Bright Ideas Blog Hop

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DOLLAR STORE ITEMS IN THE CLASSROOM

Teachers have the ability to go into a dollar store, pick out random items and turn them into a fantastic learning activity which is engaging and relevant. I just wanted to share a couple of these ideas that I have used in my classroom.

PEGS

You can use pegs for lots of things. Clip charts, hanging artwork...but you can also use them for learning. In the pics below, we are using them to choose the medial vowel sound.

MAGNIFYING GLASSES AND FINGER LIGHTS

You can turn dollar store items into reading aids! I used these with my struggling readers during guided reading time and it was certainly more engaging!

PIPE CLEANERS AND BEADS

A fantastic tool for fine motor which links perfectly to Mathematics. You could use it for patterning, use two different colours to work on addition, or what we did in the pic below, use a tag on each pipe cleaner and students added that many beads.

PLASTIC SHOT GLASSES AND MINI POP STICKS

Another great fun activity. In these pics, I labelled each cup with a number, then students had to place that many sticks into the cup. To extend it for some, I had them order the cups. You could also do it as a colour sort, or even sight words!

I hope you have grabbed some bright ideas from this post. Please leave some of your own in the comments.

Hop on over to 

For her Bright Ideas on sharing Visual spelling strategies with parents.

Or cruise the linky for more

10 Top Teacher Tips Linky

 As Aussie teachers get ready to go back for a new year, its always good to share what things get us through the good times and the bad as teachers.

Thanks Lauren for hosting this fun linky.

1. Top Tip for Classroom Organisation FILE! I got this tip from my friend Mel From the Pond. When ever you get a paper at a staff meeting....decide what to do with it! I bought an expanding file and made some labels. If it was minutes, they were filed there. PD was filed in a different tab, Literacy in another one (you get the idea). 
2. Top Tip for Behaviour Management Focus on the positive! I know this is easier said than done but it is important to remind ourselves of this occasionally.  3. Top Tip for being a Team Player This one is hard! I think often it is a bit about letting the control go...You dont HAVE to do everything yourself. If someone offers a hand, take it! Likewise,offer your hand too.
4. Top Tip for Time Management Set yourself working hours. Make sure you leave by x o'clock. It can be easy to say..lll just do one more thing. But make sure that your job doesnt become your everything! Make time for yourself, your partner and your family
5. Top Tip for Engaging Students Make things NEW! Hands on activities, fresh ideas, speaking in a funny voice! You need to look for the thing to catch students attention. Make it interesting and new and the students are yours.
6. Top Tips for getting along with Parents Professionalism. Most parents just want to know that their children and happy and looked after. Conduct your interactions with parents in a way that is professional while communicating the importance of their child.
7. Top Tip for Teacher Fashion. FLATS!
8. Top Tip for Bargain hunting Dollar stores, hardware shops, op shops. Make your money go further by being resourceful and turning unusual things into class resources. For example, you know those super cute animal/transport/fruit math manipulatives that you get from teacher stores? I went to Kmart and bought some packs of insects - perfect for counting, sorting, sharing!
9.Top Tip for Eating well at School Last year I lost nearly 20kg by doing Weight Watchers. To keep on track at school, I drank lots of water, made sure I had my apple for Crunch and Sip every day and took frozen WW meals for lunch each day.
10. Top Tip for Staying Sane Sometimes, it is very easy for things to become a lot bigger than they really are or more emotional. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves to just let things go. We cant fix the world in a day, we cant control everyone and everything. Just control what you can and do the best that you can on that given day.
Go and read some more tips on Laurens blog :)

Literacy Work Stations - Teacher Tip Thursday

Guided reading is definitely not my strong suit. Coming from a primary background, kids usually came to me knowing how to read, with plenty of strategies. Then I was put down to Year 2. Lots of these kids could read up to a certain level but some couldn't! Panic came creeping in. I developed something that worked for me, with those kids, at that time. Panic subsided.

Enter Kindergarten.

Wow!

Know I need to know how to give them the strategies they need to read, to listen, to speak, to write.... you know where I am going.

Enter Debbie Diller.

I read something in a blog post while cruising Pinterest about a book of hers called Literacy Work Stations. I thought I should give it a shot, bought it on Book Depository and it arrived yesterday.

Wow again.

I am only up to chapter 4 but my head is so full of ideas of how to manage groups while the kids are involved in meaningful learning. One of these ideas leads me to....

One of my recent TPT purchase was a fabulous set from Keeping Life Creative. It is a felt story set of the Hungry Caterpillar. Click HERE to go and see it on TPT. 

At the time, I only bought it because of its uniqueness, but after reading some of my new book, my ideas got going!

I was going to use the pieces to create a drama/puppet set and get the students to retell the story!!!

Firstly I cut out each piece, then laminated and cut again. I usually hate that extra step but thought it would be worth it in this case :) How cute are these pieces!!

 Then I sticky taped a long thin paddle pop stick on the back.

How cute is this guy?? Taadaa....puppets!

He was still hungry so he ate through a piece of chocolate cake......

If you love these felt creations, she has other story sets available too! Go and visit her blog/website too http://keepinglifecreative.com/

I see this workstation being a favourite as I develop other sets of characters from well known stories. I hope this is something you might use in your room too :)

And exhale.... Thursday Tip!

Term one is complete! I have to say that I am surprised! Surprised that I have enjoyed Kindergarten so much. Surprised that I have coped (sometimes I am not the most patient person hehe). Surprised at how much fun we have. And finally, surprised at how far these kiddies have come!!!

Which leads me to.... 

This idea came from Pinterest (I think). When your kiddies are just learning to write letters and numbers, or struggle with certain things, in the past I have often tried to draw dotted lines for them to trace over. But then I found a tip that changed my life.

HIGHLIGHTERS! 

Thanks Mel @ Graphics from the Pond for this cute little highlighter fellow!

 To help your kiddies, simply carry a highlighter around, show them a few times with the highlighter and then they are able to trace or channel the letter or number they are struggling with. 

We were finding 8 quite tricky this week. There was a lot of high lighter happiness going around! The kids told me they prefer yellow lol.

Hope this is something you can use in your classroom

Teacher Tip Thursday

Firstly thanks for the kind comments about my video post last week :) I will definitely consider it again one day....

But my tip for this week is to do with Facebook.

You may have noticed a lot of people have a 'blog/business' Facebook page which they use to promote their blog and TPT/TN stores. This is great! I have had mine for a while and it has been building nicely. It is easy to use and not a big hassle to switch between your personal page and your blog page. But anyway...on to the tip.

I have seen many people posting the link to their product in the comments section. At first I thought why? But now I know a couple of reasons and I thought I would share with you.

1. By not posting the link directly in the post, you can upload a much larger picture rather than the very small thumbnails. You know how visual the internet is right? Catch some more attention with a bigger pic.

2. I read something recently about Facebook not promoting posts which contain links that direct traffic AWAY from Facebook. So if you are posting links directly in the post part, all of your followers may not be seeing all of your posts. By putting the link in the first comment, it allows more people to see the post and consequently drives more traffic to your link.

Maybe this is something you can try :)

Teacher Tip Thursday

Well this week, I thought I would try something different for

So without further ado......here is my first video tip! Apologies about the hair lol

Would love you to let me know what you think!

Teacher Tip Thursday

Hey all

Just a quick one today as I am feeling a bit tired! I don't know if you have ever taught the grade your children are in but teaching Kinder and having my daughter in Kinder too is a bit rough at the moment. We have started homework this week as well as sight words and home reading......The best bit is that she is super keen to do it all...but the worst bit is that she wants to do it all at once and then be done with it (not her mothers daughter much hehehe). I have been trying to explain that we need to practice so we can learn...but you know 5 year olds!

Anyway....

Do you hate how you store your dice? Does it make it a chore for you to distribute dice to groups or for the kids to find what they are looking for? You might be interested in one of these...

It is a plastic bead box. I bought mine from Woollies for about $4. You can then use it to turn your dice into this.....

This is not mine - for the life of me I cannot find the images I took, but you get the idea. (Click the picture to go to the original pin). I store all my small dice - numbers, dot dice, ten sided, 12 sided, decimal, hundreds, 8 sided. It make it neat and accessible for everyone and then it has a spot to be returned to as well.

Why not go and a grab a box and transform your dice storage?

Teacher Tip Thursday - Making Maths Games

Well it has been a very busy and somewhat disheartening week.

Firstly my main USB storage device was left in the computer overnight - and we had wild storm and weather which resulted in our house having a blackout. The result - power surge through computer and fried USB with no way to recover data :(

But anyways.....here it is

Making maths games for your class doesn't have to mean lots of printing and laminating. You can also create some really great games with things you find in the local $2 shop. This game that I am going to share with you cost me a grand total of about $6.

So what do you need? I bought some plastic shot glasses, some small craft sticks (you could use match sticks too) and some little plastic ziplock bags (snack size fit this game perfectly).

I divided the glasses into groups of ten and then stuck a label onto each one with numbers 1-10 (I didnt include 0 but you could!) Then I put about 50 sticks into the bag.

 I made 5 sets of these, but I did each set of numbers in a different colour, so that WHEN kids don't pack up properly and I find the cups on the floor later, I can return them to the correct set.

Here are all my little sets in a big plastic folder .

 The kids sort all the cups onto the table and then place the correct amount of sticks into the cups, as determined by the number. I have some students who are still struggling with numeral ID so I am actually going to add a second sticker that has dots on it, so that they can participate in this activity and build their number knowledge too.

For my capable students I was asking them to order the numbers too. For those who could do that, I was getting them to order them in descending order too.

Because the activity it very hands on, my kids found this one extremely engaging. As we progress, I will make another set of cups for numbers 11-20 and just switch out the old cups.

I hope you have enjoyed this tip and go and do some $2 store shopping on the weekend to create your own version of this game :)

Bee Police - Teacher Tip Thursday

Ahhhhh news - it is one of those 'necessary evils' in K-2. We want to encourage them to talk, express themselves, build confidence.....the list of skills goes on. However, news can be a painful experience at times if you don't have any guidelines (as I learned the very very hard way in my first year of Year 2).

Enter the tools of news :)

1. Timer

We have a IWB and I usually select a timer. I put a count down clock on the board and show the kids how to set it for 1min 30sec (I think thats pretty generous). It counts down and the timer usually choose a fun sound effect to indicate that time is up. The students know that as soon as the noise goes off, it is their cue to ask Any questions?

2. Limit of 2 questions.
That's it. No discussion.

3. Bee Police
Our behaviour system is based on our rules Be Kind Be Safe Be Fair and the students get bees for being a great student/trying hard/giving me presents etc etc. In order to promote good listening during news, I have a Bee Police who watches for listeners during news and gets to award those students bees at the end. This year they also get to wear a cool badge that I made and also a set of bee antennae that I bought at Woolies (sorry no pic of the headband-yet!!!).

What are your tips for news time?

Teacher Tip Thursday on Saturday!

Well it has been one of those weeks...but I am so happy with what I have accomplished with my Kinders in such a short time. We are sitting quietly on the floor, raising our hand to speak and taking turns like champions. Go KB!!!

One thing we are trying to do a lot of is name practice. I have about 5 kids who cannot write their names. Each child (Courtesy of my awesome teaching neighbour) has their own handwriting car where they must trace and copy twice with a whiteboard marker. Then they rub out and repeat.

This was causing a bit of drama which leads me to....

To help your munchkins rub out their whiteboard marker work when it is on laminated paper, you must get yourself some of these - 

These little babies are a little expensive, but if you chop them up and make small ones, you can probably make a class set out of a few packets.

I bought mine at Woolies for $4 a pack, but I managed to make 8 out of this 2 pack. And it means that the kids aren't complaining about not being able to rub out!

I hope this tip is helpful to you :) And I promise I will be back more regularly soon.

Teacher Tip Thursday

I can't believe it is Thursday again! I am feeling swamped with school (without even having a day with the kids besides their assessment interviews) but I have to tell you that I have found Best Start Assessments fascinating!!

My tip for this week is organisation - and this is my goal for this year! I got this tip from Mel @ From the Pond - see her original post here.

Get an accordion file and label the tabs. In mine (no pics at the moment sorry) it has communication meetings, ALERT (out literacy program), TEN (maths program) and sport labels. 

After you have a staff meeting where you collect paper get given important notes, file them in the appropriate file space. This eliminates your desk/office/handbag becoming a breeding ground for paper. And if it doesn't have a space, either make one or BIN IT!!

My biggest goal is be an organised teacher this year and I hope this will help me (and you too!!)

Teacher Tip Thursday

I thought I would try and do a bit of a 'tips' series of things I have found useful in the classroom, in organisation and even with the blogging/resource creating side of things.

So I bring you....

Thanks Graphics from the Pond and Jessica Weible. 

My tip for you this week is about pencils. When I made the switch from teaching the older kids in Grade 5 and 6, down to Year 2, pencils were a whole new deal for me. We supplied them, needed to sharpen them and keep them on the tables at all times. What? I tried a few different things until I caught onto this one.

Cups - plastic drinking cups from the cheap shop (to be exact Go-Lo/Crazy Clarks for my Aussie friends). The reason that I think these are great is because they are a bit on the heavy side and it is a little harder to know them over. They come in a set of $4 for 3 cups and believe me, they have been worth it! I bought some 2 years ago for my class and decided they needed replacing. So little Miss Maddie and I went into school today with the new pencil cups and.....

 Taaaadaaaa - the end result! My baskets for the tables, ready to go.

One more job to tick off the list!