Whats happening in room 28 week 5 – Goldilocks and the three bears

This week we are looking at Goldilocks and the three bears. We will be reading the story and acting it out using our imaginations this week.

I have used this bear size sorting activity.

And this item sorting activity to sort a whole bunch of different things from our classroom.

We also looked at the idea of sequencing with this class anchor chart idea and worksheet using these great sequencing cards.

We looked at things which are hard and soft in our classroom.

We used this template to make characters for our drama centre.

For writing early finishers I have got them to do this writing sight word sticks activity, they use an ice cream stick with different sight words written on to practise writing their sight words. I have introduced it first on white boards then for those who can in their writing books.

I found a whole bunch of activities on this site as well which would be great for kinder/ early years classrooms.

For our Imagination topic we did some activities looking at famous artwork and how they made us feel. Then we drew our own to show different emotions.

We also imagined we were super hero’s and created our super hero cuff’s and wore our mask’s. We wrote about what powers our super hero would have and how they can save the world. They loved this and spent a god amount of time zooming around the classroom as super hero’s.

Some more exciting ideas for a year 0 classroom can be found here

Little Red Riding Hood

The Three Little Pigs

How to make play dough

What did we do before Pinterest?

National Blog Posting Month 2015

Please, Mr Panda

I read a lovely blog post over at live 🙂 Life about a book called Please, Mr Panda.

Please, Mr. Panda

A panda has a tray of Doughnuts to share and goes around asking some creatures if they would like one. A variety of responses are given but only one gets the doughnuts.

Whats happening in Room 28 Week 4 – The Gingerbread Man

This week in Room 28 this week we are looking at the Gingerbread man. I started with a google search and came across the blog A to Z Teacher Stuff with this post from Amanda.

I have used some of the ideas to create my own resources which I will share with you for free here.

We have made our own Ginger Bread Man Class book using this template. Each child was given a page to write his or her name on and then decorate the gingerbread man. I have stapled the altogether and will put it in the book corner.

We talked about how you could stop the gingerbread man from running away and created this little book showing our techniques. They will keep them in their daily 5 reading bags to practise reading.

I modelled this activity with the class first using this big we made.

I printed these templates out for the children to use while they retell the story to each other.

Each day we share a poem together which the children can take home in their poem books. This is the one (below) for Monday which I loved as it ties in with our weeks theme. Normally I just use a selection of nursery rhymes for the week. I have a class poem book in which I stick a copy of each days poem as well. The children can read it and I will start to invite some children to colour a page in each day and sign it.

Four Gingerbread Men poem

For maths, we used the Roll a Gingerbread man game and the children made their Gingerbread men on the sheet from the same website. Which they loved so much I went onto Pinterest to find some more roll a dice activities for them to do.

We have been using some milk bottle tops to practise putting our numbers in order and learning to recognise number patterns to 10.

The role play area is very popular and I will have to remove the little pigs hats so they will act out the other stories instead. However, I’m glad they enjoy it that much.

Some more exciting ideas for a year 0 classroom can be found here

Little Red Riding Hood

The Three Little Pigs

How to make play dough

What did we do before Pinterest?

National Blog Posting Month 2015

Craziness in room 28

So I just read this post over at nothing was said and laughed out loud. Then thought I should share some hilarity from my own classroom. I regularly get comments from the teachers in the adjoining classrooms about how they love overhearing my wails of despair of what the children are doing that they shouldn’t be and have a little chuckle. So in no particular order from the mouths and hands of kids.

• All is quiet in the classroom and I walk over to the blue table and find a big pile of hair. Look at kids all innocently holding scissors, cutting their shapes and notice M has three big bald spots on his head. Sigh …….. discuss with the class why cutting our hair is not a good idea. Then brace myself for a conversation with mum.
• Same child at sports day, I turn round to find him eating grass. Sigh …….. talk about why grass is not good for us to eat. Discuss with mum.
• Kids all working well in groups. Walk over to yellow table to find M (seeing a pattern emerging) with two yellow crayons sticking out his ears, then notice that most of the table has copied him and have colourful crayons sticking out their ears as well. sigh………. more discussions on how we use our equipment correctly.

Enjoy and I shall update with more as I think of it and as it happens.

National Blog Posting Month 2015

Reading the Daily 5 – Introduction in Room 28

While stumbling around the internet i found this blog with a great day by break down of how they introduced the daily 5 in their classroom. This has been really helpful and we have started doing it their way. We are practising daily and slowly increasing our stamina. We started at only being able to read for a minute and a half and can now manage a great 4 and a half minutes.

How we are celebrating Diwali in Room 28

Diwali is November the 11th this year, Auckland city celebrated it early in Aotea Square on the 17 & 18th Oct.

We are celebrating Diwali at school and have been using lots of ideas around Diwali to talk about and introduce to the children.

The school organised a lady to come in an give anyone who was interested a henna design on their hand for $5. Here is mine in the classroom just after being done and later on the evening when all the paste had come off.

We have used a selection of resources from Activity village to colour in,

• Rangoli patterns to put up in the classroom.
• A poem to share at home in our poem books.
• A Diya to colour and
• lots of ideas for crafts to do.

We are having a group coming in to do a performance and all the adults are borrowing Sari’s to wear to school.

National Blog Posting Month 2015

In Room 28 Week 3 – Little Red Riding Hood

This week, Monday was a public holiday so we had the day off. Then on Friday i had an induction day so my class was split. So not as much learning has gone on as I would have hoped. We were basing it around the little red riding hood story. We have watched a whole range of video’s on You Tube.

We used a variety of activities from this wonderful set by 123 homeschool 4 me. You can download a whole set of worksheets for a range of skills including fine motor skills, ordering and maths.

We have used the cutting practise sheets, story sequencing sheet, size ordering sheet and the continuing a pattern sheet.

I have done a LOT of testing as well this week to get it all done before my reports are due in next week. Hopefully, now that is out of the way we can get on to some really great learning, rather than me setting tasks they can do without my supervision so I can test children.

Pictures to come later on in the week.

This post is part of my NaBloPoMo check it out

What’s happening in Room 28 Week 2 – The Three Little Pigs

So the second week of school and both me and the Kiddies are settled in. I went from 4 to 13 kiddies in a week and think I might have levelled out for a bit.

I was sent my report outline, given some leeway as we were all new,  but I have had to start writing reports to get them completed before the deadline in two weeks while completing my maths and reading testing. So it’s been a busy week.

This week I have focused on The Three Little Pigs as a sub-topic to our school one of Imagination. We watched the story daily on You tube and by the end of the week the kids could tell it off by heart.

We acted out the story using props that we made, some pig ear headbands, and found to help us remember what happened.

We have been building our own houses in our construction site using wooden blocks. They enjoyed wearing the Hi-Vis jackets and safety glasses I got and they randomly wear them around the classroom.

During maths, I have introduced graphing. We discuss then poll a different question every day. Our first question was what colour eyes do we have? I was the only blue eyed person in the room.

We are graphing different questions daily.

I finally got my laminating back from the office, it has been absent for the whole two weeks. I haven’t had a chance to get it all up on the walls yet, but my classroom is starting to come together.

Positive behaviour and making good choices earns them a sticker.

Keeping track of the days and weather.

Our letters of the day go here along with extra sheets.

I keep our class poetry book, letter of the day sheets and a current reading book for the class here

How to make quick and easy playdough

I made play dough! I’m still very new to the whole being an early years teacher. This is the first class younger than year 3 that I have been officially responsible for, longer than a couple of days. So for me creating activities and planning educational play are unknown territory.

What did we do before Pinterest?

I’m not sure how we survived before Pinterest. As I teacher, it is the go-to website for ideas.

I have been planning for a new entrants class (year 0/ kindergarten) for kiddies who have just turned 5 and are starting school for the first time. So in need of ideas I head over to Pinterest and a Facebook shout out to all my teacher friends.

I have found some GREAT ideas and resources and I wanted to share the best ones with you. If you are looking for ideas for 5 years old then hopefully this will help. You can also see them here on my new entrants school board.