and Purple popcorn. The cute popcorn box is from Krista Wallden's popcorn set. We coloured in in a pattern with pink and purple crayon, then put our fingers to work with some scrunching of crepe paper. The kids found this really therapeutic! 

How was your week?

Reflecting on the week in KB

I have been a bit of an inconsistent blogger. We have been doing so much great stuff in Kindergarten and the kids are a dream! (well most of the time lol) It is one of those groups of kids that for the rest of their school career people will just say WOW (you know, like the 100 year flood, once in a lifetime and you'll never forget it) Anyway....here is a look at some of the things we have been up to in the last couple of weeks.

Every week we look at a letter in focus and end the week with Friday Funday (also known as double bee Friday, where kids get double the reward - bees on their chart). Every Friday morning, we do craft to compliment the focus letter and 2 Fridays ago we made these fun igloos. We try to incorporate many different art/craft techniques to get students feeling confident in all aspects of art and craft. For this one, we used sponges to do the background with paint, then crayon to colour the small elements on the eskimo and penguins and finally the cutting and gluing onto the painted background. I evn made my kids mount their own artworks, as it gave me a little look at their spacial awareness (could they place it in the middle of the backing page). Then for some fun, I sprayed them all with glitter hairspray (which got me in a tonne of trouble from the cleaner!)

For maths this week, it more dice pattern and numeral ID stuff. The kids got really great at it and by the end of the week ( as we played this game 4 days in a row) I only had 3 kids out of 22 who subitizing was not automatic. And of those 3, 2 of them were only struggling with the number 4 for some reason. You can grab these freebie game mats in my post HERE.

I shared this one on Instagram and FB - we have a new reading corner! I had the shelving, benches and mat, but last weekend my boss bought me this tent at IKEA. All it took was a little rearranging of furniture and ta-da. The kids beg to be able to go and read when they are finished so it is definitely working. Do you have a fun reading corner?

Ahhhhhhh book club! It is one of the best presents! Eve if you have to give it to yourself. With both of my own children at school (in K and Yr1) books are definitely devoured in my house. The top spread is all the ones I bought for home while the bottom row is more to add to the classroom library. And for the second month in a row, my book club bill has been over $100....dont tell the husband please lol.

Thursday we celebrated the 40th anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We read the story in class and I was surprised to see how many students were not familiar with the story. Then we made these cute headbands to make us look like caterpillars from the story - the kids and the parents loved them! 

We dont just craft in Kinder, but these are the only other pics I took last week. We had a focus on R and made this gorgeous rainbow. The techiniques we use were chipping and gluing and it incorporated a lot of talking about colours as well as the size of the segments of the rainbow. The finished product, with cotton wool cloud, looks so fabulous hung in my room :)

Wow, what a week (and a bit). I will try hard to take photos of some other learning that is going on. AND I am almost ready for a classroom tour now my room is looking so colourful and inviting.

Alpha-bands!

Just wanted to show you something new I added to my TPT store tonight. This pack was born because YOU asked for it after seeing a pic of mine on Instagram. If you feel like following I am brookeb80.

I made an 'i' headband for my Kinders last week to practice their letter formation as well as looking at initial sounds and working on our fine motor skills of tracing, cutting and colouring. We made our headbands during our morning group time and it was fully assembled and ready to wear in 15 minutes! And no, it wasnt a fluke as I managed to get through this activity with 3 different groups of kids.

So the whole set has been created - from A - Z. (x is treated as a final sound rather than an X for Xray).

Have a look!

How cute is my model? That is my son Cameron who is in Kindergarten this year (and no, not at my school). The pictures above take you through step by step just how easy it is for little people to create an alpha-band.

You can go and download the 'i' version from TPT as the preview of the whole file.

Click on any pic to take you to TPT.

Five for Friday!! A look at my week

Hi all. I have been wanting to blog all week but I just never can find the energy at the moment. But here I am, sharing a snap shot and linking up

1. How sweet is this clip art? I bought a BUNCH of stuff from Kari Bolt during the last sale and made this fun little subtraction pack for little learners. An addition pack will be coming soon too! Click HERE to visit her Facebook page and HERE to find this pack on TPT

2. It was 'i' week this week so we made these headbands in our fine motor/oral language groups. It only took them about 15 minutes to cut, colour and assemble so it was a great activity! I will be posting the full set of these basic alphabet bands in my TPT store over the weekend. Make sure you like my FB page so you will know when they are listed (I might even be keen to give one or two away!)

3. Another activity from our groups this week was shaving cream writing. It was our first time trying this and we will definitely do it again (just not sure how much 'writing' went on as we were too busy giggling about how the shaving cream felt)

4. One last activity from groups - GEOBOARDS. I bought a geo board pack quite a long time ago and thought this was a great time to use it. The shapes were quite challenging for my Kinders but they had lots of fun. Pack from First Grade Blue Skies

5. This one is from last Friday (I can still include it can't I?) We have been trying to use different craft/art techniques each week on Friday Funday - yes it is a thing in our class. These cute "crocodiles" came from the ever talented Mel From the Pond. We painted the bodies the day before, then cut the next day, did our paper accordian folding (which is a lot harder than it looks for a 5 year old lol) and did the teeth. I actually glued the template onto foil so the teeth would look shiny :) Funny story though, when I took the paper home to glue on, I discovered I only had purple foil. Add a googly eye and it was done! Click HERE to go and look at it in Mel's TPT store. And HERE is a blog post from Mel showcasing some of the awesome things you can make from this pack.

You made it to the end! Great! I am going to give away one of my Subtraction Task Cards for Little Learners (seen above). Just leave a comment with something you did in class this week (dont forget your email address). I will pick a random winner on Sunday (Syd time)

AND

The generous Mel of From the Pond has kindly offered to give away one of her Craft Projects - 26 Fold and Create Paper crafts. Go and show her some love on her BLOG or TPT store

Love this girl!

So that is 2 lucky winners! Leave your comment to be entered!

Five For Friday!

I havent linked up for such a long time but being back in the classroom makes me excited and I want to share with you what I got up to this week. 

On Tuesday we returned to work after a 5 week break....bleh!

In my state (NSW) all Kindergarten students are to be assessed using the Best Start Assessment within the first 5 weeks of school. We choose to do it in the first few days so we can sit one on one and then students start the week after. So I think after a total of 20 assessments...I was pretty over the story "The Long Walk" (I can hear other NSW teachers nodding)

My little girl went back to school too - into Year 1! I cant believe Kinder is behind her. My son starts Kinder on Monday so expect another pic next week. After her second day, she told me Year 1 was very hard. Love that kid.

I know you have seen these on pinterest and maybe even made your own. This is my first attempt at the 1st day of school frame (sorry about the glare in this pic)

First week we look at 'a' so this is my test run of our craft for 'a'. Another Pinterest inspired creation with a Brooke twist :) Click the pic to grab the 'a' and the leaves (thanks to Mel @Graphics from the Pond for the leaf clip art)

How was your week??