Grandparents Are Special

Every year we celebrate Senior Citizens' Week by having  Grandparents' Day at our school. Grandparents are so special and are an important part of our children's lives. My Grandmother lived far away from me when I was growing up but I remember staying at my 'Nana's' every school holidays. She lived at the bottom of a mountain and I loved to climb that mountain! I remember her little cottage with many rooms and most of all her big bed that I needed help to get up on to it. I remember having no TV but I loved her stories. The woodfire stove and her cooking! She was very special. There will always be a special place in my heart for my Grandmother. They are fond memories that I will never forget.

 

 Grandparents are invited to come to our school and we entertain them with singing, dancing, stories as well as giving Grandparents an opportunity to visit the classrooms and see all the wonderful work that the children have been doing. They can stay for a Devonshire tea or have a picnic lunch with their treasured ones.
The children did some craft activities of Grandparents and we talked about why Grandparents are special and wrote stories.

                                     Don't you love this display in another classroom.

                           I took  photos of some of the special Grandparents in my classroom.
                           It was a wonderful day and thank you for coming.
                           I know it will be a special memory for everyone.

Easter Fun

Easter is just around the corner. We have been having fun doing lots of Easter activities. I have an Easter Graph for you to download for free from TPT HERE.

This is part of the fun activities I have put together in my Easter Fun package which has a cute bunny Glyph for you to do as well as a descriptive writing craftivity about the Easter bunny and lots more.

                                                                                                                     

 

These activities are available at TPT HERE

Top Ten Award

I am so new to the blogger world and was delighted when Corinna from....
     

Surfin' Through Second  

                                                     nominated me for a Top Ten Award.

I have recently joined some great blogs and would like to pass this award on. There are so many talented teachers out there who share so much  and inspire me with their ideas. I think recognition is well deserved! A big thank you to everyone. I just hope I can give something back in return.

                                                           Heather@ Heather's Heart

  

Michelle @ The 3am Teacher

Kylie @ Down Under Teacher

 

       Deanna @ Mrs Jump's Class

Sue @ The very Busy Kindergarten

                                           

Hadar @ Miss Kindergarten

Cara Carroll @ The First grade Parade

Kristen @ KPM Doodles

Cindy @ Love Those Kinders

Alessia @ Mrs Albanese's Kindergarten Class

Don't forget to grab this award from HERE , pass it on to 10 other well deserved bloggers 

and display it proudly. 

This is also a thank you from me for being so generous.

Checkin' Chicken Reading Strategy

 The Beanie Baby reading strategies are so good to have in the classroom. They are great to remind early readers of the strategies they need to use when reading. As a Reading Recovery teacher, another strategy we teach children is to make their eyes go to the end of words and check the ending. I came up with 'Checkin' Chicken' to add to the Beanie Baby strategies.

                              

If you would like a copy of my' Checkin' Chicken' reading strategy you can download it for free at  TPT HERE

Tt is for Tortoise

When it is early days in Kinder, I like to give my little ones lots of practise  cutting out to develop fine motor skills. There are some children who come to school and they don't know how to hold a pair of scissors. This little craft activity gives cutting out practise and supports your sound work as well as early number recognition. The little ones need to match the pattern on the tortoise matching numbers 1-10.

 

This little one did a good job of cutting out.

This is the display in my classroom. So cute!

If you would like this little activity you can download it for free at my TPT store HERE.

 

Read, Read, Read

I have had this poster in my classroom for many years. When I first made it, I had done it all by hand. I recently remade it. It looks so cute with  clipart I purchased from scrappin’doodles. It looks much nicer than my handwritten one!  I thought I would like to share it with you.

If you would like to download it for free, go to my TPT store HERE

The Kissing Hand

The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn is an adorable story about a little raccoon named Chester who is worried about starting school. It is the perfect story to read to your class at the beginning of Kindergarten.

I just love the craft activity we did of Chester. I found some little heart embellishments at a craft store that finished off Chester perfectly.

 We did text to self connections about how the children felt on their first day of school. 

We created an anchor chart of their emotions and then I gave the little ones a copy of the emotions and they chose which emotion or emotions they felt on their first day of school and they pasted them onto their worksheet. We talked about how you could feel more than one emotion. For example, while they might have been excited, they could feel scared.

I

                                                We made inferences about Chester.

The children can’t write sentences on their own yet so I had the sentences on strips and they pasted them onto their worksheet and illustrated them.

For a bit of fun we talked about who might be Chester’s best friend. I had a set of woodland animals laminated and put them into a bag. Before we began, the children had a guess who they thought would be Chester’s best friend and we discussed that it could be any of the animals because it was just luck which animal would be selected from the bag. Of course there were squeals of delight when their chosen animal was selected.

I purchased a Chester soft toy from Book Depository that I give to those children to hold who need some extra TLC. 

Just the other day one of my little ones was upset and it was so sweet when another little one brought Chester over and said "Chester will make you feel better".

Oh how that warmed my heart! Children can be so adorable. 

If you would like to purchase my Kissing Hand activities they are available on TPT  HERE