Notan artworks

We watched a YouTube tutorial as we worked and made some really unique designs. 

Anzac paintings and silhouettes

 We introduced warm colours, tints and shades after learning the colour wheel and made it a cross curricular lesson by integrating it with our HSIE lesson on the Anzacs. 

Skipping

Looking around the playground on morning duty I saw the cutest, most lovely interactions between the kids playing really old fashioned games my grandparents possibly played- elastics, handball, a cup and clapping game I couldn't quite work out and skipping.

As it's sports day tomorrow and there's a whole crate full of skipping ropes in the sports press, I thought I'd drag them out and allow the kids of various abilities to have a go. I've numbered the activities from easiest to most difficult:

1. Snake- for kindy and kids who need lots of scaffolding. Two kids just wobble the rope on the ground for the jumper to hop over

2. Individual  jumping backwards and forwards, try it hopping and jumping

3. Individual cross over with rope 

 

4. Big rope start in middle

5. Big rope run in

6. Double dutch

Easy as pie PE lessons the kids have a chance to goal set and chose their own challenges. They can also make up their own little poems and chants as they go. 

Maths and fitness

As any teacher in any school anywhere in the world will tell you; there's just so much to fit into an expanding curriculum. As our children become less active, teachers have to find more innovative ways to fit in physical activity into the day. 

Today, as we went out for daily fitness, I decided not to cut short our maths plenary and printed off the maths questions I wanted the kids to answer to check their learning progress. 

I simply clipped up the printed sheets and had kids do relays to the end of our tennis court, attempt one of the questions and then run back to their team and tag the next person.

It's not something we could do everyday, but it was an easy solution to finding enough time in today. 

Meaningful vocabulary

Resplendent, abode, precipice, despairing and narrer are all lovely words that aren't common in an 11 year old's vocabulary but will feature in our poem next week. 

I thought to get them interested in the words, I'd play a little game as a starter. I'm writing the same word on three cards, then on the back writing the real meaning on one card and false meanings on the other two and as a group, they decide what is the real meaning.

You could also play the game after the poem is read to see of they can work  it out by context. 

Simples! Xx

Origami procedures

I needed to get some cups for an activity but I'm a bit reluctant to continuously dip into my own pocket. I intended to have the children fill a bucket; every child has a little cup (a bucket) and each day they draw a name out of a hat written on a post it, on the back of the post it, they say something positive about something positive they noticed about that child- anything positive, I like that you used your manners at the canteen, thanks for letting me play with your tennis ball etc. I gave the children a piece of square paper and we checked out an online video tutorial and made an origami open box for our "bucket", then we wrote up the procedure in English. Simples! 

The buckets were all pinned onto an old cork board with thumb tacks and the children love going to check what message awaits. 

Place value

I have a boy in my class who has shown he has real problems understanding place value, we,re cutting out some card tomorrow to help him see the base tens which fit into each column and employing a number extender to help him as he works towards understanding place value.