St Patrick's Day In the Classroom

Theme based teaching has not been hugely popular in Australia for the last decade or so. It IS possible though, to integrate theme-based resources into your program AND maintain a very high standard of teaching and learning. I have actually found that by using a theme or holiday as a base for an activity, I can achieve much higher student engagement. The key is to choose themes and holidays that are meaningful for your particular class and community of learners. 

Meaningful CAN be something that is not a usual part of the children's lives. Children LOVE to learn about different cultures and what is happening in the world around them. Our world is becoming a whole lot smaller these days, and our students are becoming more aware of other countries and cultures. 

I like to use a 'theme' in my classroom, and weave it into my regular skills-based learning activities. A little 'input' lesson, where I explore the topic or theme with the students, is sufficient to give the students some background on a topic. 

I have been putting together some 'Print Packs' that are a 'sampler' of sorts, in that they contain resources from some of my core teaching resources, but have a themed-spin on them! I have just finished one for St Patrick's Day. 

St. Patrick's Day is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated on the 17th March. It is a day of celebrating Irish culture and heritage in general, and will give you a good opportunity for you to talk about other cultures with your students. In Australia around this time, we have Harmony Day, a day of acceptance and celebration of other cultures - why not combine them!?

Included in this pack, is a template to make a Leprechaun. There is an emphasis on 2D regular shapes in this craft - integrate it with a mathematics lesson!

There is a simple writing activity, provided in 4 style sot cater for a variety of learners in your classroom.

An 'emergent reader' that has a cut-and-paste component....

and a few 'puzzle paste' activities. In these, students cut and paste pieces to create a picture while matching and ordering numbers. 

When completing 'puzzle pastes' - teach your students to just place glue on the top edge of each piece. Then, your students will be able to lift the piece and see the matching number underneath. 

There is so much in this packet, I have not got everything featured here, but I think you will get the idea. There are 'print and play' games....

And a number match worksheet...

I have also made a 'pattern block' shamrock for you to use. It is NOT in the file, but is loaded on Google Drive, and you can grab it by clicking on the image below. I suggest you ask students to use REAL pattern blocks to try to make a shamrock in this shape, before they do the cut-and-paste component. 

Thank you for stopping by friends!

Another Bright Idea

Hi friends! I am thrilled to be linking up with some of my favourite bloggers for another huge 'hop' of bright ideas! You will find a stack of great teaching and classroom posts! Nothing for sale, just interesting, clever, simple, practical and fun things to try!

I wanted to share an idea with you that I use in my classroom when I am teaching about money. It was an idea I saw another teacher implement, and I developed it a little further. It is not complicated or fancy. It is a VERY SIMPLE idea. At first, when I saw it being prepared, to be honest, I was very critical. I thought to myself 'that is NOT going to work'. Kids these days NEED more than THAT. Well let me tell you, once I had implemented this activity, it was ME that 'learned a lesson'. Not only did the kids LOVE it, but they continued for weeks, asking me if we could 'do the shop again'!

I love to set up a 'class shop' when teaching money. There is nothing like students experiencing actually 'spending money' to learn about recognising coins, notes, written money values, pricing, adding up and change. BUT sometimes, it is just not all that practical. You need space for a class shop. You need time to set it up and maintain it. And sometimes, let's face it, we are just too busy!

Enter, the "File Folder Class Shop"! Make a few of these so students can 'play' in small groups.  Just draw a little picture on the cover. 

Inside, you will need to display a variety of stickers. You can choose any theme. For this example, I used food stickers. BUT, you can integrate this with any theme or unit of work you are doing in class. 

You put the stickers inside the folder and label them with a price. If you are only just introducing the coins and values to your students, start with a few simple ones. If you have older students, you can write values that will take a combination of coins to 'buy'. As well as the stickers, glue an envelope down in the corner for the money.

Inside the envelope, you can put coins. You mat have commercially produced 'play money' to use, or you could do some crayon rubbings of real coins and use some of these. 

The crayon rubbings themselves, are a great activity for students to learn to recognise coins. 

Once you have your 'shop' ready, demonstrate to your students how you would like them to play. Do a few demonstrations, and role play one person being the shop keeper and one person being the customer. This activity is a great opportunity to integrate LOTS of LANGUAGE learning as well. Turn taking, vocabulary, forming questions, descriptive language... yay! 

The shop keeper could first welcome the buyer and talk about a few items in the shop. The shop keeper can then ask what the buyer would like to purchase. Model the correct sentence structure for all of these interactions. The buyer can then look through the shop and select what they would like to purchase. I would suggest making a limit of items for students to 'buy'. When first learning about money, your students should just buy one item. As they get more confident with money, you may want to them to focus on adding up values and giving change. 

The buyer then selects an item, and must ask to buy it "May I have this strawberry", for example. 

The shopkeeper then tells the price, and the buyer finds the coins to match the price of the item and collects them from the envelope. 

The coins are placed out  on the folder and collected by the shopkeeper. The sticker is NOT removed from the folder, it is just an 'imaginary' transaction. You may like to provide your students with a piece of paper to draw and record their purchases. 

Once completed, students can swap roles and have another turn!

This 'class shop' activity is so simple to prepare, is very engaging for your students and your equipment will last for years! Keep them on hand, and it makes a great standby activity when you need a fill-in.

Now hop over to Lynn's blog to read about bright End of Year Writing ideas! Or use the linky grid below to find an idea perfect for your needs!

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Subtraction Fun

Hi friends! I have had a HUGE week or two. My two beautiful babies had birthdays. I've been cake-baking, present-wrapping, house-cleaning and celebrating A. LOT. It was all lots of fun and nice to feel like we were  in a 'birthday week'! 

I have found little pockets of time to work on a few new resources and spring-clean a few favourites. I put a 'Subtraction Fun' pack together to help a special little friend who is having serious trouble understanding the concept of why we 'count back' when we subtract!

These recently revised 'Snake Count Back' cards were a great start for him, but I needed MORE!

There is nothing like interacting and manipulating resources to gain a great understanding of a concept, so I created some FUN 'printable interactives' to help students 'act-out' the subtraction process as they are completing their worksheet. These are perfect for students that are just BEGINNING to work on subtraction. There are no problems with numbers greater than ten.

Here we have 5 frogs on a log.

Students will fold down some frogs to find the answer.

I included an octopus to work with number 8.

And a bendy snake for number 6!

I made a little carrot patch sample for you to try! Just click on any of the images below to grab from google drive! 

The carrots and frogs are the trickiest to cut, and for very-new-learners, you may want to have them cut prior to your lesson. Grab one of those helpful parents at your classroom door and ask them to get them cut out for you, ready for your math lesson!

I was so happy to find time to get the March/April edition of 'Pinning Pages' complete and listed in my TpT store. I have received such lovely feedback and emails about students having a wonderful time pinning and it does make my heart happy! 

You can grab a free sample of a PLANT pinning page, by clicking on the image below! Pinning will help your students will fine motor control and its a very calming quiet activity as well!

If you do not know much about pinning, read a bit more on my blog post HERE!

Thank you for stopping by today friends, and please get ready for another SUPER SIZED blog hop in the next few days FULL of BRIGHT IDEAS from some of my favourite blogging friends! I have seen some of the topics that will be covered, and let me tell you, its going to be AMAZING!

Sailing Through Spring! A Sale AND A Giveaway!

Soooo - Spring!? Yeah, I am at the end of summer here in Australia. We have just had a very hot and humid week, and I am HANGING for Autumn. Autumn is my favourite month! I have 2 Autumn babies and I just love that a 'bad' Autumn day here, swings back to Summer and is usually warm and dry. A bad Spring day, on the other hand, will swing back to Winter and be cold and miserable. BUT my blog-hopping friends are SUPER happy to be heading into THEIR Spring and have the idea of a summer break already on their minds, I am sure!

We decided we would give you a little blog-hop of teacher tips for getting through Spring with ease! And teachers here in Australia will love these ideas for the beginning of the school year too!

A tip I have for helping you cruise through the last (or first) months of school, is this little gem of a behaviour management strategy - Self Control Bubbles! You can find it FREE at TpT in the store of Lauren, a fellow Aussie seller! Click on the image below to find it!

The idea is that you blow some bubbles in front of your students and let them go crazy, popping them all over the place. And on a second turn, they must practice self control and not reach out to touch or play with the bubbles at all. SUCH a clever idea for getting kids to FEEL self control! I am going to use my mega bubble blower machine to get some serious bubble time!

I have made a fun "Bubbles of Self Control" take home note that you can award students in your class that are demonstrating good self control in the days after this lesson. Just click on the image below to grab it from Google Drive. 

If you need more Take Home Notes, try this product in my store "Star of the Day and So Much More" - I have ALMOST finished an upgrade to this product, it will double in size at least. If you buy it during the sale, you will be able to get the new additions for free in the next week or so!

Whiel y ou are here, I will show you a couple more resources I am super excited about. There is a HUGE TpT sale going on soon, and you may want to take advantage and get 28% off these!

My "5 L's For Learning" will help you introduce and encourage behaviours for learning on the mat - Look, Listen, Lips, Legs and Lap. Find it on my store on sale now!

My latest collaboration with Deanna Jump is "Bump Jump and Build". Lots of teachers had emailed Deanna wanting some "Bump and Jumps" with a phonics theme - so here they are! We made these slightly different, to keep your little ones on their toes!

Another couple of resources that are very close to my heart. These ones have been in the making for 10 years. It has taken me that long to foster the skills to put together these packs, and I had various parts of them, as ideas in my mind a decade ago. And people say I move fast. If only they knew!!

SO happy to have them complete.  One is my "Book of Blends Mega Pack". 

And "Blends Bonanza" - both perfect for when you are ready to MOVE ON from cvc!

Have a look around the blogs of some of my blogging pals and see what tips they can give you for helping you sail through Spring!

An InLinkz Link-up

3 Million Strong!

TeacherspayTeachers (TpT) has just announced that they are 3 million teachers strong!!

Wowza! I am so proud to have been a part of TpT since 2010 and so glad to be joining them in this celebration.

The site is giving you 10% off all purchases made between 27th and 28th February (USA time). 

But the BEST part is, most stores will also reduce their prices by 20% - meaning you can save UP TO 28% off the AMAZING purchases you make!

My 2 TpT stores will be on sale! Find my stores, by clicking on the links below:

I have some collaborations with Deanna Jump, that you can find in her store by clicking on the image below:

I would LOVE to give you the chance to win a $100 TpT gift voucher for being a fabulous blog follower of mine! All you need to do, is enter the rafflecopter below and I will draw it soon. Good luck! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Also, if you are a TpT seller and your store will be on sale, please add a link to your store here! Let's get this 3 million strong party started!!