Apple Directed Drawing Art Project


Apple, apples, apples! Did you know that there are more than 8,000 varieties of apples?! Me either! It does feel like I have drawn that many over the years and I especially love adding a cute face, arms and legs to bring them to life! 


I drew these little Apple Cuties a few years ago and wanted to remind you that the directions are still up on my blog. There is a  printable pack of directed drawing papers too.

FIND THE DRAWING STEPS


Directed drawing can allow young students to feel successful on their journey learning to draw and helps to motivate their writing.

We turned these big drawings into art projects with watercolour and brushes. 



You may also like to see our full Directed Drawing collection over at TpT including this one that is especially made for back-to-school!



Shared Reading Activities - Look and Listen Little Apple


Shared reading is an opportunity to teach your little ones to read but also provide a platform for a range of other learning experiences! We are overjoyed to bring you another printable pack of activities to support the shared reading of our newest short rhyming text - Look and Listen Little Apple.

You can teach reading with this text in a range of formats:
  • printable pages (print and staple to make a book)
  • printable student book (print and staple the blackline version)
  • digital (open the MS Powerpoint file on a device or board)
  • animated reading (play the video on a device or board and listen and track the words)



This short text is perfect for the beginning of the school year when our little learners can be feeling a range of emotions and nervous about making friends. The story sees little apple fall down on the ground. He is sad. He sees another sad apple. Together they chat their way to happiness and a new friendship! Eyes and ears are used in the very early stages of their friendship. Use this text to help teach your students how to open a new friendship:
  • look for someone to become a new friend at school
  • walk up to them
  • smile and make a nice face
  • say hello
  • look at them and listen to them when they talk
  • have a conversation
In the printable pack, we've included a list of questions that you can use to encourage discussion, comprehension and connection to the text. These are ideal of a second or third read of the text. During the first read, just allow students to listen and join in to the reading.


Don't forget - you can also watch, listen and read with our animated version on Youtube!

Comprehension activities after shared reading

Six comprehension activities are also provided. You can do these activities as a whole class, particularly if you project them onto the whiteboard, in guided reading groups or independently when more capable.

An activity is provided to help students develop the strategies of:

  • making connections
  • monitoring
  • predicting
  • questioning
  • summarizing
  • visualizing

Predicting

Do this before your read. Students can write or draw why they think apple is sad. Perhaps they will make some connections here too.

Monitoring

Have students order the story by cutting and pasting the story boards. With each piece they will return to their memory of the story and monitor the progress of the developing plot and story. 


A 'one page read' is perfect for little learners to practice independent reading and start to work with the language and features of the text. Ask them to read along with you a few times, read to a partner, and then look for the nouns and verbs. 


Making Connections

Talk about things that make us happy and sad. My Sam struggled with this as he is not often sad (true story!). We talked it out and he suggested I make a worksheet that says 'when I have been frustrated'. You could easily modify this activity and just let the kids cross the word out and write a different feeling. Pure differentiation!

Questioning

Students can explore main idea and detail by asking themselves questions to uncover them. This may need to be done collaboratively with little learners. 

Summarizing

Use the SWBST scaffold to unpack the story and provide a summary. Students can write or draw. 

Visualizing

Students can draw a picture to visualize what they predict is in the broader setting of the story. Here they will use some connections they have to the text as well.


Students can write their own apple themed story using a planning page and publishing pages provided. 


We added some activities for phonics ('at' word family) and fine motor (pinning and tracing) to integrate with the apple theme. 




One Page Craft

We know you love one page crafts so have provided one to accompany the story. What a great addition to your classroom displays to help bring back the memories and new connections the students will make after they read the text. Visuals are powerful and something that students have made themselves provide a powerful bridge for accessing past experiences. 



Although the text is short, to allow emergent readers to feel successful, plenty of rich learning can follow, including a discussion on friendship and feelings. Following a class talk about appropriate play in your learning environment, help students break down the steps needed for making new friends with this poster. The steps are gently uncovered in the text. Ask students to role play how to establish and initiate play with their peers. Talk about feelings and how we can care for our sad friends. Talk about proactively seeking friendship and interaction when we are feeling down and how this can turn our day around!

You can snag the poster FREE today: I Can Make Friends


We hope your little learners love these 10 activities and our original rhyming text. Use some or all, there is enough for a whole week of literacy engagement!



Class Rules Posters

Class Rules Display

Classroom rules can help create a wonderful classroom community. A well managed learning space makes students feel safe, secure and happy. Properly explained and consistently reinforced rules and expectations will make your classroom happy and a place everyone wants to be!

We suggest these 6 rules for the classroom:
  1. listen
  2. be nice
  3. try hard
  4. be safe
  5. share
  6. care
Why simple? Children have a hard time remembering the first letter of their name in the early days of school, let alone streams and streams of long complicated words that express your desired expectations for classroom behavior.

When you consider most expectations in the classroom, they will fit within one of our six 'simple' rules.  For example, if you have an expectation that students walk in the room (not run), this will fit with the 'be safe' rule.

Use our editable version of these posters to change the rules if you need!

Classroom Expectations

Classroom Decor

Classroom Expectations




I have provided 3 options for you to display:

1. large page sized class rules posters (see photos above)

2. one page class rules poster

This poster features all 6 rules and is perfect for small classrooms with limited space for visuals.


3. half page size class rule cards

Create a vertical display with the half page size cards and header.



Ask your students to draw and write how they demonstrate the 6 rules on the follow-up activity book to reinforce the expectations.

  
Set a platform for growth understanding and learning by helping your learners understand how their positive actions fit into your set of expectations called 'rules' using words that are abundantly clear and familiar with. Give them words that they can instantly visualise themselves acting out.

When the foundations are clear, strong and meaningful we can then grow and move into more intricate detail and understanding.

Head over to TpT if you would like to take a peek at this resource.

Jellyfish Screen Wallpaper


I'd love to share a new screen wallpaper with you today, to brighten up your home and classroom electronic boards, iPads, computers and phones. This one is cute jellyfish design - big, bright and full of energy!


I do hope you love the design as much as we do and that it brings some fun to your 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 in distribution folders}

We've also added a jellyfish coloring page to the club so your little ones can get in on all the fun.


If you're looking for more ocean themed goodies (think tote bags, mugs, phone cases, notebooks and even dresses and T shirts) hop over to our Red Bubble store to see our cute friends on a range of lovely items!

Coordinating Printables

We've also added our wallpaper 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.


Starfish Art Project


We had fun in our freshly organized craft space this morning and made a happy starfish art project. We started with a starfish template, but you could easily draw your own! Not that creative? No worries, scroll to the bottom of this post and I'll share ours with you.

You will need:

  • starfish template or drawing
  • bubblewrap
  • paint
  • paintbrushes
  • google eyes
  • black sharpie
  • crepe paper
  • scrap colored paper
  • background paper (we used blue and yellow)
  • Pom poms


We rolled out some bubble wrap we'd saved from a recent parcel and blobbed our favorite colors of paint along the length.


Spread the paint out with a brush to cover the bubblewrap. 


Print the bubblewrap pattern on the starfish by pressing the paper down onto the paint firmly.


Lift your paper and ooo-and-ahhh about how pretty it is! 


We made about 8 starfishes! So much fun!


After the starfish dried, we cut out the shapes.


We added googly eyes with white craft glue.


We used liquid chalk for some gorgeous big pink cheeks! Paint would work too!


Next we drew mouths with a Sharpie.


We put a soft fluffy pom pom on each point.  Ta-da! We looooooove how they turned out! 


Creating a background is optional, but will provide an excellent opportunity for students to explore more creative choices and express themselves freely as they make their own design. We used crepe paper to twist some seaweed, orange paper scraps to make fish and yellow paper for sand. A white oil pastel makes lovely bubbles!


We hope you have fun making a starfish art project and would love to see them on social media - tag us so we don't miss it!

Find a template here to use: Starfish Art Project Template

We posted yesterday with some starfish literacy activities and a free poster. Hop back here to find it!