Editable Classroom Labels - Happy School Bus

Use Classroom Labels

Labels in the classroom can be used in many ways! Use them to label:
  • equipment storage
  • designated learning areas 
  • main classroom equipment
  • student cubbies, trays, lockers or desks
  • students (as name tags on the first day)

Why use labels?

Labels are important for:
  • providing a print rich environment for students to encounter words in a meaningful way
  • helping students to gain independence (which will lead to resilience) in their leanring environment - being able to identify the places things belong for example, will empower little learners to return equipment without being asked. 
  • helping students notice and begin to learn the correct spelling for familiar words, including their friends' names


Happy Bus Classroom Labels

These 'happy school bus" labels are perfect for back to school and as well as being functional, are super cute!
  • We have included color labels and a blackline version in this packet. 
  • An editable file option is also included (text fields editable only)
  • Labels are provided in 3 size options - 1 to a page, 2 to a page and 4 to a page. 


Thanks so much for stopping by the blog today to learn more about our printable teaching resources. Find a huge range of alternative classroom label styles over in our My Cute Classroom category in our TpT store!

Happy Bus Screen Wallpaper

A Happy Bus design is ready to add to your screens this week!

Regularly switching out the background design on my computer, phone and tablet screens always makes me inspired and reinvigorated for a fresh new week.


We 'd love to share this new design with you, to make your home and classroom electronic boards, iPads, computers and phones happy and bright this week.

Simply download the images from google drive from the links below. Store them on your camera roll and choose them for your screen saver and/or wallpaper!

Find the Computer Screensaver HERE
and the Phone Screensaver HERE

{These are for your personal use only and cannot be redistributed or shared}


School Bus Directed Drawing

Drawing pictures in the first days and weeks of school is always a wonderful way for students to settle in and also help decorate their learning space.

Today I wanted to share a school bus directed drawing project with you. Easily incorporate it into a broader art activity by:
  • encouraging students to extend the picture by adding extra details
  • using art quality large paper
  • using paint, oil pastel or water colors



Directed Drawing Helps Students

Learning to draw helps students become more creative and gives them confidence for writing activities. It helps build skills that will enable them to express themselves more confidently and creatively in the older years.




Here are the free steps to follow to draw our cute school bus from right here on the blog (a printable version is for sale in our store too).


















After outlining in crayon, you could let your student paint with watercolor or bright poster paint.



Find the printable pages, with writing papers, over in our store:



This printable pack includes the project in 4 styles. These styles are repeated through every directed drawing printable we make.

Classic Draw

Our classic directed drawing is in a style that has been used traditionally for drawing activities. It has the steps and drawing space provided on the same page for students to simply draw, with guidance.

Big Draw

Big Draw is photographed here on our blog today and provides the steps on one page, and a page sized, bordered worksheet for students to create a large artwork.

Draw and Write

We created Draw and Write after we had made a few packets in our series. It has a blank space for students to draw (using the separate page of steps) and a few lines to write a sentence or two. Great for early emergent writers.

Read, Draw, Write

With more room for writing, we created this style worksheet to encourage students to use a word bank to stimulate ideas for writing. They follow the directed steps to draw a picture and then write a sentence or two about their picture or the topic.

Your students will love completing more drawings and painting throughout the year, find our growing collection over on our resource page!

Bus Bulletin Board

We are also rolling back to 2016 to show you our 'display in a day' set for creating a bus themed door, window, hall or bulletin board.

This set has blackline options. We have seen quite a few teachers just have their students paint a bus cutie of these to create a display rather than having them draw one.




We hope you love bringing some drawing and creative joy to your classroom this back-to-school and are so glad you stopped by the blog. Have a wonderful day!


Coffee Love Screen Wallpaper

Coffee Love is the name of our new screen wallpaper this week. 

Changing the design on my computer, phone and tablet screens is a great way to become inspired and reinvigorated heading into a new week.



We 'd love to share this new design with you for your iPads, computers and phones.

Simply download the images from google drive from the links below. Store them on your camera roll and choose them for your screen saver and/or wallpaper!

Find the Computer Screensaver HERE
and the Phone Screensaver HERE

{These are for your personal use only and cannot be redistributed or shared}

Coordinating Printables

I've also added this design, in print quality to the 'Banner and Paper' pack. This pack allows you to coordinate your home office or classroom elements with printable papers, folder covers and banner pennants.



Do you love decorating your teacher desk space?

Find more posts and goodies for your 'teacher space' HERE
Find more screen wallpapers HERE


Thank you so much for visiting us here on the blog. We would love to see you over at Instagram too.
Wishing you a delicious new week full of coffee, love and laughs.

- Mel x

Paper Craft Techniques

We know you love paper craft. We do too! Would you like to make your paper craft even better? 

Teach you little ones these fun paper techniques and they can then apply them to any of their future projects or individual creative pursuits.

We used crafts from our Fall and Autumn 2D Shape Craft packs to demonstrate these paper crafting techniques to you.


Drawing Patterns

The most simple technique you can use is to draw pattern lines with crayon, pencil or maker. Make a straight line pattern, circular scribble, zig-zag or jump pattern. These are the traditional pre-writing line strokes and will turn your craft activity into a writing project for our little learners. 

Paper Tearing

Teach students, explicitly, how to tear paper. Start with little pieces - washi tape makes a great start. Pinch with thumb and first finger and gently pull the paper. Give lots of verbal cues. Use the torn paper to add detail to your craft.

Paper Chipping

Paper chipping is snipping small 'chips' of paper from a long thin strip. Our little ones only have to make one snip with the scissors. The chips are great for covering a large space and will help your sweeties understand space and area.

Fringing

Extend on the 'snipping' that you taught with chipping, by teaching the skill of 'fringing'. For this students will snip with the tip of the scissors and stop before the edge of the strip of paper. Show your sweeties how to snip repeatedly along a long strip of paper to create a fringe. This is great for grass and fur on animals.

Pleating

Pleating is a form of paper folding. It is also referred to as the 'concertina fold'. It will give a zig-zag bumpy effect. 

 Paper Rolling

Roll a strip of paper around a pencil. Squeeze. Release. 

Twisting

Hold a piece of paper by the two ends, twist twice and you get a lovely little bow!

 Tufting

Tufting gives a lovely textured 3D effect - especially if used with multiple tufts close together. Wrap a chip of paper (we use crepe paper) around the end of a pencil, squeeze. Leave on pencil as you push into a blob of glue, release the pencil and the tuft will remain.



2D Shape Craft Projects for Fall

Here are our paper craft projects with the extra paper techniques incorporated. 

Cat with a twisted paper bow on her tail. 


Crow with crayon detail lines.


Fox with rolled paper tail. You can download the fox project for free in our TpT store!


Owl with torn paper sky.


Spider with chipped paper clouds in the sky. 


Squirrel with pleated bushy tail!


Turkey with tufted autumn leaves on the ground.


We hope you love those ideas for bringing even more creativity to your craft projects! And thanks so much for stopping by the blog. 


Find these autumn shape craft projects in our store


A Letter Home for Kindergarten Homework

Little kindergarten lovelies are always so excited to bring homework home from school for the first time! Our 'letter home' style alphabet homework pages will help them to revise the letter sound they have learnt at school each week with fun activities for the whole family.

This packet includes 26 homework notes to to inform families of your alphabet and letter-sound learning in class.


Included also, is a 'picture page' that can be copied to the back of the letter home. Students can locate, cut and paste pictures from magazines and colouring books to match the focus letter sound for the week.


Each letter includes a note to families that outlines the letter focus for the week and requests that someone spend some time talking with their child about the letter and sound. 

It gives them a list of fun, play based activities to celebrate the letter-sound - e.g. doing a jigsaw puzzle for the letter 'j'


Students might also like to paste them into a scrapbook and record some of the activities they tried by drawing pictures or attaching photos. 



We have prepared a sample for you to try for the letter 'p' - you can download it from Google Drive HERE

If you are looking for the whole set of these pages, hop over to our TpT store:


Thank you so much for stopping by the blog to learn more about our printable learning resources. We hope you have a fantastic day!



Math Activities for Equal Groups

Multiplication and times tables can be the cause of much frustration for students in the later years of primary school. 

An abundance of learning opportunities in K-2 that involve making, recognizing and counting with equal groups can help build a firm foundation for multiplication and division. 

We've added Math Pack 20 to our collection of math resources perfect for Kindergarten (the first year of formal schooling). 



What are math packs?

  • We put 5 printable math activities together in one easy-to-prep pack to help teach one focus area and call it a Math Pack.
  • The packs are sequenced in a general suggested teaching order.
  • Each activity in the 5-pack is also sequenced into a logical teaching order.

What is included in each activity?

Each of the 5 activities includes:
  • game/activity instructions that includes a specific learning purpose
  • game boards, cards or mats 
  • a worksheet that can be used to record learning or follow-up or revise
  • cover page (slide this into a clear plastic document wallet along with all the materials you need to implement your activity)
The following activities are included in Math Pack 20. They can be used within your current program, to help create a learning sequence (see post HERE) or as a stand-alone activity. 

Big Pig

In this game students will make equal groups of cookies in the pig tummies and describe the groups. 


Fish Catch

Students will identify the equal groups and determine the number of equal groups represented by circling the fish on these fun cards. Tell the students they have to draw a 'net' around the fish as they catch them! This one will help consolidate an understanding between the number OF GROUPS and the number WITHIN A group (this gets tricky for little learners). 

Group Match

Students can use what they have learnt in the last 2 activities to match picture representations with descriptions in this puzzle style matching activity. 

Rows Of

Students will learn how to represent equal groups in rows (arrays) in this activity. Ask your little one to trace his finger along each row to help reinforce the nature of a row. 

Farmer

Little learners will have so much fun 'acting out' a story with the field game mats in this activity. Use counters to represent the animals and slide them into the fields to show an equal distribution. 


All the activities in Math Pack 20 deal with numbers to 15. If you have been implementing the activity packs in sequence you will know that formal lessons have only covered this number range so far. We suggest extending children above this number range incidentally in day-to-day activities 
however. 

Where can I find more math packs?

We have a special category over in our TpT store that features all our currently available editions. 
We absolutely love creating fun and engaging activities that help make learning come alive in your home or classroom. Please don't hesitate to contact us if we can help.



Thank you so much for stopping by our blog to learn more about our printable learning activities.