Goals for May

I'm joining up with Jess from I heart recess for this cute & useful "May goals" linky.

Personal: My computer is looking untidy at the moment. I'm normally the file queen but at the moment I'm finding it hard to easily get to stuff. Time for a clean up!

Health: I have not been looking after myself the last couple of weeks. Aiming to get back into walking every day and going to yoga or the gym twice a week.

Blogging: Last week it was wonderful to have reached 50 followers. We're just reaching middle of the school year here, not the end but things are still hectic with reports and planning. I need to find more time to make (cute looking) stuff! 

Social stories: A few of my poppets are still settling into school life and knowing things like- we need to keep our hands to ourselves, how to ask questions, I need to ask permission before I do things, and "No" from the teacher means NO. After a not so great day yesterday I am back to using social stories- I will post more about these with some activities next week.

Fun: I'm so excited this weekend about catching up with some friends and going to a music festival! Getting towards report time I know it's really important to make more "me" time so I stay sane and stay a happy, healthy person. If you're near the end of your school year I'm sure the same goal is true!


Wishing you a smiley & sunshine-y week,

Giveaway!

Crystal at The Lamppost in 1st Grade is having a giveaway to celebrate having 100 followers!

Click on the pic to enter! Some great prizes up for grabs including my Beginning Sounds Alphabet Puzzles

Also, checkout Dana's amazing giveaway at Fun in First. It is a HUGE giveaway to celebrate her 1st year Blogiversary! Cute

Two days left to enter both giveaways! Hop to it :)

Flashback and 5 for Friday

Linking up with:

     

While it's Friday in pretty much the rest of the world it's a gorgeous Autumn Saturday morning, so I'm still inside in my pj's :) but planning on heading out and enjoying the sunshine soon. Ooh, and some breakfast.

This week we have been learning about the letter Ww. We read two of my favourite books- Wombat Stew and When the Wind Changed. If you have never read When the Wind Changed- do! It's hilarious and a great one to read about why it is sometimes impolite to make funny faces.

We made these cute retells of Wombat Stew.

The fox (Dingo) put water in the pot.

Thursday was our ANZAC day public holiday. We went to the parade and enjoyed another gorgeous Autumn day. I love it when the leaves are just starting to fall.

Yesterday we had an awesome group of High school PE kids come and teach my poppets some football skills. We leant how to bounce the footy correctly and how to kick a footy from a cone. Next week we get to learn more skills! I can use the help too :)

 I hadn't realised when I took this pic how close the footy was to poppet on the left's head. It didn't hit him but this makes it look like it did! 

We also focused on the Days of the Week in Maths and we used lots of the activities out of my updated Days of the Week packet

including this Mini-book and Race to match game.

   

Click here for a freebie. Wishing you all a great weekend,

ANZAC Day Lest we forget

Today is ANZAC Day in Australia, a day we especially remember service men and women who have served our country. ANZAC stands for Australian New Zealand Army Corps and was the name given to our soliders who fought in WWI.

This morning we went to the Memorial service in town . Both my grandad and my husband's grandfather were Rats of Tobruk in WWII, so today we were especially remembering them.

This week at work we have read My Grandad Marches on ANZAC Day by Catriona Hoy. This is an gorgeous book told through the eyes of a little girl, showing what she knows about ANZAC day.

My grade 1's made the cut & paste sentence of the ANZAC Ode from here

And my Preps (Kinders) made this ANZAC day book.

Today is also a BIG football day, with Collingwood vs. Essendon. I don't barrack for either of these teams but unless you barrack for Collingwood everyone else tends to support Essendon today so, GO BOMBERS! 

Sorry about the members bit at the end but it was the only clip I could find to explain it!

Lest we forget xx 

Tired it Tuesday- CUPs Editing acronym

I'm linking up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for another Tired it Tuesday. 

Thought I'd share something I've mentioned before. In my K-1 room I use the acronym CUPs to help my first graders edit their own writing. To start with I only focus on Capitals and full stops.

I put this up on the SmartBoard as a reminder and they use a red pencil to edit, so I can see what they have changed.

What I love:

• It's visual.
• The acronym is a great reminder and it's easier to say "Have you used CUPs?" than "Have you edited your work?".
• My kiddos are much more aware of sentence structure because they are their own editers.

What I don't love:

• The "U" for understanding really needs to be focused on and taught repeatedly for the kids to get it. Would be better if it was an "M" for Makes sense but then it's not a word!
• I have to keep the red pencils in a cupboard because if I leave them out they need to do a disappearing act. I'm hopeless at remembering to get them out but I have a kiddo organised to do this so it makes it easier.

What can I do differently:

I've been meaning to make this into a flip book or poster for tables so that it can be used if the computer has a hissy fit (which always happens at the worst time). In a dream world where I had more time I would figure out a way to make this interactive and have a game to match it on the computer.

Click here if you would like a free copy of the SmartBoard page. Looking forward to reading all the other great ideas!

Manic Monday Freebie

Today was looonng... at one point I actually thought it was Tuesday! Good day though but my poppets were just a little bit 'off' (which doesn't sound right but you know what I mean- not themselves) but that's ok because I'm sure tomorrow will be better!
We are focusing on Time: o'clock (Grade 1's) & days of the week (Preps/Kinders). We did this simple 'Monday' organiser today to show what we did this morning. This involved ALOT of discussion as a few couldn't remember what they did this morning, didn't know when they had gotten to school, etc. One poppet argued with me that she didn't wake up this morning. I said "H of course you woke up, you're awake" and she replied, "Yeah but my Dad woke me up!" Made sense :)
If you'd like this freebie click here.

5 for Friday!

Week 1, Term 2 done and dusted (although my room is a pig sty and I'm planning to go in tomorrow to do a big clean up, the math planner and prep. for a meeting Monday but I'm trying not to think about that)! It's been nice to come back and see that my kiddos are used to the routine and are acting like "my grade" which is lovely!
So, this is the recap of the week.....

Last Saturday we went to Melbourne to celebrate the engagement of two of my gorgeous friends! It's been a long time coming! We (ok, me but the gift was from us both so I should include the hubby) made them this "Marriage Survival Kit" for their pressie (pics were taken at night, sorry about the shadows)

Inside each envelope was a voucher to match the tag on the outside. They read:

-For Date Night (Village cinema voucher)

-So you can sing, dance and be merry (App Store voucher)

-For House Stuff (Myer voucher); and the chattering teeth were their 'gag' gift

We have been learning about collecting data and presenting the information in graphs.

Click on the pic to get a copy of the "Do you have a brother?" graph we have used this week from google docs.

Every day we play a Maths game with our maths buddies (these change each week). We have gotten very good at working with a buddy! Everyone played beautifully this week.

C is for Caterpillar! The kiddos made these super cute caterpillars using mini kinder circles and scrap paper. We learnt to roll the 'antennae' around a pencil to make them curly.

And finally I have been busy on Pinterest trying to find ideas for one spot in our garden. We're thinking something like this 

What do you think?

Oh How Pinteresting! Link up

Oh Yay! Made it to Wednesday! I'm linking up with Michelle @ The Vintage Apple for the first time :) which is great because I have a Pinterest addiction and this is another way to share it!

Random Things

House

Food

School

Craft

Pretty

Looking forward to seeing everyone else's pins. Happy week 

Skittles Game Linky

Linking up with Latoya from Flying into First! 

TOPIC - Skittles Game

Here is the code:

Red- Favorite Ice Cream Flavor

Orange- Favorite Memory from College

Yellow- Favorite Sports Team

Green- Favorite Fast Food Place

Purple- Wild Card (Tell anything about yourself)

Red

Pistachio! Mmm-mmm

Orange

I LOVED Uni (College) so, so much! Particularly the last 2 years! I had an awesome group of friends who I'm glad to say are still close. Tough to pick a favourite memory but I'll go with our end of year social night- 'Las Vegas' themed. I won best dressed

Yellow

I barrack for the Geelong Cats. Aussie Rules football

Green

Probably Grill'd burgers and chips (they are really chunky fries- not potato chips) with their relish dipping sauce. Amazing!

Purple

I love Josh Pyke! Looking forward to the new album. This is one of my fav songs "Memories & Dust"

Maths & Manic Monday

Can't believe it's Term 2 already. Today was a great start back :) Missed the poppets for sure but was so exhausted by the end of the day! All of the 'relaxing' on the hols may have been a bit much... nah!
This week we are focusing on counting and data in Maths so we made these cute "MacDonald's" graphs.

The kiddos went around asking 15 people in our class whether they went to MacDonald's on the holidays. They were so serious! Cutie pies.

They needed to keep track of how many people they had asked by counting how many boxes they had coloured in. Admittedly, this wasn't perfect but most of the kids kept track. A few poppets just asked everyone in the class. Oh well. Was really surprised of the overall results- more kids hadn't gone to Maccas then had- thought it would have been almost all yes'.
If you'd like a copy of the template click here.
Happy week peeps!