5 Ways to Use Letter Bricks

It's no secret that LEGO and DUPLO are more popular with young children than ever. Little Man spends ages building towers with DUPLO and Miss M creates some amazing, creative constructions out of her LEGO. It's always a popular choice of activity in my classroom and is so open ended with infinite possibilities!

So naturally, if you can find a way to tap into this interest to incorporate some more Literacy and Numeracy with your own children or children in your care - why wouldn't you take that opportunity? Recently I connected with the small business Lime Tree Kids, and they were kind enough to send us some Coko lower case letter bricks to feature on the blog. Both of my kids loved playing with them and it didn't take me long to come up with a list of 5 different ways to play with them!

The great thing with these bricks is that they still connect to regular DUPLO bricks as well as the base, so you can easily add them to your existing collection.

So when I first presented these to Little Man - this is what he did...

...followed by his rendition of the alphabet song, pointing at any random letter he wanted to. But this is great! This is where it all starts people!!

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BOOK WEEK 2018: Find Your Treasure

BOOK WEEK is here!! I just love this year's theme Find Your Treasure, don't you? Taking place across the country from the 18th - 24th August, teachers are preparing their engaging activities and parents have (most likely) organised their child's costume.

To me, books themselves are treasured items. Your child's favourite book is a treasure. The one you've read to them over and over again, so often that they can recite it by heart. But of course there are some more literal ways to interpret this year's theme... here are some of my favourite activities!

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

Image Credit - CBCA

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SCIENCE WEEK 2018!

Game changers and change makers...

Doesn't that theme just get you excited for Science Week? To me it's all about STEM, innovation, inquiry, investigations and experiments. We want to encourage our students to think outside the box, use their creativity and push the boundaries of what they already know and take for granted.

Science Week 2018 takes place of the week between 11th and 19th of August right around Australia. Some schools might choose to do lunch time activities in the Science labs, buddy class activities, rotations around the school or simply make extra time in their timetables for some super fun Science activities within their own classrooms.

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

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Fun and Fabulous Four Seasons Activities

I'm really interested to know, how do you go about teaching the four seasons? Does it come under your Maths curriculum when you are learning about days, weeks, months and time? Or does it come under Science when you're examining the weather, Earth and space? Or maybe it's a little bit of both. Do you do it all in one unit? Or spread it out over the year so your Summer lesson plans take place in the Summer time? I don't think there is a right or wrong approach, I am just genuinely interested! Please let me know via the comments below or over on Instagram.

Anyway, regardless of when and how you teach it, here are some fantastic resources for Junior Primary level you might want to try!

When setting up your classroom at the start of the year, months of the year visuals and birthday charts are always a must have! I love how the seasons are reflected within the months of the year labels, each of which is subtly different to the last, adding a point of interest and discussion. Children can also use these as a stand alone activity where they need to place them in order or group the seasons. The poster below would make a great addition to a class calendar display as well!

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Outstanding Oceans: Ideas for Junior Primary

At school this term we are bridging the gap from "Living Things" in the garden, to "Living things under the sea". It's another one of my favourite topics with so much scope across several learning areas - and it's just so pretty! All that blue looks amazing in the classroom (just like my discovery table pictured here).

Here are just a few fun resources from Teach Starter to get the ball rolling if you're keen to try an Ocean unit of work with your Junior Primary class.

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

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Learn and Grow with the New Officeworks Range

Don't you just love wandering the aisles of Officeworks? All that pretty colour coded and matching stationery makes me feel like I could be the most organised teacher ever. Miss M shares my love of pretty stationery and is always so excited to simply just buy a new pen or notepad, but Officeworks recently launched their new Learn and Grow range, opening up a whole new world of kid's products and I'm sure it will fast become one of their favourite shops too!

Please note, this is not a sponsored post, although we were lucky enough to be invited to the launch of this new product range which included a very generous goodie bag! I couldn't help but show you some of the products in more detail here on the blog. 

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Top Tips for Teaching Shape

Today we're talking about SHAPES!

It's probably the second biggest Mathematics unit in your term after Number. Children are usually exposed to the basic 2D shapes well before they start school (quite often thanks to the Play School windows), but it's so important that we as Junior Primary teachers give them a good foundation of both 2D and 3D shapes. As I was planning this post, and how to incorporate some Teach Starter resources, I came up with four key points to keep in mind when planning learning experiences for young children.

• Make it hands on
• Make it real life
• Make it purposeful
• and make it fun.

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

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A Wrap Up of our Term 1 Living Things Unit

I don't know about you - but we had THE BEST time in the Early Years in Term 1. So much learning happened. So many new things, new friends and new experiences.

For a few years now, our key theme for Term 1 is "Living Things" alongside our author study of Eric Carle. Of course we are always evolving, adding, changing and updating our programme, but the overarching theme has remained the same. It's just such a good starting place for the first term of school.

Eric Carle Animal Alphabet flash cards + alphabet pebbles + alphablocks

Way back when I first started blogging in 2014, I did a post about our Eric Carle Author Study (read it here - my how much my blog has changed and evolved since then!). In this post I go through 5 of the key texts which are all about insects/living things in the garden. Today's post is a bit more general and to show you some other things we've been doing (incase you missed them on Instagram).

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10+ Ways to Learn Numbers with a Hundreds Board

The hundreds board is one of the most fundamental mathematics resources for Junior Primary. It perfectly demonstrates the base 10 number system to young children, encourages counting and makes number patterns easy to find and identify. There are so many ways to use them so I've rounded up my favourites to share with you today!

Sponsored by Teach Starter as part of my Brand Ambassadorship. 

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What Type of Learner is Your Child?

We know that all children learn differently, but did you know that there are four (possibly even more) distinct different learning styles? In today's guest post we discuss the four main types of learners to help you identify which category your child falls into. Once you figure that part out, then you can aim to specifically teach them or guide them with their learning in the way they learn best, thereby giving them the best possibly outcome. 

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"Nothing Without Joy" - Reggio Emilia Explained

If you've been following me on Instagram (first of all - thank you!), you would have heard me talking about the Reggio Emilia approach and how we are incorporating this teaching philosophy into our Early Years classrooms this year. I am so excited about this path we are heading down, and I really want to share more about it with you all!

Back in 2016, I had three lovely guests join me here on the blog, to explain the Montessori, Reggio Emilia and Waldorf educational practices, and it turned out to be my second most viewed post EVER! (Here it is again incase you hadn't seen it - but after you'd read it please come back!).

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How to Customise and Create Your Own Teaching Resources

Do you ever find that when you're scouring the Interwebs for teaching resources, you just can't find what you're looking for? I mean, every class is different and is likely to have different needs. Not to mention that within each class are students who also have individual needs. Rarely would there be a "one size fits all" approach to your worksheets or lesson plans.

So your first stop could be the Teach Starter "request a resource" option if you are looking for something in particular. The community then gets to vote on the resources they would also like to see created and each week the Teach Starter team creates the top 10!

But today's post is more about the custom worksheets you can make yourself using the Teach Starter widgets. I've had a play around with handwriting, sentence starter writing prompts, maths worksheets, and word searches to give you a bit of a sample of what you can create.

This is a sponsored post as part of my ongoing Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

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How to be SUPER organised for back to school

Well, Christmas is well and truly over and we have all celebrated the start of a new year. Teacher types around the country and probably relaxing and enjoying their breaks, while some of us are starting to think about getting organised to head back to school (we are a bit like that, us teacher types).

This is a sponsored post as part of my brand ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

My friends at Teach Starter have so many amazing resources to make it easier for you to be super dooper organised for 2018. If you haven't already got a teacher planner, consider printing your own! There are some gorgeous designs and options that Teach Starter has created, and I wanted to show you the "chalkboard" series. It's all completely customisable as a word document if there's anything about it you wish to change. We all work differently, so it's great to be able to craft your planner - just the way you like it. Here's just a few sample pages...

Your year at a glance, for special events, birthdays etc...

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My Top Christmas Classroom Activities for End of Year

Christmas is coming! Assessment is almost at an end so it's time to start all of those super fun Christmas activities in your classrooms for the last few weeks of Term (depending on where you are in Australia, it sounds like the end of term dates are quite varied this year from the 1st to the 15th of December!)

Teach Starter is always adding new resources to their collection and they have some awesome Christmas activities to keep your children busy and engaged across all curriculum areas.

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

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This Month's STEM Nest Activity Kits

You all know how much I love STEM right? Well it's time for another update on what we've been doing with our monthly STEM Nest activity kits. We have got to experience so much already - constructing, designing, building, experimenting, recording, freezing, melting, pouring, mixing, stacking and exploring our senses. Incase you missed them - check out my previous posts here...

• New Exciting Products from STEM Nest
• Teaching STEM to Preschoolers
• Celebrating Science Week

This month was all about living things - in particular, germinating seeds!

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A-Z Letter of the Day Craft

Today's activity has been weeks in the making and I'm so proud to share it today (I even created a little video of our finished product!). I've been posting our progress on Instagram and have gotten a great response from my community! I really wanted Miss M to have a good background knowledge of the alphabet before she starts school, but this doesn't just mean writing out the letters 10 times each. There are so many more hands on and engaging ways to learn letter formation, as well as the sounds and words which begin with each letter.

This is a sponsored post as part of my ongoing Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter.

So I found these awesome alphabet play dough mats on Teach Starter, and you could of course laminate them and use them to create each letter with play dough as a fun, sensory experience to learn letter formation. But I decided to find a craft material for each letter for Miss M to decorate each one.

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Tips for Teaching STEM to Preschoolers

There's been a lot of talk about STEM and STEAM on my blog lately, and for good reason! I've been working with a new small Adelaide based business called STEM Nest who are all about bringing STEM into your everyday life at home - no matter the age of your child! You may remember my post on school aged children's activity kits and I'm so pleased this month to be able to give you an idea of what Karlie from STEM Nest is able to provide to preschoolers (or "Little STEMies"). It's all about hands on learning, exploring materials, sensory play and encouraging our little ones to be little innovators before they've even started school.

Sound like something your little one might like? Read on!

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with STEM Nest. These products were kindly gifted.

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Numeracy Activities for Preschoolers

Did you know that there are several aspects to consider when teaching early number concepts to young children? It's not just about how high they can 'rote' count by memory, or writing the numerals (some would argue that is a handwriting skill, not a mathematic skill). It's much more about their understanding of number, grasping what a group of '3' looks like, understanding words such as more or less, and counting a small group of objects using one to one correspondence.

In preparing Miss M for the start of school next year, this week I downloaded some great resources from Teach Starter. Where you'll not only find excellent resources for school aged children - but some fantastic resources for preschoolers as well! Here are 5 of my favourite number activities.

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

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The Perfect Book for Literacy & Numeracy Week

This brainwave came to me the other day and I couldn't wait to write about it and explore the book Uno's Garden with my Year 2 class - as part of Literacy and Numeracy week.

Graeme Base would have to be one of my favourite Australian illustrators (and authors of course but I feel his art work really needed a mention - did you know that original art works from the books sell for up to $50,000???). They detail is absolutely brilliant and the reader gets completed enthralled in the story thanks to the imagery.

Uno's Garden at it's core, is a story about how fragile the environment is, and how society needs to strive to create a balance between creatures, man made structures, and plant life. It uses multiplication concepts to do so, both increasing in numbers, and decreasing - even touching on square numbers. The mythical creatures and plants are so fun and creative!

Image Credit

Literacy and Numeracy week is all about integrating these two learning areas together, and what better way to do that than with books about numbers?

Let me explain Uno's Garden a bit more...

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Brilliant Book Week Resources & Lesson Plans

BOOK WEEK is here! It's a time to celebrate our favourite books and immerse ourselves in the joy of reading. The CBCA winning books have been announced and children all over the country are getting their Book Week costumes organised. Teacher's are planning their lessons - and with the help of Teach Starter, I've found some fantastic resources you might like to check out.

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with Teach Starter. 

Let's start by discussing the theme - Escape to Everywhere...

A very imaginative theme, as we explore how books allow us to escape into another world. Kicking off this collection of resources with a classroom banner - giving students a starting point for their thinking about the theme. Will they escape to outer space or into a fairy tale castle? A great story writing prompt or story book investigation.

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