The Destitute Teacher

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...

My class absolutely LOVES raiding my big pointers. Unfortunately sometimes they can be a little hard on them, especially the more fragile fairy wands etc.  So I have made a bunch of mini pointers for the children to use when reading. They went wild for them! This set is inexpensive, quick to make and an easy craft activity. You could even have your students make their own!  The wands are simply large popsicle sticks with a decoration hot glued to one end. I am hoping that the decoration focusses the eye, helps the children with their tracking and makes their reading just a little bit special and exciting. I used a range of decorations- googly eyes, wooden shapes, felt shapes, sparkly decorations, Christmas decals, foam shapes, pom poms, ribbon flowers, fabric flowers. The craft aisle of the dollar shop or your local emporium should provide plenty materials to work with.  They are stored in a condensed milk tin. I used PVA glue to cover it with yellow paper an...

Shifting classrooms always requires a scramble to inventory current equipment and to replace those old regulars that you use a lot. I know that almost every classroom must need counters at some point in time! Having a range of alternatives can often pique children's interest, but can be a budgetary stretch at the same time. Here are 10 alternatives that I have rustled up with a minimum cost. 1. Smooth stones come ready made and freely available from your local beach or stony river. Small pebbles are perfect as game tokens, or collected for use in Math lessons. They look great with stickers and glitter glued on and are REALLY durable. However, they can be heavy when stored en masse. 2. Wooden shapes are available in packs of 12-20 from your local dollar shop. These are particularly awesome to use for number stories (i.e. 6 bumble bees were sitting on a flower and 3 flew back to the hive, how many were left?). They are more durable than paper cut outs, intriguing and reasonabl...

I find Math to be an absolute headache in terms of resource management. There is never enough resources, occasionally too many, and they are often in bad repair. This is why my next few posts are about Math resources. Enjoy! As I teach in NZ and follow the Numeracy Projects, place value houses are a common material to work with. I printed mine off A4 size from http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/sites/default/files/Numeracy/2007matmas/Bk4/MM%204_11.pdf . Each 'house' was copied onto a different coloured paper, and then cut out and laminated. I didn't cut them out again after laminating, as it made it easier to punch a hole in the corner and thread a ring through (are they 'magazine' rings?).  My awesome set can now hang from the wall if there is space. No more scrunching up in the bottom of a drawer! They are also really quick and easy to unclip and use, then pack up again. I started off using a whiteboard pen to write the digits directly onto the laminated charts...

Yup, i've returned. The goal is a post each week. Let's see how long I last this time! Exciting news- new school, Year 2 class (6-7 year olds), new city. BY THE BEACH. Oh yes.