The Race That Stops A Nation

Are you wondering how you can possibly incorporate a little 'Melbourne Cup' into your learning tomorrow?
 
For my blog friends out of Australia, we have a little horse race on tomorrow, here in a small town called Melbourne. Just kidding, its a HUGE race, in a big beautiful city! It literally stops the nation. At around 3pm. EVERYONE (just about), will be watching the race, and probably involved in some sort of workplace sweep.
Depending on your school policy, you may be talking to your students about the race. I have been very fortunate the last few years to work with some great people and we are not discouraged from discussing it with the children. I like  to talk about it within the framework of our work on 'celebrations'. We talk about the horse race itself, the 'carnival' atmosphere and also tie in some work on ordinal numbers. One year we had the children wear their best Melbourne Cup hat and also did 'horse' races in the playground. Although not technically in the syllabus, I think acknowledging events and celebrations with our students at school is SO important. It helps little children engage with the world around them and start to build a framework to understand the world. I think it also provides them with some key ways to make connections with people, both at school, and at home. It encourages conversation and language at home. In other words, it's real. And kids like to talk 'real' at home. Some of our students need all the help we can give them with language and communication.
 
 
I have made these horse race themed 'puzzle pastes' that you may like to do with your class tomorrow. I know its late and I should have made you these last week.. but you know how it gets!
I have made one for addition to ten, and another to review number concepts to ten.
Download them HERE
Puzzle Pastes are our cut-and-paste puzzle worksheets. Students have to cut the pieces and match the them to the answer page provided. When they are all pasted into position, the students will see the horse picture they have created!

The worksheets have been created in black and white so that they can be easily photocopied for your class.

 We used clear, crisp, cute graphics from Scrappindoodle.coms

This file is for your personal and classroom use only. You are not permitted to share or redistribute this file at any time.
Good luck in your sweeps! I always like #8, but I can't get #11 out of my head for some reason!


UPDATE: I just found another really great freebie for Melbourne Cup over at Stef's blog - find it HERE