My Favourite Center Activities - Beginning of the Year

Centers are a big part of our day, they keep students occupied while I work with my guided groups. Carefully chosen centers allow students to work on skills taught in guided groups in a fun way.

Here are some of my favourite centers for the beginning of the year.

Make a Pizza
I have a numeral and alphabet versions. The can be found in my Beginning of the Year Centers pack.

In this activity, students make a pizza by matching the ingredients to the pizza base. This is a great way for students to consolidate their matching skills as well build familiarity with numerals and letters.

This is probably one of my most popular games. I even get requests for this game from my fast finishers :)

Clip A Word
Click here to find it on TPT.

In this activity, students pick a card and use pegs to 'clip' the letters that match. This helps with fine motor and letter recognition.

Number Tracing
Click here to find it on TPT.

In this activity, students trace over the numerals with a whiteboard marker. I love this activity because I feel that we spend a lot of time emphasising letter formation that we forget about numeral formation. So working on our numeral formation during guided maths groups is a great way to slip it into our daily routine.

Matching Trains

For this activity, you can use these ten frame trains and unifix cubes. Alternatively, you can use a printed ten frame or an egg carton.

Students match the unifix cubes by colour to create 'passengers' for the train.

Duplo Letters and Numbers
The number cards can be found here and letters can be found here.

These have been a huge hit with my students. They love showing me the letters/numerals that they make :)

ChickaBoom Tweeze

This awesome mat can be found here, from My Fabulous Class.

In this activity, students use tweezers to pick letters and see if it matches the letters on their board. Once again a great activity for matching, fine motor and letter recognition.

Pipe Cleaner Letters and Numbers

In this activity, students use pipe cleaners to make letter and numbers. This activity helps students develop strength in their fingers through manipulating the pipe cleaner.

Pegboard Numbers

These pegboard cards can be found here.

Students use the pins to copy the number onto the pegboard.

Sorting

This is a simple activity that works with anything. All you need is a sorting tray and some tweezers. Students use tweezers to put the objects into groups. Students can sort by colour, shape, size, etc.

Hopefully you have found some inspiration on here. Got any ideas to share? Let me know through email or comment below :)

Enjoy your weekend!

STEM in Kindergarten

My Kindergarten class has been participating in STEM type challenges for the past 4 weeks. I'm loving it and so are the students!

I should probably clarify that I am no expert, all that I know about STEM is from reading blogs and looking at Pinterest. It caught my eye because it looked like a lot of fun and my students seem to really enjoy hands on science and math activities.

For our first challenge we did 'Build a house that the Big Bad Wolf can't blow down'. For this challenge, students could only use masking tape, paddle pop sticks, matchsticks and rubber bands.
The Big Bad Wolf was myself and my support teacher. We created a wind by frantically flapping a plastic document wallet.

As this was the first session, I didn't really go into the design process. I just wanted to see if this would actually work in my room; would anything be built? would it cause fights? would it cause tears? I also wanted to see what we needed to work on in order for this to become a weekly activity.

Overall the first session was a success. The houses that were built were pretty stable. Only 2 out of the 10 fell over. I was quite proud. Though one thing that we needed to work on was the concept of "working together as a team" and the notion of a growth mindset.

So I whipped up this resource to tackle the teamwork problem.

It's a poster set with each social skill and what each skill actually means. It's all good to say "you need to work together" but what does that actually look like? What needs to be done? This pack makes it pretty explicit.

Our second challenge was 'Build a boat that will carry two teddies'. Before starting this challenge, I went through the skill cards and we discussed what each one meant and what it looked like. I hung up the prompt cards on the board as a visual reminder. I also introduced two Growth Mindset phrases which can be found on these two FREE posters. Click on the picture to get your own copy.

We went into the challenge chanting these!

 

Introducing the social skills before the session made a difference. I noticed that there was a lot more sharing, communication and teamwork during this session. Success!

For the boat, students used foil, straws, paper cups and masking tape. For the two teddies we used teddy bear counters.

Some of the boats were pretty fancy, I was not expecting them to be so elaborately designed. Most floated but some started to sink after a while.

At the end of the session, we walked around and looked at each boat. Then we came to the floor and talked about what we discovered. For the boats that sunk, I asked the groups why they thought it happened and what could they do next time to fix it.

Our third challenge was 'Build the tallest tower you can using only pipecleaners'. Once again, before starting, we talked about social skills and got into the notion of a growth mindset "I can! I can! I can!".

In this session, I noticed more students working on fixing their existing designs rather than just starting again all the time - which is part of the 'improve' phase. Not that I have explicitly taught these phases yet! That will be the next step now that the teamwork aspect has been covered.

I should also mention, that while students are completing the challenges I go around to each group and we have a brief discussion about what is happening. This is a great way to hear student thinking and prompt them in improving their design.

We have a STEM wall in our classroom. I take photos during each session and while we are having our reflection at the end, I scribe what the students have discovered. It's then hung up on the wall.

My display :)

This week I'm going to go through the Engineering Design Process and get some planning down. I'm thinking of doing this on the mini-whiteboards as this will allow them to change and rub out easily. Especially as this will be the first time and I'm anticipating that there will be a lot of rubbing out! This will link in perfectly with what we have being doing in maths - recording our working/thinking.

The only problem is deciding on what challenge to do next! There are so many awesome ideas!

If you are thinking of doing STEM in your classroom, go for it! It has a number of benefits including;

1. Fine motor skills
2. Teamwork
3. Problem solving
4. Critical thinking
5. Creative thinking
6. Communication & reasoning

FLASH FREEBIE!

In celebration of reaching the first TPT milestone, I am offering a Flash Freebie! Click on the picture below to get your own copy.

These are a great visual reminder for "Turn & Talk" times in your classroom. I have these stuck on my mini whiteboard and refer to them all the time.

Enjoy!

Back to School + FREEBIE

I've kind of neglected this blog over the past week or so. Whoops!

The school holidays are over now. I didn't spend that much time on the computer, hence the lack of posting. My goal for the holidays was to spend at least an hour each day doing something active outdoors. The area that I live in has quite a few parks and walking/bike tracks. So my boyfriend and I went for lots of walks, runs and scooter sessions. Our building has a pool too, so on the hot days we went swimming (i.e I learned to swim). It was nice being able to do things outdoors during the week. On weekends, it's always a bit hectic with all the bike riders and dog walkers.

Aside from doing outdoorsy things, I went shopping and bought an iPhone. I got the 5c in blue. I love it! Now I finally get to hear the magical Ka-Ching that all the teachers talk about on the forums :D

School is back for the final term of 2014. I am still working with the same classes and focusing on reading groups. This week, we started with new texts. One activity that we have been working with is a Predict-O-Gram. Click on the picture to get your own FREE copy on TPT! (celebrating 300 products freebie).

Before reading, we fill out the boxes. Students make predictions about the vocab, characters, setting, problem, events and resolution. After reading, we look back at the predictions and confirm or reject as well as discuss the similarities and differences. Great activity to get students thinking about the text!

Will try and find some time this week to add to my Comprehension series.

Enjoy your weekend!

200 Products!

This is my 3rd post this weekend! I have never been so active on this blog before, haha :P Don't worry this is just a short post!

Today I posted my 200th item on my TPT store. To celebrate this milestone I am offering a FREEBIE! I figured I'd make it pirate themed as Talk Like a Pirate Day is coming up soon. Click on the picture to download it for yourself :)

Hope this week is a good one!

FREEBIE! Fall Paper and Frames

This week has been pretty awesome so far; 3 days of work and some great news (work related, but more on that later).

This is just a short post to advertise my latest FREEBIE!

I have branched out and started to make my own digital papers. I was making a resource the other day, I had an idea in my head of what paper I wanted, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I decided to give it a go myself. It was actually pretty easy and 10 minutes later, I had the design and colours that I wanted.

I am super excited to make more of these. I love playing around with colours and design. I actually find it relaxing (weird, right?).

To celebrate this new venture, I've created a FREEBIE. Click on the picture to get your own copy.

If you like it, you can follow the links through to the rest of my paper collection :)

Enjoy the rest of your week. Stay tuned for Part #2 of the Comprehension series!

May: My First Month on TPT + a Celebration FREEBIE!

May was my first month selling on TPT. I would say it has been a success based on units sold and my earnings :) It was a slow start but once I made my first sale things took off and I was making a couple of sales a week.

I was surprised, not because I didn't have confidence in my products, but because I thought it would take longer to get noticed. I'd been participating in pinning parties and collaborative boards but my repins were nothing compared to the other products that had been around for ages. When I first started my store, I had no expectations. I was just giving it a go to see what would happen. I'm always making resources and refining them and it seemed silly not to put them out there for others to use too.

To celebrate my first month and my success, I am posting a FREEBIE! This bunting is bright and colourful, the perfect addition to any classroom! Click on the picture to get your copy on TPT :)

 

If you like the bunting, there are also a-z/number bunting packs in my store in the 'Classroom Displays' section.

That's about it from me for now. I have to get back to emptying and cleaning the apartment. Only 10 days until I am back home in Sydney! Eeek!

Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy the rest of your weekend :)

Freebie: Behaviour Management

Today I am sharing an idea that made my year a whole lot easier.

Click on the picture to get you own FREE copy on TPT :)

Or click here to get it on TN!

I had a student that did not respond to the management system I already had in place (clip chart). I tried lots and lots of different strategies and sought advice from my colleagues. Nothing seemed to be working, until I tried this chart that my supervisor and I came up with.

There are two columns. On the left, the day is divided into sessions.On the right there are the warnings.

When the student worked well throughout the session (without any incidents), they earned a tick. At the end of the day if they earned 3 ticks, they received a sticker for their sticker chart.

If they received a warning, they had to strike out a box in the right hand column. If they reached 3 warnings they were sent to my supervisor for time out. At the end of each session the warnings were wiped clean.

This chart actually worked. Within a few weeks of implementation I found that we were no longer reaching the point where the student was getting up to the 3rd warning. By the end of the term the student was rarely reaching the 1st warning.

I'm guessing this worked out because the student didn't like the typical clip chart and seeing their name near the bottom while the other students were at the top. Having an individual card on their desk meant that it was more private and not on show for everyone to see.

It definitely made the classroom run a lot smoother :)

Freebie: Roll and Cover Addition Game

I have mainly been posting paid items for English, so I thought I'd mix it up a bit! :)

Today I'm sharing a simple, fun, addition game that I've used in a year 1 class. It's a superhero themed roll and cover game. Click on the pic below to get your FREE copy on TPT!

Or click here to get it on TN!

How does it work? The game is played in pairs or small groups. Each student has their own game board. Students take turns to roll two dice. They find the total and cover the corresponding number on their board. The first to cover all numbers is the winner.

You can use the typical dot dice or vary it by using a dot die and a numeral die.

This game is great for getting students to practise counting on. I had several different themed boards that I rotated throughout the year so the game was always 'fresh'.

I have also started selling my products on Teachers' Notebook, click on the link in my sidebar to check it out.

Freebie: What is a Text? poster

One of the most influential professional development programs I have undertaken was about reading. It was a two year program that really made me think about the way I taught reading.

One of the things that was brought up, was the importance of students being exposed to different types of texts (e.g poems, movies, songs, posters, photos, websites, articles e.t.c). We were asked to create a survey to find out about the reading habits of our students. One thing that came up was that all of my students only saw reading a book as 'reading'. When discussing the results with other teachers, this was a pretty common theme.

So we had a few lessons on "what is a text?". One of the resources I created, was a "What is a Text?" poster. This was used when introducing the lessons and then hung up on the wall for reference. The students were pretty impressed when they realised that they do a lot more reading than they thought they did :)

Click on the picture to download on TPT