First Day or Week at School Page

Celebrate the first day or week at school with a fun activity page that can be completed one section at a time. 

On 4 mornings of your first week have a little classroom talk before letting students have time at their desk to draw or write in each frame.

• on Tuesday let students introduce themselves to each other and share a few facts about themselves - then they draw in the 'me' section
• on Wednesday tell your students about yourself and some of your favorite things to teach - let them draw you
• on Thursday share some important reminders about your classroom space - rules, routines, expectations or special areas 
• on Friday ask them to tell a third peer, 3 positive things they know about someone in the class, a friend or someone they have just met - then let them draw or write about one other person in the class in the final frame on their page

This page is a free offering in our Pond Coloring club! I'd love to have you with me if you're not a member yet. 

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Back to School, social skills

Sunshine Numbers

I've combined two of our most popular and favorite resources to give you a way to integrate them and help your students become familiar with the order and position of numbers on the 100 (or 120) chart!

Use one of our Number House posters and a Sunshine Stick! Cut the middle from the stick to use as a number wand. Let students hover over the numbers and choose one for focus. They can record 10 more 10 less 1 more 1 less or a 9 number grid!

I've made a recording page for you so you can use this activity in groups, math workshop, independent activities or as a fast-finisher. 

Find it in Google Drive: Sun Numbers

I hope you love this idea and it engages your students in a fun number activity!

You may also like:

• Number House Poster
• Sunshine Sticks
• Math Pack for numbers to 100

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Numbers, sun

The Sun The Wind and The Flowers

Do your students like the action rhymes I share with you? They're great for integrating a range of skills and also let students become active with their learning - combining movement, language and literacy. Many of them have math and number concepts embedded too.

Print them at 60% and punch a hole in the corner. Pop them on a giant paper clip and you'll have them at your fingertips for quick mini lessons. You can easily hook them to you teacher instructional trolley or easel - at the small group learning table too.

Today I want to share with you a no-prep game you can play after 10 Happy Flowers!

It's a game for reviewing spelling words - maybe sight words, theme words or decodable words. Whatever you are working on. With a few tweaks you could use it for 3 or 4 digit numbers too. 

The Sun, The Wind and The Flowers

You need:

• chart paper, a white board or easel
• pen
• list of words
• sun (I used the tracing page that is free in the Coloring Club to make this one)

Students will:

• spell familiar and unfamiliar words
• identify letters and letter-sounds

To play:

• one student is the sun and can hold it (you could also use a Sunshine Stick)
• the sun (with the teachers help if needed) draws dashes on the board to represent a chosen word (use a word list if needed - in the example below I have chosen 'the')
• flowers are drawn beneath the dashes 
• the rest of the class is the wind
• the wind calls: 

The wind is going to blow, 1, 2, 3 - t (or any other letter)

• if there is a 't' in the chosen word the sun writes it in every place it appears
• if no 't' appears, a flower is erased (blown down)
• play continues with letters being called until either the word can be guessed, revealed or all the flowers are blown down
• a new sun is chosen to create a new word

I hope your students love this fun word review game - and the action rhyme!

Find:

• more action rhymes and finger plays
• more no-prep language and literacy activities
• more for the sun

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Finger Play, Spelling, Word Work

Back to School Bus Drawing and Art Project

 

We created a video of the steps to draw our happy little school bus! You can find it on YouTube HERE

It makes a fun back to school art activity in the classroom or at home. You could also ask students to:

• ask students to add more to their picture
• brainstorm adjectives to add to a sentence they write
• talk about how they get to school and home

You may also like:

• vinyl stickers of the bus
• printable steps and writing papers
• more bus themed ideas and resources

I hope your students love the video and creating their own happy bus!

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Back to School, Directed Drawing

A sunny honey hat

Help your learners sequence and order numbers to 50 with our sunshine activity cards! Each card has a different starting position and your learners can count forwards and backwards to determine the missing numbers. 

Use them as task cards with your children writing the number sequences in their math journal or write directly onto the laminated cards with a dry erase marker. 




After the math activity you may like to read Mrs Honey's Hat. Have you read it before? It is filled with opportunities for exploring many early concepts. Each day of the week you'll discover Mrs Honey doing something outside with nature subtly creeping in and integrating into her hat! 

Use sound out snail as you read to highlight words on the page that you can explore at a deeper level with your students after your reading. Record them on a whiteboard or chart. Perhaps they are words that are in focus for your class at the moment or that you would like them to attempt next. Perhaps they are words that they could use in their own writing, after your reading. 





Have your students look at the word bank that you have created together and ask them to find words that relate in some way. Let them share their ideas and make their own connections - maybe words starting with the same letter, rhyming words, or linking words (sun, hat, crab are all beach words). 

You could also:

• talk about sun safety and wearing hats
• let students draw their own special hat menagerie
• make a sun craft from our coloring club (free)

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Books, counting, sun

Apples and Peas

In the coloring club library this week I added 2 pea themed pages and I wanted to share with you some foundations for handwriting that you can reinforces while your learners are completing them. 

The draw more peas page encourages drawing using the 'jump' handwriting movement, the pencil moving up and over. This will be needed for letters like n, m, p and h. 

A 'dive' pattern movement can be encouraged with the tracing waves page. The pencil tip moved down and up, down and up, down and up (you may like to say that as your students trace). This will support the strokes in writing letters like u, w and y. 

On the pea pod your learners can draw horizontal lines - left to right and trace over the peas with a jump pattern line. 

If you missed it on my Instagram story, I have created a new action rhyme finger play for your learners with a pea theme. It has some mathematical concepts embedded in it too. It's free over at TPT if you'd like it!

Paper craft techniques also support handwriting skills too. Have your learners zigzag (concertina) fold a piece of yellow paper to be the center of the apple craft, also in the coloring club this week! It has 4 nice simple shapes to cut and color too. 





You can add googly eyes for fun!

Don't forget our FREE animated story Look and Listen Little Apple - perfect for the beginning of the school year to explore making friends and turn taking. 

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Pea at Sea Art Activity for ea Sound

If you're teaching young readers and writers about the long vowel sound ea, you may like to make it fun by drawing a pea at sea! I'm going to share the steps with you here on the blog but you can also find some printable directions in our store. 

Perhaps chart a list of ea words as you tell your children this little story:

Little pea heard someone was about to eat him so he decided to go to sea and set sail, east. While there is no seat on his boat, he could reach and leap on his long legs and heat some water for a cup of tea - with cream! Today he found a leak in the hull which he patched with a leaf he saw floating past in the water. What a day! And there is still so much adventure to be had. What do you think Little Pea will do tomorrow? Let's draw him!

Here is a list of ea words you may like to write in a word bank. 

• eat
• leaf
• peach
• meat
• east
• seat
• read
• beak
• teach
• tea
• heat
• steam
• sea
• peas
• leak
• beach
• stream
• team
• each
• leap
• beat
• clean
• cheap
• heap
• cream
• weak
• reach

I have written a counting action rhyme about Little Green Pea too - take a peek over here to find it when it's ready! 

I hope your students love drawing their pea friend, it's perfect for kindergarten:

• it's mostly simple shapes and simple lines
• you can embed a story within the activity
• drawing and working with circles can lead to a huge range of shape activities
• the pea theme (round dot or circle) is perfect for early counting and number work

If you'd like more creative ideas for making math and early literacy fun, be sure to sign up to my newsletter!

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2D Shapes, Directed Drawing, Long Vowels

Comparing Quantities and more - in the Pea Pod

I popped into the inboxes of the newsletter-super-fans yesterday with a little pea pod math game. I thought of some more ideas so thought a blog post was ideal! 

First engage your students with a little story about a vegetable garden and a pea pod that has grown! The story will help you integrate some listening, language and visualizations skills in your math work. 

You need:

• green counters if possible
• pea pod cards (shared with you below)

To play:

• each student in your small group has a pea pod, will collect peas and count them
• you will engage students in a small group math talk about how many peas in each pod, model how to compare 2 pods to see more/less, support 1:1 counting (each child point to their counters and assigns a number name to each counter as they count them)

The teacher starts with all the green counters - in a tub, a little green bag or pouch that represents a pea pod.

Tell this story to lead the activities:

Math Play Story

There was some trouble in the vegetable garden last night - with the peas. When they first grew, there was room for them all in the pod. As they grew and got bigger and bigger there was less space for them… they got restless (you can shake your container) until the pod split (empty and spill the counters). The peas bounced and hopped in all directions (spread them out evenly over the playing space). What a mess! The peas will never be nice to eat out like this so we must gather them back into a pod. Collect some peas now for your pod - but don't rush, they'll be squashed!

Now your students work to collect some peas and count them as they place them into their pod. You could now ask each student to:

• tell how many peas they have
• demonstrate 1:1 counting
• label the pod with a numeral (laminate and use with dry erase marker)

Talk about more/less and slide 2 pea pods together to model direct comparison, lining up the peas to make it easier to compare.

 
Play several times giving your learners lots of counting opportunities.

On repeat plays, shorten the story, giving a brief summarized version but use the words split and back as key listening words to spark action. Hearing the word split can signal to your students to get ready and on hearing the word back they can start collecting. This encourages attentive listening skills.

I should pause here and let you know that if you are not an email-super-fan you can become one using the sign up at the bottom of this email - and I'll send you the pea pod printable! Directly to your inbox!

Here are a few more early math activity ideas for using the pea pods. 

Count the Pod

Students pick a pod (that you have numbered) and match the correct number sof peas (counters) to it. 

Guess the Pod

Slide the counters off from the previous activity. Flip the pods. Can your students guess the pod number by looking (counting) the peas?

Two Pods - early addition

Students take 2 pods. Fill them with peas and find out how many altogether. 

Bigger and Smaller

Flip all the pods. Take turns to pick two pods and determine which is bigger. 

After this let students pick one pod and tell the number that is next and before - e.g. if they choose 5, they will tell you 4 and 6. 

Subitizing

Let your students each have a blank pod. Flash a dot pattern card. They make a matching number on their pod with counters. 

I hope you love these number games perfect for the first months of kindergarten. If you like the idea of little peas happy in a pod you may like our new classroom door display! On each pea you can type your students names and you can create your own welcome message with the editable message board! 

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counting, Maths Game

Book Box Labels

Our Bright Classroom Decor range helps you create a happy learning environment and also support learning activities and the content your teaching! We love providing you with fast-prep classroom essentials like these book box labels! Just type (or write), print, trim and attach to your bins, boxes, containers or shelves. 

Our brights range features consistent happy colors that also integrate seamlessly with our softer, pastel range - mix and match and everything will balance nicely. 

Each label in this pack has 2 places to add text - you can type on both or just one. 



Choose your label from the selection of:

• 6 colors 
• 2 cute picture designs for each of the 6 colors
• 6 plain labels (no picture)

Happy classroom decorating! If you need help, be sure to contact us!

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Classroom Decor