Is it a bird?…

It began with a few odd shaped bits of coloured paper…

 

and finished as a bird in a nest…

We sure had fun today learning about how birds build nests as well as the many different kinds of nests.  The Little Learners were fascinated with the intricate way the birds weave with their beaks. Although they didn't weave like birds during this lesson, they did create clever nests.  They even cleaned up well at the end of the lesson. 

Tomorrow they shall write recalling the facts learned.  Should make a great display area.

Happy Thursday!
Mrs Stowe

Circus style

My Little Learners turned into colourful circus clowns and wondered if people would recognise them.

This gorgeous sign was created using a freebie frame on TpT by 3am teacher.  Isn’t it cute!

I Love our clown photo window.

I got this idea from my Kindy colleague and loved it so much I did it a few days later.  Not sure if she made it up or was inspired by someone BUT I do know I love it!!

I printed an A4 black and white photo of each child then had the Little Learners add clown features in bright oil pastels.  Finally, we pasted on a cut out clown hat, mounted the whole thing on black card and voilà!!!

– Kinder Clown Cuties-

 

Happy Wednesday!
Mrs Stowe

 

PS Last Clowns …promise!

A Promise is a Promise

Before and After drawings.

Below are the clown drawings as promised… yesterday!
Click here if you missed yesterdays post.  The red dye was has not photographed really brightly as in true life but I think you still get the idea.

Reading Readiness

Ready Set Go

This is the set up for tomorrow’s Reading groups.

1. Guided Reading – I run this station.
2. Listening Post and activity – Little Learners listen to a story then complete a related task.
3. Reading Activity – a rhyming focus this week
4. Sight Word Practise – bingo after matching words to sample
5. Home Reading – Reading home readers to and adult then selecting a new book to take home.  Also sharing familiar texts with a partner.

More on these tomorrow

Now let’s take a look at my new signs…

 …….….….   cute!

Special thanks to Mel from Frog Spot for her fabulous freebie lady bugs…brilliant!!
and…to Teaching by Hart for the lovely freebie Digital Paper.

Happy Monday!
Mrs Stowe

Send in the Clowns

    

Be a clown, be a clown, the whole world loves a clown…

Step 1.  the Little Learners followed sequential drawing directions to draw their clown faces.

Step 2. Next they used oil pastels to colour the features

Step 3. Finally they used a dye wash over the paper to enhance the colours, unfortunately the photos were too dark to use so I will take new ones tomorrow and add to this post.  They really look effective.

Simply Spectacular

**Please don't get worried we will move past clowns in our circus unit.**

Happy Sunday!
Mrs Stowe

Five Sound Houses.

I have a sound house for each alphabetic letter.  The humming House, The Royal House, The Quiet House, The Noisy House and The Vowel House.  The divisions were not my idea but I got the idea from

 The Early Years Foundation Stage – Toad Hall Nursery. 

This was a very old idea that I used early on in my teaching, late 80’s.  However, I returned to it about 3 years ago and haven’t looked back as I felt they were a great visual reminder.



Mrs Stowe's Kinder Cottage



How ???
I run through these each morning with the Little Learners and they seriously LOVE vocalising them in the appropriate tone. ie whisper for the quiet house, royal voices for the royal house…etc 
We usually chant,  “nnn as in nurse”, “mmm as in monkey”etc

The Little Learners take turn at being the leader and pointing to the cards…again loving it!

The best part…

the noisy house can be shouted (Lots of fun while reinforcing the sounds) but it only lasts for 7 sounds then its over…peace, quiet and sensible for the rest. 

Little Learners are happy and so am I.

 

Happy Friday!
Mrs Stowe:-)

Bearly art…

My Little Learners had a fun time drawing their favourite bear
and painting a ‘golden’ frame. 

Their artworks added a zing to the classroom.

The picture below is my favourite…

After spending 20 minutes drawing and not being happy with just one bear drawing,  this Little Learner looked me in the eye and stated, “ my bear doesn’t have a name – let’s just write that okay!!”

So to all the unnamed bears, this one is for you!

Happy Thursday!

Mrs Stowe

Aliens!!

Last week I was off classroom teaching doing some Kindergarten interviews for 2014 and my Little Learners were privileged to have Mrs Whary the Teaching Fairy (also, Musings of Me) as their casual (substitute) teacher.

What a blessing!

Mrs Whary arrived with the most amazing teacher tool kit in hand. I can tell you that at this point I was seriously worried that MY kindergartners would never want me back!!!!!

So many super ideas…

Mrs Whary read the Little Learners the story Aliens in Underpants which I have promised to buy for our class library asap.  The Little learners then constructed an amazing army of aliens by cutting and assembling bits and pieces.  They even got to choose how many eyes their alien had…which ranged from 1 – 4. 

My favourite part was the underpants template that they coloured in oil pastels to their liking. 

Bright and cheerful was the order of the day.

…and by the way what alien would be complete without an exciting adventure story.  The Little Learners wrote an ending to “If alien’s came to save the world I would help them by…” 

Hilarious phonetic writing followed.

All in all…what a privilege to have such a talent in MY classroom…thank you Mrs Whary  and

please come again!!

Much appreciation
Mrs Stowe

clowning around

We had some fun in class creating these colourful clowns. 

The Little Learners used oil pastels to colour a clown face, gloved hands and big boots.  They then cut them out and pasted the pieces to a rectangular piece of tissue paper that had been scrunched in at both ends.

(I hand drew the template and photocopied it - rough but it did the job.)

We later wrote some creative stories that began… “The Little clown …”

Yes we are learning about the circus…and loving it!

The signs hanging between the clowns and on the wall display were created using a 3AM Teacher  free frame template which was perfect for the circus theme.  Thanks Michelle, your work is amazing and very much appreciated.  The design I used was actually from her tpt store and comes in a whole range of terrific colours.  Have a closer look below.

Happy Monday!

Mrs Stowe

Madness…did someone say madness…

School registration

School registration fortunately only comes once every five years.  This past two weeks have been chaotic to say the least.  Not only the general uploading of  beautifully prepared and registered programs after hours of painstakingly dotting of ‘i’s’ and crossing of ‘t’s’. (we all know about that one) Why is it that we never think what we are doing is good enough at registration time?

Registration is also the general overhaul of everything in the school. Policies, documents, programs, WH&S, gardens, classrooms tidy… I feel I’ve done all but dust the children!

Enough whinging…Almost there… Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we have inspectors on site and as for Friday…

I declare it  FUN FRIDAY!!!

Can’t wait to get back into blogging. YAY!!

Until tomorrow Goodnight.

Mrs Stowe

welcome Home…

Thank you so much
for following me to my new site.

I haven’t really got much to say tonight because just creating the new account with blogger, transferring the template and making a link here has taken it’s toll. 

Please come back tomorrow for a little bit of madness.

Love

Mrs Stowe

PS  Why not follow me …you have no idea what joy it brings to see new friends following along in the followers area.