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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Excellent Easter Activities for All Ages!

Easter is so much earlier than usual this year. It's certainly crept up on us and will be here before we know it! So it's time for me to start planning and thinking about the activities we are going to do in the classroom and at home.

Part of my role at school this year is preparing our morning "provocations" activities for all four Early Years classes. This means 5 activities per class, with enough materials in each activity for a small group of four children to use. So that's a total of 20 activities for more than 80 children! After a week, we rotate the set of activities around to another class to always keep them fresh and interesting.

I've decided to put together some Easter provocations for us all to use for the week leading up to Easter. There's going to be a mixture of fine motor, sensory, loose parts, alphabet and number. Plus there are so many more amazing ideas I've come across, although I might not be able to get all of them done! Still worth sharing though :)

So the first suggestion I have in the lead up to Easter this year is to keep your egg cartons! I've discovered so many cool ways to use them in your Easter activities. One of which is the pom pom colour sort using plastic eggs and these funky fine motor tools from The Creative Toy Shop.

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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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New Exciting Products from STEM Nest

Over the past four months, we've been sampling the STEM Nest and Little STEMies activity kits. I've been so impressed with the variety of activities. and learning opportunities in which they have provided. This month, Karlie, the owner of STEM Nest (also from Adelaide) has expanded her online store range to include some fantastic educational products, toys and resources to encourage STEM thinking.

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with STEM Nest. 

Here's just a few of my favourites...(well my top 5 actually) but there are many more on the site!

Firstly are the Neoformers magnetic shapes. You may have seen similar products to this one around (but this one is much more affordable) and it's such a great construction toy. The shapes cleverly attach together with magnets making structures more stable. This set comes with triangles and squares which allows for many possible structures and shapes. Learning about magnets is more certainly a part of science, however this toy pretty much ticks all of the STEM boxes.

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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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5 STEAM Learning Opportunities with Rusty Rivets

This is a sponsored post in conjunction with Mumtastic and Nick Jr. 

Every now and then you come across a new kid’s TV show that really impresses. Now, as a teacher I have quite a critical eye when it comes to my kid’s TV viewing, and if they have opportunities to think and learn while they’re watching – I’m happy.

STEAM (an acronym for the subject areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) is huge in schools right now – and Rusty from Nick Jr’s new show Rusty Rivets is quite the little engineer creating all sorts of gadgets and gizmos using a variety of tools and recycled materials. His friend Ruby is always by his side ready for help and work as a team!

So this week we got our thinking caps on and raided the shed to find all sorts of nuts, bolts and bits and pieces that we could use to do some STEAM of our own! Keep reading for a fun activity to do for each learning area (some of course will cover more than one!).

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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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An Introduction to STEM in the Early Years

STEM is huge in schools right now, but from what I hear many parents don't really know what it is or why it's so important. And some teachers may be not sure how to tackle it, where to fit it into their timetables and how to come up with engaging STEM activities into their classrooms.

This is a sponsored post as part of my Brand Ambassadorship with STEM Nest. 

STEM is an acronym for the subject areas;
S - Science
T - Technology
E - Engineering
M - Maths

To elaborate on these subject areas, in STEM we explore the science of how things work, we keeping up to date with new technologies which are ever evolving, we get to be mini engineers to design and construct our own machines and finally we use mathematical skills to do it all!

You may have also heard of the acronym STEAM with the addition of A for Art, and I recently came across METALS (where the L stands for Literacy).

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BEST Lego Duplo Play Ideas

This week, I was lucky enough to not only choose the theme for Early Learning 101, but I am their guest judge! When Amy and Nichole recently put a call out for theme ideas, the first thing that came to mind was DUPLO! The iconic toy which is likely to be in every household with an infinite number of play ideas; I knew it would make a great theme.

So here are some of my ideas, and I'll finish with the grid of the four winners from the #earlylearning101 challenge.

Miss M gets credit for this first idea - she decided one day to divide the lego base board into halves, so we could build our own creations on each side. We've even divided it into quarters before. This would be a great idea for siblings who need to learn to share the one DUPLO base.

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Games & Story Telling {My Little Set}

Hi everyone!
The blog has been a little quieter than normal this month, I've been busy at work taking on some extra relief days in a variety of classes across the school (which I've been loving) and of course the kids can be a handful when we're at home!

So today I'm pleased to bring you another brilliant product review with a focus on early learning (by the way if you're ever interested in browsing the other product reviews I've done, just look for the "review" label on my side bar, or if you're on mobile, scroll to the end and you should find it). 

We were recently sent two "My Little Set" sets of wooden discs that I'd love to share with you (kindly gifted for the purpose of this review).

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Following Up With The Sunshine Collective {GIVEAWAY}

Since I went back to work, Miss M has been super interested in "school work". She wants to know what the kids do all, day. I bring home spare worksheets for her to colour in and our dining table has quickly been taken over by "art". Endless pieces of paper, mini books, crayons and pencils, scissors and glue. And the best part is that she wants to learn! Her pictures are really starting to look like actual things with more detail. She explains what she's drawn and writes her name and numbers. She draws treasure maps and then we go on adventures in the back yard, and tick things off our scavenger hunt list as we go.


And she's almost four! It really is an awesome age!


Do you remember this product review I did for The Sunshine Collective? In particular we worked our way through the Preschool box, ideal for Miss M's age. Well on Friday afternoon we zipped to the post office before they closed to pick up our Foundation (reception/prep/first year of school) box to try out. Keep reading to find out how you can win one tailer made for your child.




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1 Minute Maths {With ORIGO Education}

Thanks to ORIGO Education for sponsoring this post.

Teachers - today I'm talking to you!
(Parents, if you're interested in learning about how you can teach your school aged children Maths at home, please keep reading!).

So we all have to do professional development. The latest trends in education are always changing and evolving, so it's important for us to be life long learners. Just like we aim for our students to be. For me returning from maternity leave AND being in a new (older) year level, this is even more important, especially when it comes to Maths.

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Ready Made Busy Bags {From Flying Sprout}

Yay welcome to my first product review for 2017!

Busy bags can be a life saver when you're out and about or travelling - and I love to make my own (sometimes rather haphazardly thrown together). But if you'd like someone else to do that for you (who also has a teaching background I might add) then look no further than Bianca from Flying Sprout.

So Miss M got busy testing them out - and I got to thinking about how they could be easily adapted to suit children of various ages and abilities with a few simple alterations.

*Kindly gifted for the purpose of this review
*Not sponsored

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