Easter bits and pieces

We interrupted regular lessons to squeeze in a few Easter/Spring activities.

The children wrote acrostic poems for EASTER (sorry forgot to take photos!) which were very sweet (even the one that had randomly the line "elephants are big" in). I've decided to put them up in a display interspersed with bunny rabbit faces we made using an idea I found on dltk-kids.

They made chick Easter baskets which I filled with packets of mini eggs at lunchtime. I told the kids that the Easter bunny visited while they were out playing! The baskets were based on a pin I saw from Blog Me Mum.

Let's go green!

And celebrate St.Patrick's Day!

What are you doing with your class? 

We made leprechauns that I found from a pin from Theme Party Palace.

We also made a different type of leprechaun adapted from one I saw on I {heart} crafty things. 

Next week during our Reading Roundabout we are going to be using the sight word board games from Make, Take and Teach, but with some little counters that I made from some St.Patrick's Day clip art from My Cute Graphics.

The Challenge Area is equipped with my Leprechaun Number Bonds to 10 (grab this freebie from my store!).

I'm also quite tempted to make the children watch Leprechaun Gold because its a classic!

Happy (early) St.Patrick's Day to you all!

Finally Friday (Saturday)

I am such an irregular poster! Barely making 1 post a week at the moment, so much for my target of 2-3 times! Work is so busy, I guess I'm low on inspiration at the moment! Anyway here is one of my favourite link-ups to participate in, Doodlebugs' Five for Friday.

1

Valentine's day sentences from First Grade and Fabulous. A very popular task at the Challenge Area this week. I chose the version without capital letters and full stops, so the children had to re-write it correctly.

2

Finger spacer in action! I stuck on an image of 'Fiona Finger Space' who is one of our Sentence Superheroes who help us with our sentence writing.

3

A little Valentine's craft with my extra-curricular club. Lovebirds!

4

Chinese New Year decorations my children made last week (had to come down today to make room for some paintings we did).

5

I was nominated for a Liebster Award by Sarah from Chicken Soup for the Autism Teacher's Soul this week. I shall accept in another post once I've chosen which fellow blogs I'm going to nominate! 

How to... make goldfish sun catchers

Thought I would write a How to for my goldfish that I made for Chinese New Year. They are considered lucky at this time of year especially due to their association with abundance of gold.

Goldfish Sun Catchers

You will need:

• sticky back plastic
• orange/yellow tissue paper squares
• permanent marker
• scissors
• goldfish colouring or outline

What to do:

1. Print out a simple goldfish colouring or outline (mine was from Activity Village) and blue-tak a piece of sticky back plastic over the top, shiny side up.

2. Using a black permanent marker, trace over the lines of the drawing.

3. Peel off the stick back plastic and cover the drawing with small pieces of tissue paper. I used a combination of yellow and orange. Allow the pieces to overlap slightly.

4. Cut out the goldfish. (You can cover the tissue paper with a second piece of sticky back plastic, however, I chose to leave it open since that side could face the window).

5. Display in the window.

Five For Friday (or Saturday!)

One day I'll actually manage to post this on a Friday...

1

Ordinal numbers for the Chinese zodiac race. We ordered the toys! Then a bit of cutting and sticking to ordinal up the animals.

2

Chinese New Year decorations - goldfish! This was something I adapted from several ideas I found on Pinterest and the internet as I had managed to use my entire red tissue paper supply up for Remembrance Day poppies back in November and so decided to use up all my orange and yellow instead!

3

We went outside to practice our phonics skills. Chalk writing to make it that little bit more exciting!

4

Using some my version of a freebie I found from Make Take and Teach r-controlled vowels. The children had to choose the correct sound and clip, turning over to check their answers with a coloured dot behind.

 5

I'm the Featured Freebie on Teaching Blog Addict! So so excited as it was only my second time linking up there! 

Gong xi fa chai (early!)

This topic probably ties with Christmas as one of my favourite topics to do with children in every part of the world I've taught in! I'm going to be teaching this for the 2 weeks leading up to the celebration and using some of the following 8 suggestions (8 because its a lucky number for Chinese!)

1. See-through lanterns for the windows made using tissue paper on tracing paper.

Fun Lesson Plans

2. Teaching ordinal numbers with the help of this video from the British Council called The Great Race. There is also another helpful video on that website called 'My favourite day - Chinese New Year' if you are looking for some simple background to the festival.

3. Last year I used a craft kit to make these lanterns with the children, but this year I may need to try and make my own since my school did not order another kit!

4. The children always love a bit of Chinese calligraphy. I give them some simple Chinese characters to copy such as numbers to 10. 

5. Chinese New Year cards. No picture of this as since the Zodiac year changes each year, I have to come up with something original. This year will be the Year of the Horse, so something horse-related I guess! Look out for pictures in a future blog post.

6. Always a popular end of unit event is to have the children all dress up either in Chinese cheong-sam or simply red (a lucky colour!) and then we taste some Chinese food. Remember if you are buying one for you, long ones are for married women, knee-length for unmarried.

7. Another one for improving gross motor skills is to have them take part in some traditional ribbon dancing. I tie long (1.5m) bits of ribbon to pieces of dowling wood and have the children attempt to copy youtube videos like the one below! 

8. Flicking through Bloglovin' and found this post from Clever Classroom about books she recommends for Chinese New Year. Some of my personal recommendations would include.

Let me know if you try out any of these too and Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Back to work... sigh

So we went back to school after the Christmas break this week. Despite the time going so quickly for me, it was great (mostly!) to get back into the swing of things in class. Here are the highlights of my week in another 'Five for Friday' (despite it being Saturday!) link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching.

1

I started off this week with reading 'Squirrel's New Year's Resolution' and then using a freebie from An Educator's Life called 'New Year, New Me' which was just the sort of fun, but meaningful activity to spend Monday morning doing with some excitable 5 year olds! I hung the finished mobiles across the back of my classroom. I have also referred to their resolutions multiple times over the week for behaviour management!

2

I also added the 'New Year totals' freebie from Kathy Romano and Christina Murphy to my Challenge Area along with the 'Word Sort' that I bought from Doodle Bugs Teaching way back during the Cyber Monday sale! These activities, along with some recount holiday writing scaffolds, are the 'challenges' that the quick finishers may choose from. They can also go to the book corner if they prefer. The Challenge Area is also available during free choice time, so that my slow finishers can also access them.

3

For my extra-curricular Crafty Kids club, I used this great 'New Year Craftivity' from A Cupcake for the Teacher. These were absolutely gorgeous when the whole group were wearing them (sorry can't post photo!)

4

Multilink Maths! Using multilink cubes to help decide if numbers are odd or even. 

5

I have a Reading Roundabout session where I split the class into small groups and they take it turns reading with me or my assistant. The independent groups do different reading based activities, this week one of them used the great 'Roll and read tricky words' that I got from Primary Classroom Resources, although I adapted it into a game that can be replayed by using counters rather than colouring the sheet.

I seem to have used most of my 5 to prove how much of my classroom teaching is now affected by resources and ideas I've found off teaching blogs! Loving this addiction of mine!!