The Destitute Teacher

Countdown supermarkets in NZ recently had a promotion. For every $20 spent they would give you one 'free' collectible domino. So I put the word out to friends and family. I put it in my class newsletter, on Facebook, everywhere I could think... I would trade handmade goods for dominoes. Due to the generosity of my friends and family I had a surprisingly large collection of dominoes by the end of the promotion. So now I am putting together some Math resources for my classroom that use dominoes as the main material. I am sure that I have come across the idea of Domino War somewhere in the wilds of the internet, but when I went to print it out for my classroom, do you think I could find a source? No way Jose. Tried and tested, this game is much loved by my year 2 students at the moment. The craze of the promotion may be contributing, but they are enjoying this relatively fast paced game. The idea is quite simple. First, turn all the dominoes so that the dots are facing do...

We are hammering away at our skip counting sequences at the moment. So when my husband went fishing a couple of weekends ago, I found it the perfect opportunity to make a couple of skip counting activities for the classroom, using my favorite math manipulative- milk bottle tops! To begin with, I took an A3 sheet of colored paper and traced around a bottle top multiple times, to create one long, windy snake. I filled it in with permanent marker and drew on a head and snaky tongue. I then wrote the skip counting in fives sequence that I wanted to re-inforce on each body segment. This took a surprisingly long time, so I was on the hunt for a quicker way. So I cut some chux cloth and glue it onto the back of a milk bottle cap, creating a simple stamp. I then chose white paint to stamp my second snake, to create a skip counting sequence in twos.  By the time I finished the second snake, I was totally sick of serpents. So my final game is a flowering vine, with petals stamped wit...

I love celebrating Easter with my little darlings! Normally Easter heralds the beginning of the school holidays here in NZ, however this year we are starting with a 12 week term, so we qualify for an Easter break! This year I am teaching year twos, so we did the usual routine on the Thursday before Easter.... Easter poems, Easter Math games (into their group boxes), Easter baskets and some Easter printables which were available as a fast finisher activity (dot to dots, spot the differences, find a word and an Easter themed boggle). Our boggle activity was vastly popular, as the prize offered up was some glittery eggs and little fluffy chicks (both available from Spotlight). I buy them after Easter each year, when then are marked down to ridiculously cheap prices and pop them in my cupboard for the following Easter. This year I made my class an Easter themed bean bag throw activity for Math. It began with 10 circular bean bags, decorated to look like bunnies (inspired by this blog h...

Although this post is has "St Patricks Day" in the title, the content is totally adaptable to any themed holiday or occasion- as you will soon see! In NZ, Valentines Day occurs fairly quick into the school year. I usually take the opportunity to pop some Valentines themed board games into the Math group boxes for the children to play as part of their rotation tasks. Last year I made up a set of 'tic tac toe' for each group box. The sets had a coloured game board (glued onto card) and 6 felt hearts of one colour, 6 of another colour. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I forgot about the games, and they were in the group boxes for the entire year. However, am excited that every set survived! I credit it to the fact that each heart was a double layer of felt blanket stitched together- very durable. However, this year I was less organised and just cut out single layered felt hearts. My plan is to stitch them together before next Valentines Day. No doubt it w...

Recently I had the sweetest student teacher in my class. It was a thought provoking experience- it certainly makes you aware of your own little idiocyncrasies and question why yourself about your teaching and learning program. It also means that for a block of time (in this case, one week), you have a student teacher in full control of your class. So all of a sudden you have time to GET THINGS DONE (of course I was still busy supporting them in their new role etc, but it is nowhere as full on as fulltime teaching). It was a bit of a shock to the system initially. There are so many things to get done that I didn't quite know where to start. However, after 5 minutes the shock wore off and my hands and mind were racing. I have been meaning to create some more learning activities for my two dyslexic students, and here was the perfect opportunity. First stop- Adrian Bruce. Adrian runs an amazing website dedicated to free, printable learning games and activities. If you haven't...