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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Teacher Carry All Review + GIVEAWAY!

One thing that most teachers have in common is that we seem to cart everything except the kitchen sink to and from school. Folders, planners, student books and papers to mark, picture books, toys, resources, laminating, art supplies, ingredients, materials, storage, not to mention our lunch and drink (because, you know, we need to remember to eat and can't survive on coffee all day!)

I was in desperate need of a new teacher bag, so I was thrilled to recently discover the Teacher Carry All! Keep reading for all the info AND a sneaky giveaway that's happening over on my Instagram RIGHT NOW!

Kindly gifted for the purpose of this review. 

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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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"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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An update, a look back and a cheeky birthday

Well hello there my little blog! Long time no see.

It's been a bit of a quiet December here, so I thought I should post one more time for the year with a bit of an update and a reflection of the year that was. The end of a calendar year also marks the end of another year of blogging, that's been four years since I started Teacher Types (a very easy blogiversary date to remember) so it's time to get back into it and set some goals for 2018!

So 2017 for me was the year of the juggle. The spinning of the plates. Motherhood, part time teaching + extra relief days, and maintaining the blog, and I think I've managed to do it all! I actually had a really good year.

I wrote 85 posts in total, with January and February being the busiest months (I must have started the year more enthusiastically than I finished it lol), and here are my top 5...

Kid & Hub Opened in Adelaide!

We absolutely love Kid & Hub! They have had such a successful first year of business with their movers and makers classes a big hit for both of my kids and we love their new and improved play hub!

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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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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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My Epic Fail {Growth Mindset Guest Post}

Growth mindset. There's a lot of talk about it amongst schools and workplaces at the moment. We are being encouraged to train our minds to embrace challenges, look on the positive side, find solutions and problem solve. The simplest example that comes to mind is to add the word "yet" at the end of the statement "I can't do it". 

Today's guest blogger is Bec from Square Peg Tutoring (you know that expression - square peg round role?). Well Bec is all about helping those square pegs to learn in their own way and at their own pace through her tutoring business. She's sharing a really personal story from her past experiences in the classroom - her "epic fail". Something I'm sure we have all found ourselves doing at one stage or another. I applaud her for so bravely sharing and for allowing me to publish her story here and share it with my community of teacher types. 

Welcome Bec.

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When Should Your Child Start School? {Guest Post}

My daughter will be starting school next year! It's such an exciting time for our family and we are really looking forward to it. She'll be four when she starts, turning five in early March. There was no doubt in my mind that she would be ready. Not that I have pushed her to do any of the educational activities you've seen on the blog or Instagram - I really do try to take her lead and follow her interests of when she wants to do writing, drawing, reading, numbers, sensory or imaginary play. As well as being academically ready (in my opinion), her Preschool teachers agree and she is so used to the daily routine of a 7:30 - 4pm day that I think she'll cope with school life really well.

However in my chats with family and friends, it can be a difficult decision to make for March & April babies who will either be 4 turning 5 when they start (making them one of the youngest in their cohort), or 5 turning 6 when they start school. And in many cases you need to have a plan the year prior to decide if they will commence sessional kindergarten or not. A really good piece of advice I heard from a friend (she read it in a book) was to ask yourself; "Will they flourish? Or will they just cope?". Parents often do not regret their choice to wait another year before sending their child, but some who choose to send them 'early' do.

So to help you navigate this big decision and to give you some food for thought, today I welcome Aly from Grow to Know. She's a teacher of the Early Years like me and her website Grow to Know is all about preparing children for school. Aly has some really clear dot points for your to consider to decide if your child really is ready...

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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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Rain Cloud in a Jar Experiment {Science Week}

Hi everyone!
I'm back again this week with another Science Week post. Our theme in Year 2 is "Water Wise" for this term and so the perfect Science Week experiment for us was the rain cloud in a jar. I've done this with Miss M before, but it's great for all ages. The shaving cream represents the cloud, the food colouring is the rain - and when the cloud gets heavy, the rain falls down. It really is mesmerising.

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Celebrating Science Week with STEM Nest Activity Kits

It's Science Week, hooray! Term 3 is always a busy one for us with lots of things happening but Science Week is one of my favourites - especially since it's the speciality subject I've been teaching this year in my part time role. You may remember this post I wrote recently on an introduction to STEM, and I wanted to share more of the fantastic activity kits you can get via a subscription with STEM Nest for all different ages.

This is a sponsored post for my Brand Ambassadorship with STEM Nest. 

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8 Ways to Keep Your Family Organised & Have More Time to Play! {Guest Post}

Hi everyone! How are you at organisation? I always thought I was pretty good at it - but with two kids, working part time and just the general chaos and busyness of life it's not always easy to keep your household running like clockwork. 

Today, guest blogger Erin (you may have read my interview recently) has some fantastic organisational tips to keep the household running like clockwork, ultimately leaving you with more time to actually play with your kids!

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...so if you are anything like me, you are always on the hunt for fresh ideas to keeping the home, routines, family as organised as possible. Today I am sharing eight ways to help keep your family organised so you have more time for play. These ideas are nothing new, we didn't create them (other than our version of #8), these are ideas that we have seen and/or adopted from various experiences and influences. Some we have changed to meet our needs and others we have simply followed in the original form. By using these systems, we have found there is more opportunity for family adventures and PLAY!

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Teacher By Day {Melissa - Paper Halo}

Hi everyone!
Today's teacher by day is an Adelaidian like me and I'm so pleased to have her here on the blog to share a bit about her biz. Meet Melissa from Paper Halo. She knows all about weddings, parties and events and creates gorgeous invitations and stationery. 

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