Five for February

So for the first time this year, I am joining in a link up! And I'm picking Doodle Bugs' Five for Friday.

1

I started the term with a couple of weeks on Space and the result of a Maths craftivity making rockets out of 2D shapes and some experimentation with marbling inks and their effects to make planets, was this display.

2

As part of learning about Chinese New Year, we read the story 'The Great Race' and made a small world version for the children to use to retell the story. Though if I'm honest they most just took the rat around the classroom...

3

In the Messy Play area, we had cooked noodles and various tongs and chopsticks to experiment with. Only one child tried to eat it so I consider it a success!

4

This idea was part of the parent activity afternoon we had, where the parent reps from all the classes organised games and crafts for the children to do. Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of the finished firework pictures.

5

The excitement of this term is the introduction of some letters to begin learning to write our names. Look at this beautiful curly caterpillar! 

#TPTBEMINE

I sometimes forget I have a TPT store, but I have actually read about the TPT Be Mine Sale tomorrow and Wednesday in time to ready my store and let you all know! What a great time to stock up on some special treats for yourself or your class! Who needs a real Valentine when you can buy yourself a Valentine's treat?! 

Everything in mine and many others' shops will be 20% off and then use the code LOVETPT to get an extra discount! 

January's Bookshelf

One of the (many!) blogs I follow is Lucky to be in First and last week she wrote a post talking about what she has read in January. I thought I would 'magpie' this idea as I'm an avid reader, both with my class and personally and share some of the books I've been reading in the month of January (and I'm going to be super strict and not include what I've already finished in February!) So though not strictly a 'teaching' post, here are some of my recommended reads from January (maybe you can enjoy them on half-term!)

(I should mention here that I have no affiliate links to Amazon!)

'A Man Called Ove' by Fredrik Blackman

I read this for my book club and really enjoyed it! Very similar style of writing to The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared, I was in tears by the ending. It took a while to get into as frankly all that happened was Ove complaining about everything, but after a couple of chapters I was hooked.

'The Stranger in my Home' by Adele Parks

Reminded me of Gone Girl or Girl on a Train with the twist and suspense. Not as scary as I first thought, but an interesting read and thought provoking situation. 

'Six of Crows' and 'Crooked Kingdom' by Leigh Bardugo

These books are for fans of George RR Martin or Sarah J Maas. Epic fantasy series (there is a another trilogy set in the same world). Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of one of the six main characters whilst still following a main storyline. 

'Feversong' by Karen Marie Morning

Another fantasy book, and the conclusion of the Fever series. I have been hooked by MacKayla and Barrons' adventures since Darkfever and have had this on my wishlist for months. I have ended up with more questions than answers though with the ending, so hopefully the spin off series might resolve some of those!

I've had plenty of time to read this month as I've just had my half-term break (tomorrow is the beginning of a long stretch until Easter break!) and I should return to school rested and rejuvenated! And maybe even inspired to blog some more! Why not head over to Lucky to be in First and see her January bookshelf for more ideas?

Throwback - Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is very early this year, meaning that we have an extremely short half-term (3 weeks!) followed by a rather long 7 weeks until Easter. Still the Year of the Rooster will be properly celebrated with some old favourites and new ideas (adapted to my slightly younger age-group). To kick-start your ideas here is a throwback post to last year...

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Original post - 5th February 2016

A CNY-themed Five for Friday link-up today. Why not head over to DoodleBugs and see what everyone else has been up to this week?

1

Chinese New Year is a big big deal where I currently teach and the school is having a CNY rotation of activities organised by the parents, so I am actually scaling back what I would normally do so as not to take away from their efforts.

My posts from previous years about CNY ideas can be found:
here
and here

I also have a freebie on offer here.

2

I needed a really simple card as with a really tight timetable, unfortunately I didn't have time to do anything overly complicated. This year is the year of the monkey, so I adapted an idea from Adele Jeunette.

3

We made a wishing tree display as a writing focus, using the sentence starter 'I wish' to encourage some use of the recently learnt digraphs! Chinese people have orange trees for luck and prosperity and sometimes write wishes on them. There were some incredibly aspirational wishes ("I wish for diamonds"... please share with your teacher if you find some!) but also some very thoughtful ones.

4

My teaching assistant is a whiz at creative activities and she helped the children to make these beautiful blown ink and finger painted cherry blossom pictures.

5

Chinese New Year wouldn't be complete without plenty of themed books to share with the children. Click on the books for the links to Amazon.