New School Year - New Blog Post

Phew!! It has been a summer and a half, which is why more poor poor blog has been so neglected!!

Let me fill you in before I give you a room tour!

I went away to Italy, Germany and Austria.. which was an absolutely beautiful holiday (where I consumed far too much pizza, pasta, ice cream and prosecco!!)

Then I eventually completed (and passed, hurrah!!) my Master's Degree!!

...THEN I went to Hong Kong for a couple of weeks, where I spent far too much money on stationery!!!

We even went to HK Disneyland and met a few characters!

Right - now for my room tour for my 2013/14 room.....

This is my door, with my cute little sign that a kiddo gave me as a leaving present;

Our topic this half term is 'Into the Woods' which is why you may notice lots of forest themes!

This is the view as you walk in to my room....

My role play area - with a small world table, complete with gorgeous smelling coloured/scented rice - my room smells of cinnamon and nutmeg, it is to die for!!

                         Complete with a Gruffalo Café ... I even got to meet The Gruffalo himself!!!

 On each table I have a cute little photo frame with the table name (sight words to help kids with their recognition) and a writing checklist so the kiddies can use this during literacy;

This is my reading area, which I added this year;
You can now purchase the check list from here

These are my beanie baby reading strategy posters which I am going to use this year in Guided Reading, I'll add them to my store this weekend;

I also made a cute bunting using the children's favourite book covers!! I plan to add to this throughout the year as we read more books together!

This is my art area, with a little Art Gallery for the kiddies work;

 

And finally, my displays!! I've been doing a lot of reading about maths and this was inspired by a pinterest find on subatising;

This is my blooms display to encourage higher order thinking and questioning - if you like it you can buy a copy here from my Teachers Pay Teachers store.. I LOVE this display and it's so useful to have up and pick questions to ask the kiddies from! 

 I bought this brilliant pack from TpT and put a copy in each of the kiddies drawers for early finishers;

This is my number bond display (again, another pinterest find!) That I absolutely love!! 

 Our school have introduced Spanish this year, so this is my little homage to our Spanish lessons!

This is my 'How are we learning?' poster so the kiddies know the noise level etc.

 This is my interactive numeracy table - I'll do a blog post on this soon!

And finally, my literacy working wall ...

I hope you like it as much as I do!! :) My resolution for this teaching year is to blog more, so hopefully I'll be keeping on top of my blog a lot more now my Master's is out the way! 

Finally here are a few of my 'made it's' that I'm proud of;

I started collecting pringle tubs, and bought loads of washi tape out in HK to make these cute storage cans;

And I also decorated this tired looking table to go in my reading area (it's not the handiest of DIY work but it will do!)

 ....and very lastly I'll leave you with one of my phonics 'made it's' that I love (and I didn't make most of it!!)

The kiddies loved building words today!! They could not resist learning :p

Dani x

Back to School Sale

Hey guys!

This is a super super quick post. I know I have been totally useless as of late with my blog - I am literally at the end of finishing my Master's degree, so my summer has been completely consumed with writing my dissertation - but as we speak I have 6000 words left to write so there is a light at the end of a very very dark tunnel.. then I PROMISE I will show my poor neglected blog lots of loving!!

 So tomorrow is the start of the huge Back to School TpT sale with a huge 28% off my store - be sure to enter the code BTS13 !!

Click on the link below to go to my store and snap up some bargains - I even have some new products that I've added, but unfortunately haven't had the chance to show them off explain them on here yet!!

I have lots saved to my wishlist, so I can't wait to do some shopping tomorrow - let me know if you buy anything :)

Dani x

Little Learning Lovies Review

So I have been fortunate enough to try out some stuff from the fab 'Little Learning Lovies' store. If you're not familiar with their website then you should check it out, educators and parents! They have fantastic printable packs to help your little ones with all sorts of things.

My kiddos are always finishing early and I found I was often telling them to read their book or practise their formation on a whiteboard for the last 5 minutes of the lesson. When I had the chance to download some things from the LLL store, the Pre-Writing Super Pack was a must have!!

I've stapled this pack together so when my kiddos finish their literacy lesson early, they go straight for this. They LOVE practising their letter formation with this pack - they go absolutely crazy and always ask if they can use their literacy pack!!

If you want this pack for yourself then you can buy it from here for the bargain price of $4.80 - it seriously is worth this if your little one is struggling with their formation!

I've also used some of the sheets from LLL to make a numeracy pack, but sadly I forgot to take photos of this!! These are the other products that I got, I used the count to 100 Writing Challenge for my numeracy pack, and once again the class have gone nuts over it!!


I'm going to use the Alphabet Cover Up game for phonics - but I'm having trouble getting hold of the folders over in the UK to make it! 

Click on the button below to go to the LLL store to take a look at all of the fab things that they have!! Let me know if you buy anything :) 

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I'm having a sale!

As part of Teacher Appreciation week I'm having a sale over at my Teachers Pay Teachers store... if you use the code TAD13 you'll get up to 28% off my products! Click on the picture below to go to my store... and let me know if you buy anything!

A new half term and a new topic!

So it has once again been a long time since I blogged.. but teaching takes up so much time and we have so many meetings going on right now it has been more than a little crazy!

I had a lovely Easter holiday, but it went far too quickly.. and I spent far too much money (mostly on teaching supplies!) Lots of the supermarkets were selling off the Easter supplies for cheap, so I bought some of those to stash away until next year...

...I also bought some things for our new topic, which is Handa's Kenyan Safari. I bought lots of fiction and non-fiction books based in and around Kenya, some animals for the small world, a couple of builders trays (which were an absolute steal at £6 each!!) a Kenyan flag, some animal masks and a crocodile puppet!

 I also bought a few things for my prize box.. and some things for phonics, smelly markers to go with my tricky word scoop pack and some cool sunglasses to go with my gangnam style phonics pack..

           

 

















These are the phonics packs that I mentioned... just click on the pictures and they'll take you to my TeachersPayTeachers store!

  


I also need to post up the pictures of our Art Gallery from our previous topic, The Great Fire of London... here are the kiddos fantastic portraits of King Charles II.. the head loved the display so much she wanted one outside her office...

 ... this is the portrait gallery outside the heads office.

So as aforementioned, our new topic this half term is 'Handa's Kenyan Safari' so we're doing lots all about Kenya, Handa's surprise and Africa.

I have opted out of a roleplay area this time, choosing a small world area instead.. which the kids absolutely love! I also have another interactive display..

                               The kids really enjoy using the interactive display!

This is our small world area, which unfortunately hasn't stayed this pristine for very long.. but they have tried really hard to make it stay this nice!

On the first day back we had some juice with animal bars and some mango and oranges, from Handa's Surprise..

 Our afternoons have been so jam packed it's untrue, we looked at African materials and had a go at painting some of our own (kind of adinkra style)

      We looked at Maasai jewellery and tried on a real Maasai necklace!

We made a Kenyan fruit salad - using the fruit from the story Handa's surprise....

We collected 'wow' words (adjectives) and then used these to make giant fruit shape poems outside!

We have been looking at how a typical African village differs from where we live, and they produced some lovely work...

.... and we made corn fritters which was lots of fun!

 This is just a tiny snapshot, we have done so much more with our afternoons!

One of my personal main focuses this half term is guided reading, and our guided reading sessions have also been full to the brim. Each child works in their group to complete each task for 15 minutes - they then rotate until they have completed each task;

We have been reviewing books that we have been reading throughout the week...

We are also currently working our way through Mrs Wheeler's non-fiction writing pack which you can purchase here   I am absolutely in love, and my kids are really enjoying making their non-fiction book.

We have been using these follow the yellow brick road story telling aids to work on retelling stories in order.

We've been doing some dictionary work, finding the meaning of words and putting words in to alphabetical order...

...we've been using non-fiction books to find out information about Kenya...

...and there's been lots of speaking and listening in our small world area!

Finally... I made up my kiddos a literacy and numeracy pack, so if they finish their work early they can just go straight to their drawer and grab their packs. I'll do a more indepth post in a few days, as I'm going to be reviewing some fab items from Little Learning Lovies, so keep your eyes peeled to find out what's in these packs!

 That's all for now!!

Dani x

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