More Australian Final Day Fun in Kindergarten

If you didn't read my last post you may want to take a look there first, click here.

Now…

Here is my cushion, gifted to me by my 2013 Little Learners. 
It’s so sweet. 
I think I find something new each time I look at it.

  Front   

Back

And a few close ups too…

                           

 

                   

                     

 

                           

A Treasured gift

Have your Little Learners surprised you
with something that touched your heart?
Or
Have you done something that's given you and the receiver a real buzz? 
Why not relive it and leave an inspirational comment below.

Happy Sunday!
Mrs Stowe

2013 Australian School Year Over

Yay…I survived 2013!

(Come on, you know I mean that in the nicest possible way.)

In Australia we have just finished our school year. 
Our intake is aligned with the calendar year. 
New kids arrive at the end of January and finish in December. 
Yes… that means I have just finished school for the year.

Rejoicing

 
My Little Learners will return after our Summer holidays as
great BIG Year 1 children and I will get my NEW Kindergarten class.

2013 was wonderful
and we ended our time with the usual hectic rush of assemblies,
Thanksgiving gatherings and Christmas parties. 
It was a fast pace,
to say the least, right until the very end. 
Have a look at our final day photo below.

The Little Learners decorated a ceramic star for their Christmas trees,
adding 2013 and their name to the back
to commemorate their final day as Kindergarteners.

Next we set up our long table as a banquet feast and celebrated lunch together. 
There were presents and smiles all around. 
My Little Learners gave me the usual amazingly generous array of chocolates
and perfumes and gift certificates. 
Then they presented me with a
class cushion. 

It was so sweet. 
Each child had designed a square
and one of the grandmas sewed the whole thing together. 
I love it.

Feeling very loved and special indeed.

More exciting news!

Have at look at my bare classroom.  Everything off the walls and windows…very boring looking.

 

Well…

Over the Summer break our 3 Kindergarten rooms are being completely renovated.
I cant wait to come back to the sweet smell of new paint and new carpet and new furniture too. 
Even my office will be renovated with a new external door and air-conditioning!

Right now, I'm off to a carnival & Carols

Happy Happy Saturday!
Mrs Stowe

Christmas craft made easy

She promised that this would be an easy, little preparation,
Christmas Craft activity and…

She was absolutely right!

By She I mean, Aussie blogger

Lauren from Love, Laughter and Learning in Prep.

We made her fool proof easy Christmas Wreath. 
Especially designed for anyone feeling a little bit lazy. 
That was me!

I gave the Little Learners a strip of olive green and a strip of grass green crepe paper
and got them to cut it into little square sized pieces about 2cm square. 
While they did that I cut the centre out of paper plates and delivered them to the Little Learners. 
When they were ready they glued the crepe onto the plate collage style.

 

Next they cut little read squares from a red strip of crepe paper
and when ready they scrunched them into little balls and
pasted them on top of the green to become
Holly berries.

Finally, the Little learners coloured, in pencil, a bow and cut it out when they were finished.  The bow was attached with a curled piece of tape which they did themselves too.

Best part ever…
all I had to do was peg them up and they look wonderful.

Thanks Lauren for getting me through the busy week.
If you'd like to check Lauren’s post Click here.
If you’d like another fun Christmas Tree craft click here,  then come back and click here.
Don't forget to let me know if you give any of these a try!

Happy Sunday!
Mrs Stowe

Daily Five…so Far so Good

With just a few short, end of year, days to go
I am still powering forward with the Daily Five. 

I want to try as much as I can in preparation for the new Kindergarten coming in 2014,
as well as giving the current Little Learners a kick start for Year 1 in 2014.

I'm excited because the Year 1 teachers have decided to …
implement the Daily Five in Year 1 next year. 
This is great news for our school…JOY!

Recap

We’ve started

1. Read to Self
2. Read to Someone

so now its time for…

3. Listen to Reading

We started this piece of the Daily Five the same way as the others by creating an anchor chat.  I was impressed with the way the Little Learners quickly assisted filling out the details because they were so familiar with the other Daily Five anchor charts.

We practised behaviours that would not be helpful and yes, Mister Tricky acted superbly twisting headphones and fighting over CD choices.  He even managed to pull our plugs and push buttons. 

Flipside,

when he was then asked to demonstrate the correct behaviours for
Listen to Reading…
he was a star and receive the due praise that meant he settled quickly into the session and
was the ‘go to’ specialist who carefully controlled volume and CD player buttons. 
Crazy but this process of practising and identifying poor behaviours followed by good choices just works. 
Don't ask why, just enjoy it.

My Little Learners sustained 20mins Listen to Reading with absolutely no problems at all. 
They were too cute with an occasional giggle or singing along.  
Cant wait until next year
because we will have a class set of iPads
so many can participate in Listen to Reading at the same time. 

At present I can only have 4 at a time,
which is okay but more will be wonderful.

Listening along together.

What next I hear you say…

Number four of the Daily Five, Work on Writing. 
I must confess we have already started this but
I am behind blogging so I will catch up soon and share the fun we had with this one.

Happy Saturday!
Mrs Stowe

PS  Don't forget to click on the links above to my other Daily Five posts. And keep sharing your successes with Daily Five.  I have appreciated your sharing and love reading your posts.

Christmas Trees 2014

Have you started to become sluggish or is just me!?

I thought I would have posted the final product of my Little Learners Christmas Trees last week
but no…
everything else seemed to pop up and steal my time. 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised as we are wrapping up the end of the year
and things seem to… well…pop up! 
Nativity Musical, 
Thanksgiving Assembly, 
Presentation Assembly, 
Extra Staff Meetings, 
Parent Meetings,
Reports…etc…
you know what I'm talking about!! 

Anyway, here it is…

The Little Learners finished their Christmas trees…

The stars were very cute.  The Little Learners cut 2, glued them together except for the bottom point.  They separated the point that wasn’t glued and attached a sticky tape curl then pushed it onto their Christmas tree top.

Here they are all seriously colouring and cutting the baubles.

For the baubles the Little Learners coloured cut and pasted onto coloured pre-cut circles that I punched out for them.  Next they put glue on one corner and stuck them to their Christmas trees.  They were so proud and so was I.

See my previous post to find out how we made these, click here.

Happy Monday!
Mrs Stowe

Creating A Christmas Tree…

Stage 1

My Little Learners have had so much fun this past week making mini Christmas trees.

Helping each other

   

They decorate our room perfectly even when unpainted and not yet decorated. 
I am thrilled with the results. 
Take a look…

First each child selected a substantially thick magazine. 
ie Australian Women's Weekly, Top Gear, which incidentally the boys loved!

Steps to Success

To begin simply fold the top right corner of a single page in towards the centre to form a triangle and make a firm crease as below.

Next take the newly formed right corner and bring it across to the middle of the magazine ensuring the hypotenuse is now straight along the magazines centre.  The page should still be completely attached yet hanging off at the bottom due to the folding as in picture below. 
The Little Learners call this move “making a Dads tie”.

Lastly, fold upward the small section that is hanging off the bottom of the ‘tie’ as shown below. 
Ensure the crease is firm and strong then turn the newly shaped page and start again. 
Continue with all pages including the covers. 
This took my Little Learners approximately 2hours to complete.

Once completed, stand upright and tape covers together. 
This makes the folded pages fan out slightly and form a Christmas tree shape.

 

Now the trees are ready to spray paint with green paint. 

 

Pop back tomorrow to see the spray painted trees,
the star and decorations that really finish the activity beautifully.

I hope you are inspired to have a go.

Happy Tuesday!
Mrs Stowe

Moving On With Daily Five

Loving implementing Daily Five…

After launching Read To Self, it was time to move on into

2. Read to Someone

Again we started with the suggested anchor chart for Read to Someone
and
practised the behaviours that would ensure this was a successful station. 

In my mind it was risky practising the anti behaviours as ‘the sisters’ suggested but…they were right. 

My little rascal was doing his usual thing so I selected him to demonstrate the behaviour that would not be good to have during this Read to Someone time.
 
Needless to say…

He excelled in his demonstration of rolling around the floor, taking the ‘shared book’, being noisy and making ridiculous faces.  The Little Learners laughed hysterically and I immediately ventured ( as suggested) into having him then demonstrate helpful behaviour for Read to Someone. 

SHOCK , HORROR…

He did this perfectly so naturally we all applauded and praised his demonstration.  HE beamed with this attention.  Now for the best news ever,  he AMAZINGLY employed the correct behaviour for the whole session of Read to Someone.  Yes I was astounded.

My Little Learners are proudly now achieving 20minutes of Read to Self perfectly and 12 minutes of Read to Someone brilliantly too.  Have a look at the following photo’s.  They echo my ramblings.  By the way the Little Learners even get up and change their books without being disruptive.

And now…

I'm gathering ideas for Work on Writing so please
share anything you do that’s great and help us out.  Much appreciation for anything!

Happy Saturday!
Mrs Stowe