Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is on the 8th of February 2016 and is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and explore Chinese themes in the classroom.

A quick and easy way to present Chinese New Year to students is to download the Chinese New Year activity pack.

Contained in this pack is everything you need to introduce and explore this festival in your room including:

Information Slides:
• China
• Chinese Calendar
• Red Envelope
• Firecrackers
• Lanterns and Dragons

Activities:
1 Find the continent of Asia
2 Chinese Calendar
3 Red Envelope
• Red Envelope Decoration
• Red Envelope Coins – Black and White
• Red Envelope Coins - Colour
4 Firecrackers – Maths sheet
5 Chinese Lantern Instructions & Chinese Lantern Template

A farm thematic unit in the classroom

Young children love all things farm-related. They love the noises animals make. They love to name the animals (something they have often been doing since they were babies). They love to colour and play farm games.

The Farm Activity Pack by TechTeacherPto3 is everything you need to introduce farm themes into your classroom.

Inside the Farm Pack you will find 12 Maths and 12 Literacy activities to use in your classroom.

Full colour farm posters assist with vocabulary building.

Flashcards and a Bingo Game also assist young students to build their vocabulary.

The Diorama is a fun craftivity to allow students to build their own farm and then write about their farm in the writing task.

12 Literacy activities and worksheets build on vocabulary including naming, labelling using describing words.

12 Maths activities include Old Macdonald's Farm song and several maths activities that can be used with this (including large images for interactive lessons). Part, part whole activities, maths problem solving and much more!







To view the full list of what is available in this busy pack visit the TechTeacherPto3 store or follow the link to the product by clicking here.

Dot Painting Fun!

My Preps have really enjoyed exploring Aboriginal culture and their connection to the land as part of their Geography study.

We've studied Tiddalick the Frog and the concept of drought and flood in Australia.

We read the story of the Rainbow Serpent and discussed how we must care for the land and animals as they are our brothers and sisters.

To finish our unit we explored Aboriginal art and then created some wonderful dot paintings. I was particularly impressed with how easy these were for 5 and 6 year olds to create!

If you'd like to try the dot paintings you can download the full pack which contains explicit step by step instructions, images and black outlines for students to use here.

Teachers Pay Teachers Sale Time!

Well it's THAT time of the year again!

The Teachers Pay Teachers Cyber Sale is on for only 2 days starting the 30th November.

Visit the TechTeacherPto3 store and grab yourself a 20% discount on all of our products - but wait there's more! When you checkout use the code SMILE and you can get an extra 8% discount on your purchases! That's 28% discount in total on everything you buy but only for 2 days!

Christmas Around The World - Time to explore and celebrate!

Christmas is such a fun time in the classroom and a perfect opportunity to explore how other countries and cultures celebrate.

The Christmas Around The World pack contains everything you need to take students on an adventure to 9 different countries. see my new updated pack with 10 countries in it now!

Passport stamps and 12 page activity booklet

In this pack you will find 9 10 passport stamps from each country visited and an Activity Book.

As you visit each country and explore their traditions, you can contrast and compare their events, location and culture with your own.

Complete the passport page and then allow students to glue in a passport stamp - just like a real passport!

p.s this also doubles as a neat little formative assessment tool.

Or download the individual packs here (click each picture to download)

Play Doh/Dough Mats - Literacy Rotations idea

 My students usually enjoy their sight word Play Doh mats when we do literacy rotations however, I've noticed they have become bored with them and needed something new. I wanted to extend them with short and long vowel sounds but still wanted them to strengthen their fingers with the Play Doh.

I created these quick little Play Doh mats for both Short A and Short E and they really enjoy them.

They have fun trying to work out what the word is and by making the missing letter with Play Doh it reinforces their spelling and phonics knowledge.

Other Play Doh mats available at TechTeacherPto3 are the Play Doh 10s Frames Mats - another fun maths rotation activity.

 

Fun Maths Activities: Teen Numbers

 Teaching teen numbers can be tricky for young students. They often struggle with the concept of 'more than 10', parts of the whole and where to place the 1 (in front or behind).

It can be hard to make maths interesting for kinder kids so here are 6 fun differentiated maths activities to introduce and reinforce teen numbers.

 

1. Kids love a puzzle and this one is no exception! Match the number to the symbol to the tens frame (look you've just shown me 3 ways to represent that teen  number!). 

 

2. "Show me 14!", "Now show me the two parts that make 14?", these flip and fold number strips allow all students to show they can tell you two parts of the whole. To differentiate this task for higher students give them two different parts of the teen number (6 and 7) and ask them to show you the number. 

 

3. A fun whole class activity, first to 20! Put students into two groups (boys or girls works best) and place the numbers on the floor (another opportunity to count as a class and sometimes you can be sneaky and leave a number out to see if they notice!). Then roll a dice and race to 20! Higher students could race to 50 or even 100 (use chalk to extend the line out). 

 

4. Tens frames and flip cards work great as a maths rotation as students can easily test each other in pairs. Higher students should try and use the non-numeral cards to see if they can read the word. Additional activities can involve a timer, race to see who can show that number first! 

 

5. My students love a craftivity and this butterfly doubled as a formative assessment tool. Students pick a number between 11 and 19 and then must represent the two parts in as many different ways they can. Cut and hang in the classroom for a fun display. 

 6. Flash cards with matching tens frames make useful visuals around the room I print, laminate and attach magnets to the back of mine so I can throw them on the to board at a moments notice and call out "Show me fourteen!". Use with whiteboards and pens for a quick formative assessment tool.

These 6 products are available now at the TechTeacherPto3 TPT store.

Reading Around Australia - encouraging independent reading

Reading Around Australia - 16 Book Challenge by Ripper Reading Resources is a lovely way to get your students to read more independently.

Students are encouraged to read 16 books in total (two per State or Territory). They cut and paste one of the book icons on the next page into their “passports” each time they have completed a book and they record the title, author and a review of the book within their passports.

Teachers have the discretion to decide whether this challenge is completed over a term, a semester or a school year, depending on the age and the stage of the students. The passport, in particular, is a nifty little tool to keep students engaged with the activity and even slightly competitive! What a great idea!

Introducing the basics of grammar

Nouns, Verbs and Pronouns - they can be tricky to introduce to very young students, however, it is essential students develop a conceptual understanding of grammar basics in order to develop their writing skills.

This nouns pack provides an introduction to what a noun is (person, place, feeling or thing) through a colour poster and short activity. I have used this activity with students to help them create their own grammar poster they can refer to when writing.


The verb pack introduces young students to the purpose of verbs with a colourful poster and quick activity. Place the noun and verb activities back to back to create a fun poster when hung from the ceiling.

I also love this cute little idea from Teacher Idea Factory's blog post for pronouns. I'm definitely going to try this with my own class and decorate the classroom with these little flowers.

 

 

 

Teaching Addition To Young Students

Are you looking for fun and engaging ways to discuss addition with young students?

The Little Mouse story uses animation, sounds, children’s language and familiar objects to model the addition concept to young students.

A quick fun visual way to introduce the concept of addition and a building block to many other activities to allow students to demonstrate their understanding of the concept.

The 10 Play Doh mats set is another fun engaging activity for young students.

In addition, there is a colour and black and white Cookie Shop Game mat with printable cookies (should you wish to get students to cut and paste on the b&w sheets). To help students play the game there are 8 customer cards with cookie orders to make.


 
 Teddy Maths Problem Solving Cards


18 Cards in total (3 patterning and 3 problem solving) have been placed into this set. 

All cards have been colour coded to assist with classroom differentiation and maths rotations.

Maths Problem Solving Stories - Addition

Introduce maths problem solving through 10 addition stories on colourful slides. These slides make a great set of morning work when displayed in the classroom on a large screen.

Why not save some money and purchase the  

Foundation Year Maths Bundle 

with all four products inside!