A Nova-fied Tuesday

30th July

At the moment I normally don't work Tuesday but this Tuesday was a work day, a Nova day and as an added bonus it was my day with the three children visiting us. This was my first time teaching English to a very much younger Japanese student. I think it went well, I hope it did.

We did 'What is your favourite colour?'

We did ...
'What animal is this?' It's a koala.
'What colour is this animal?' It's grey.
 'What size is it?' It's medium.

We coloured animals and we repeated again and again and again. 

It's a crocodile.
It's green
It's big.



We did 'Whats your favourite animal?' I like ...

We played animal name bingo where the students had to find the first letter/ sound of the animal that I called out on their bingo card. Prize ... a freddo frog, yum!

We made origami koalas. Fast little hands were good at this. Some even made a baby koala too.

We had some artists at work on the white board.

We had some constructive mess.

We had puzzle making teamwork.





And some animal finding at the end.

We had races to find the Australian animals like the emu, the wombat, the snake, the platypus and the dingo. We had noise making which annoyed the people in the office next door hehe.

We had an alphabet game where the students gently threw a freddo (short on tools here) at the letter board and thought of something that started with that letter sound. F ... fffff ... frog
They got to keep their freddo.

We had some koala counting and colouring while waiting for their Mums.

In the afternoon we had some koala cuddling and watching.

We had some blue tongue lizard teasing.

We had some crocodile spotting and touching.

We also had some bird spying (another story) and some snake watching.
And lastly we had some tired feet and brains all around.

 

Scrabble Letters Activity

Last week we used scrabble letters (the ones without magnets) to practise our spelling words. I put the scrabble letters in a tray in the middle of the floor. The kids chose 5 words from their spelling list that they thought were tricky and wrote them in a notebook. They then spelt the words with the scrabble tiles and added together the numbers on each tile to find out how much their word was worth and which word was worth the most. Even Mr Yr1 got in on this although his long words made for tricky adding but he got there with a little help to keep him adding on the right number.

 

 Mr T even got in on the action making 'words' and finding every letter T and E in the tray.

 

Scrabble Letters

 I honestly think this post should be named 'whose silly idea was this?' but as I used scrabble letters, well I will stick with that. 

Yesterday I finally made up some magnetic letters using crafty scrabble tiles that I had purchased, yet again, off that wonderful place full of good things, ebay. The finally part is because I probably bought these around 6 months ago but making them has been shoved to the back so here goes.

What you need:

First grab a handy bag of scrabble tiles,

 Some awesome magnetic tape, or any other form of magnet you can get you hands on and some PVA or wood glue if you need stickiness or don't trust the stickiness of the tape (which I don't after previous experiences).

Now what to do:
1. Apply PVA glue to the back of the scrabble pieces.
2. Stick on a piece of magnet or magnetic tape

3. Do it over and over and over again (hence the whose idea was this comment)
4. Let them dry.

Then taa daa there you have it, magnetic letters. 

Some ideas for how we are going to use them coming soon (just as soon as we get around to it).

Sight Word Idea

Sight words ... the bane of our lives and something that I am constantly looking for more ideas for because the kids get bored. However, despite that their favourite activity is still jumping on the words written on the cement but I do like a bit of variety.

I am not sure about in 'real' school but in distance ed preps are given a list of sight words to learn (those words that you just need to know for successful reading).

On air one day Mr Prep's teacher did an activity where they had to look at the sight word and then move the letters onto the pegs on a picture of a clothes line ... so I decided to make the same thing.

 So now we have a pile of laminated letters and some cool pegs on string from Crazy Clarks. Mr Prep can then sit down on the floor and copy words from his sight word book. Sometime I choose the word for him to find and make and sometimes he chooses the word and tells me what it is.