Swap, Share, Give!

I am so excited to be part of this awesome product swap, linky and giveaway with my very talented Aussie blogger friends. We have lots of great products, freebies and a GIVEAWAY to share with you to help as you get back into the swing of a new school year, or for any Aussie teachers, to help you finish the year off well.

The Low-Down

We will each link-up to:

SWAP a product with a partner from the same year level;

SHARE a great Freebie; and

GIVE you a chance to win one of each product from the swap, just enter the giveaway on any of our posts.

Without further ado...

SWAP

I was teamed up with Lauren from 

It was hard to pick something to try out...they all looked so cute! But I settle on this fun CVC game.

The great thing about this game is that Lauren has included HEAPS of cards with different CVC words. I picked a couple of pages and to keep it simple and have a really good practice of those words included. You can always switch out the words and then you have a whole new game! 

 Pick a card and read it. If you can read it, you can keep it!

 Uh oh.....this was my first go :( Shark means all the cards go back.....to make it even more exciting, we might have been yelling out Shark Attack ;)

Sorry....all those cards are going back

I enjoyed using this game because it encouraged sounding out. Thanks Lauren for sharing it with me :)

Make sure you go and check out Lauren's TPT store too.

SHARE

Grab this cute number matching freebie from my store. Perfect for little learners.

GIVE

Enter the Rafflecopter below to win a copy of each of the fantastic products that have been included in our linky. Make sure you check out all the other link-ups below to find some more great products & freebies.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Two for Tuesday and Meet me Monday!

I know I am a little behind, but I am going to participate in The Teaching Tribune Summer linkies :)

First my Dice and Card Games is 50% off - only $3.75! You could use these games from K-2.

and second is Alphabands which at 50% off is only $2! (and this one is on my list for a revision, so if you buy it now, you get the revisions for free!)

Click on the pictures to go to the product!

And to catch up......

Friends of Ten Bracelets - Bright Ideas!

If you haven't seen the Bright Ideas link up before, you have been missing out! Ideas from 100+ bloggers for you to implement in your classroom and all the ideas are FREE! No products to buy! How great is that?

This month my Bright Idea is Friends of Ten bracelets. We have been talking about which numbers make ten in class and although we have been working a lot with ten frames, I thought we needed to see it a little differently.

You will need some pipe cleaners and some beads (here I had a jar of cut up straw which certainly worked fine!)

We sat in a big circle and talked about the Friends of Ten. Then I distributed bowls of straws and asked the kids to thread ten pieces onto their pipe cleaner (fine motor skills and maths unite!)

As we went through the Friends of Ten, we were able to separate the straws into two separate groups. Here you can see the friends of ten are 2 (on the left) and 8.

After we had had some fun moving the straws around, I handed out whietboards and textas and we recorded what we saw.

Of course sometimes we make mistakes, but having the concrete example there was easy to draw that students attention back to the friends of ten they had had a problem with and get them to remake it. Instant assessment!

If you liked this Bright Idea, make sure you follow me on Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram.

And for more Bright Ideas from over 100 bloggers, look through the linkup below for ideas that will suit your grade level.

An InLinkz Link-up

Another Free Font Friday!!!

Here is my font for you for this week. It is a little 'rough' but I think it still is a fun alternative font for you to use :) Personal and commercial ok (simple credit would be great!)

Click the picture to go and download it for FREE!

Snowman! Tuesday Art Linky

Last week we were looking at the letter S. We made this totally pinterest inspired snowman artwork :)

It was a very simple activity which combined cutting, gluing and the a little bit of paint right at the end. Super cute!

And I have uploaded the templates I made for the main pieces for you to Google Docs so you make your own snowman :)

Click the pic to go and grab your templates.

Organising Table Supplies - Another Bright Idea

I hope you are loving the Bright Ideas Linky hosted by Shelley Gray. It is such a fun and innovative idea to find a wealth of knowledge and information from REAL teachers using these REAL Bright Ideas in their classrooms. Make sure you click back to the linky to find over 100 more great Bright Ideas from teachers around the world!

My Bright Idea is all about how to organise those table essentials. In Kindergarten we supply everything for the students (and beg for donations of glue sticks along the way). Last year I had everything in cups and found that my kids must have been eating the supplies! Red pencils seemed to disappear into the ether but the purples were breeding. And don't get me started about the accidents....the pencil cups just always seemed to be on the edge of falling over (probably because of all the random pencils in there). AND the fights! I had a group of boys last year whose goal it was to have the most pencils in their cups. Did they want to use them all? No way, just collect them to be the winner.

I really wanted those cute caddies you see from Really Great Stuff or Oriental Trading but shipping to Australia is rather ridiculous. Enter the humble cutlery drainer from the $2 shop (you know, where you put your knife and fork to dry?)

Anyway this is what I started with

The baskets cost me $1.50 each and I bought 1 between 2 kids. I also bought new scissors this year for my class in 4 different colours and these colours are exclusive to each table. Each student gets a glue stick each.

Top view - there are 4 compartments. I use one side for coloured pencils and the other side holds glue in one section and scissors in the other.

See?

Pencils in the other side.

The finished basket.

Here they are on tables in the classroom. The kids have been fantastic and will let me know if they have too many of one colour pencil or there are no scissors  because someone has accidentally returned them to a different basket. Even pencils on the floor usually get returned to their rightful home as we can quickly see which basket is missing that colour.

Trust me...I am not an over-the-top-organised person, but for some reason this has really worked with me and I will definitely be doing it for years to come :)

If you enjoyed this Bright Idea you can follow me on TPT, Facebook and Pinterest for more!

And for more Bright Ideas from over 130 bloggers, make sure you visit the link up below and find what you need!

An InLinkz Link-up

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 :)

Swap, Share, Give: A blog linky from Down Under!

Since being on TPT, I have made some connections with some AMAZING women and men...and the best part is that some of these people I have been fortunate to connect with are from my part of the world -Australia!

So one of these lovely ladies Lauren from Love, Laughter and Learning in Prep came up with a few of us having a bit of a product swap, I was in.

So I bring you

I was paired up with Bec from Books Bugs and Boxes

I picked her Squiggles and Wiggles pack and had a bit of fun at home with my kids testing it out!

Firstly we tried out the full page squiggle where you are provided with one or two elements to build your picture around. The kids enjoyed this one with the big cheesy smiles.

Next we tried out the mini-squiggle page, where there are 4 small boxes with 'squiggle starters'. We found this one a lot more challenging as it was pure imagination!

Last, I tried out the activity cards. You could chop these up and get students to select one or two, but we used it like a grid, and tried to choose something on each line horizontally. Definitely a challenge! But easy enough to change the difficulty by only including cards you think your kids could do.

For the two squiggles that rhyme, Miss M drew Mum. I asked what rhymed with Mum that she could draw. The answer was "Ive got it covered, I drew a bum!" Insert hysterical laughter here

It was a fun pack to use and would be great as a reward or early finisher activity, especially since it comes with a few writing pages to write about the squiggles.

Thanks Bec for sharing this with me!

More sharing! Just wanted to share with you a great freebie for practicing counting on your IWB. You can find it, and many others in my TPT store.

And for the giving part of my title - all the ladies who have participated in this swap are giving you the chance to win! All of the products showcased will be bundled into one big grand prize!!! Just use the Rafflecopter to enter and goodluck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway