Nelson Mandela

While looking through my blog back when I first started it, I discovered a post I had written shortly after the death of Nelson Mandela. When I visited South Africa earlier this year I was fortunate enough to visit Robben Island and see the jail where Mandela spent the majority of his 23 years in prison. The size of the jail cell was tiny and hearing from former prisoners and seeing the island was a very emotive and sobering experience. Although I've always considered him a very inspirational person, he became even more real to me. The work he did and the passion he inspired in others has left a lasting legacy of social change, not only on education, but the wider world.

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Original post - 8th December 2013

I started this post a few days ago and it was going to be about some websites that I find invaluable in the classroom and some of the things I find inspirational. Then of course, someone incredibly influential, not only to me, but the whole world died, so I decided to keep the title of the post and completely re-write the rest!

A friend of mine was devastated by the news of Nelson Mandela's death and asked on Facebook for some positive and upbeat news. Another replied "Nelson Mandela lived". I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, yes, the world has lost an inspirational man, yet we should be so glad that we had him at all.

Here are some of my favourite Nelson Mandela quotes:

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.

 

 

Throwback - St. Patricks Day

With the Irish patron saint's day fast approaching, I thought I would share a post I did 2 years ago sharing some of what I did in my classroom for St.Patrick's Day called 'Let's Go Green'. The freebie is still available!

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Original Post - 16th March 2014

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!

Throwback - New Year Fun

As I begin the Spring term with my tinies today, I am sharing a throwback post from 2014 highlighting some of the activities I like to do in early January. I've updated the links to the resources if you want to try any of them this year...

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Original Post - 11th January 2014

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!!