Wordless Picture Books...

My favourite picture book of ALL time is 'LEAF' by Stephen Michael King.  Why?  For two reasons...

• Because it is both 'written' and illustrated by my favourite children's author and illustrator...Stephen Michael King
• Because it has NO WORDS...yep, you read that correctly!!

My middle daughter first brought this book home from her school library a few years ago and the first time I read it, it made me cry (lol...may have been due to me being pregnant with our littlest at the time!!).

Our littlest now loves to read this book at bedtime.  Everytime she reads it to me, her narration becomes more detailed and I love her response when she notices something new, or comes up with a new idea.

Wordless picture books are great for any age and can be used in so many different ways.  Last week the Kindergarten class I was subbing on had such a great time with 'Leaf'.  They came up with a wonderful narration, a huge list of different things that start as seeds (we did have to make one kiddie's suggestion of ham, into a magical ham plant) and then we used these ideas for a text-to-self interactive writing activity, followed by a drawing activity.

Do you have a favourite WORDLESS picture book?  I would love to hear about it if you do!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Thank you!!

I just want to send a HUGE 'Thank You' to the very lovely Annie at The Moffatt Girls blog for awarding me the Sunshine Award!  Annie is such an inspiration to me, so to receive this award from her, certainly added a great deal of sunshine to my day!!  Thanks Annie :D

Here are the rules for accepting this award:

1. Thank the person who gave this award and write a post about it.

2. Answer the following questions below.

3. And pass the award to 10~12 fabulous bloggers, link their blogs and let them know you awarded them.

So here goes:

• Favorite color?  Blue
• Favorite animal? Giraffe (or do sock monkeys count??) :D
• Favorite number? 5 
• Favorite drink? Cappuccino (especially the one my husband makes for me at home on a Saturday.  It is lovely to sit down and share that coffee time together)!!
• Facebook or Twitter? Facebook - great for us because we live so far away from family!  I don't Tweet...
• Your passion? My family.  My husband and our three daughters are my world :D
• Giving or getting presents?  Definitely giving!  If the gifts I am giving are handmade, then even better!!  I must say, I also love to receive handmade gifts, especially from our girls :)
• Favorite day? Friday.

I would like to pass this award onto the following lovely bloggers.  A lot of the bloggers that I would pass this on to, have already been given the award.  The following blogs were some of the very first ones I discovered and they ALWAYS inspire me and bring sunshine to my day:

• Tamara from Teaching with TLC (and TBA)
• Abby from The Inspired Apple
• Amanda from One Extra Degree
• Rachel from Sub Hub
• Kylie from Down Under Teacher
• Jennifer from Herding Kats in Kindergarten 
• Dana from 3rd Grade Gridiron ( I know you have already been given the award, but wanted to pass it onto you as well)!!

If you are on my list, please do not feel obliged to post or particpiate, unless you would like to!  I just wanted to send a little Sunshine back to those of you who inspire me!  


Sending a sunshiny 'Happy Week Ahead' to EVERYONE!

Volcanoes in Kindergarten!

My favourite subject to teach, without a doubt is science.  Kids love anything out of the ordinary and I am finding that they are much happier to sit and write about something they have had a hands-on experience with.    Science is a great way for kiddies to write a simple procedural piece, without them actually realising that they have been doing 'writing' !

Today I subbed on a Kindergarten class, for the morning only.  I had originally planned work based on a picture book,  BUT after making baking soda / vinegar volcanoes with our youngest daughter yesterday, I thought it might be fun to do the same with the class today!

We began by watching The Magic School Bus 'Blows Its Top'.  The class were just fabulous and loved watching the episode.  It sure sparked a lot of fabulous ideas and discussion on how volcanoes form and the kiddies just loved coming up with adjectives and verbs related to volcanoes.

We then made a baking soda and vinegar volcano...using red coloured vinegar to simulate the lava, of course!!  It was a huge hit and again was such a great discussion starter!! (I didn't have a photo, so this is a pic of a volcano that I made at home with Miss Charlotte, yesterday)

We wrote a simple procedural piece, based on how we made our fizzing volcanoes.   We tried really hard to remember our capital letters at the beginning of our sentences, spaces between our words and some of the kiddies even insisted we use exclamation points to make our writing more interesting...how cool are Kindergartners!!

I love this underwater volcano...how cool!

Then we brainstormed the adjectives and verbs relating to volcanoes, and the kiddies chose their three favourite ones.  They wrote these on red strips of paper and used them as the lava on their volcano collage pictures.  We all chose to tear our brown paper volcanoes rather than cut them...to make them look more realistic ;)

The class had such a fun time and did such great work, I just had to share:)  The highlight for me was definitely listening to them chatting away about lava, hot rocks and eruptions whilst creating their artworks...a fabulous day, for sure!

Click HERE if you would like the Procedure sheet we used as a freebie download.

Thanks for stopping by!

Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' - Art Lesson Freebie...

Here is a whole class interactive art lesson that I designed for my first teaching prac class a year ago.

I always use this lesson in conjunction with the picture book, 'Camille and the Sunflowers: a story about Vincent Van Gogh' by Laurent Anholt.  However, you could use the lesson outline without using the picture book.  The lesson is also great for linking to the science topic  ' Life cycles of Seed Plants'.  The possibilities really are endless.

 I have used this lesson a couple of times and have extended it to be an interactive artwork, once completed and displayed!  To make it more meaningful for students and for them to be able to identify with the artist at a deeper level, a different student each day, dresses up as Vincent Van Gogh and rearranges the sunflowers in the completed artwork, in the way in which they themselves would have painted the famous painting, if they had been Vincent Van Gogh.  We take a digital photo of them dressed up as Van Gogh and display the photos in the classroom, around our actual artwork.

If you would like a freebie copy of the lesson outline in PDF format, that I have uploaded to Google Docs, then click on the link below:

SUNFLOWERS LESSON OUTLINE

I hope you have fun creating your own interactive Sunflowers artwork with your class!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT TBA's FRIDAY FREEBIES

I have linked up this post to Teaching Blog Addict's Friday Freebies!  Pop on over and see all the fabulous freebies on offer this week!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Monster Box Of Things To Do...

I may be a little OCD...but I try my darndest to be completely prepared for ANYTHING when it comes to walking into a classroom.  I am finding that one of the disadvantages of being a substitute teacher is that unless you are lucky to be consistently with one class, you really are not able to differentiate your lessons as much as you would if you had your own class.

So to avoid that age-old question of 'What do I do now?' from those early finishers... I put together my own version of 'The Bored Jar'.  I call it 'MRS RUBIE'S MONSTER BOX OF WHAT CAN I DO NOW? ACTIVITIES!', which of course then allowed me to coordinate it with my favourite Monster clip art by JIllustrations, which I purchased from Lettering Delights.

I created cards using my own ideas, as well as combining some fabulous ideas from other sources, including Rachel Lynette's  150 ELA - Themed Creative and Critical Thinking cards, which you can purchase  from her Teachers Pay Teachers store.  I have included activities for all learning styles and the questions promote both lower and higher order thinking skills....hopefully there is something in my box for EVERY student in the class, and I can keep adding to it :)

I take out the cards that are not age appropriate for the particular class I will be teaching,  before I start the day.  Having the box sure does cut down on the 'What do I do now?' questions and the children love that they get to select a card!

We are still working on the 'You get what you get, no swapping, no arguing' side of things ;)

Do you have a version of a  'Bored Jar' ?  I would love to hear what you do with your early finishers!!

Thanks for stopping by!

A Pirate's Life For Me!!

In my limited experience so far with casual / substitute teaching, it is not usual practice for class teachers to leave their day's planning for subs to follow.  So I love to put day-long plans together and I love to use a theme.

Yesterday I had such a fun day with a Kindergarten class that I have taught a few times now.  An added bonus is that the school is the one that our middle daughter attends, and it is only a 1 minute walk from our home!

Our theme yesterday was PIRATES!  I love pirates and I have yet to meet any little person that doesn't like them too!!

We started the day with Pirate name tags.  I just used Avery labels and my favourite clip art from Thistle Girl Designs to create the labels and then I wrote each child's name with black pen as I marked the class roll.  They loved them, only a few fiddled with them and I only had to replace a few at home time, so they could show their parents!!

We started the day by watching and singing along with the fun 'Portside Pirates' book by Oscar Seaworthy and Debbie Harter from Barefoot Books, on YouTube!  It is so catchy, I am still singing it ;)

Then we watched and listened to the picture book 'How I Became A Pirate' by Melinda Long and David Shannon which I found via  HERE ...don't you just love Tumblebooks??

Both books were great for getting the children to think of lots of fabulous pirate-related words to use in their independent writing tasks.

We then used the 'If I were a Pirate' story map and writing sheet, both from the amazing Deanna Jump's Pirate Literacy and Numeracy Fun Unit which I purchased from Deanna's TPT store.  Did I say that I LOVE this unit?!!

For Numeracy we played the 'Build a Pirate Ship' game from Deanna's Jump's Pirate Literacy and Numeracy Fun Unit.  I had made up 6 sets and laminated all the pieces and the game boards....this way I can keep them and use them over and over ;)  We played this in teams of four and it was so popular we ended up playing it 4 times over!

We also played the 'Roll A Sight Word' colouring game from Deanna Jump's Pirate Literacy and Numeracy Fun unit.  This was a fabulous activity and we completed a tally chart and then converted this into a bar graph, with the children having wonderful fun taking turns writing the tally strokes on the board and then colouring in the squares on our bar graph.  Their discussion of the graph afterwards just blew me away....I love how Kindergarteners think!!  I unfortunately didn't get a picture of their worksheets as I bound them into a book (cover is the pic above)  for them to keep in their class library...I try to do this every now and then as the children seem to love it and they love being able to give their class book to their class teacher:)

For science we focused on floating and sinking and after a fabulous discussion on the best way to sink a pirate ship, we used unifix maths blocks to sink our Pirate ship model.  I had all the children make a guess as to how many blocks would be needed to sink our ship.  We wrote all of their guesses on the board.  Once we actually conducted our experiment, we checked to see who had been closest with their guess...they love it!  Then we guessed how many staplers it would take to sink our pirate ship, and why... who knew it would only take one stapler to sink it ;)  Most of the children wanted to use cannonballs, but we couldn't find any marbles or ball bearings to use...*note to self:  buy some for the next time I teach this lesson!!*.

Throughout the day I had given each table group merit points for settling quickly, working quietly and being kind friends to each other.  The table with the most points were spared from 'walking the plank' ;)  However, given the choice they all chose to walk the imaginary plank, just before the home time bell....too much FUN!!

I can't wait to have some more pirate fun again sometime soon!  There are so many fabulous pirate themed resources out there!  If any of my readers have some that they have made, please let me know...I would love to use them and give them a shout out here on my blog:)

Ahoy Me Hearties!!

Pirate Tina :)

My Exciting News!!

I am beyond excited to be able to let everyone know that I am now a contributing author on the amazing   Teaching Blog Addict blog!  Eeek!!!!

I have been inspired by so many wonderful and amazing teachers, not only by their teaching ideas and willingness to share their ideas, but also by the incredible enthusiasm that they show for their chosen careers!!

I am so honoured and happy to be part of the whole teacher blogging community and am so excited to now be part of TBA!!!  I hope that through being an author on TBA as well as my own blog,  I can give something back to this amazing online community!

Congratulations to all of the new authors and a HUGE thank you to Tamara, Leslie, the other lovely authors who recommended me and to everyone who has left a lovely congratulations comment either on my first TBA post or on my Facebook page...I am so very grateful for each and every one of them:)

I would like to give a special CONGRATULATIONS to the lovely Dana from 3rd Grade Gridiron, who has been such a kind and wonderful supporter of mine,  because Dana is also a new TBA author!!  Yay Dana !!

Wishing everyone a wonderful day!!

Badly Drawn Dog - Guided Drawing Lesson Freebie!

Hi everyone.  I know that guided / directed art lessons are nothing new, but I thought I would share a lesson that I have used a few times now.   I observed my first teaching placement supervisor do this lesson with her Kindergarten class as a visual arts lesson and I was absolutely blown away by the quality of artworks these little 5 and 6 year old students created!  It was a HUGE light bulb moment for me with regards to teaching and one I will never forget.

This lesson uses the fabulous picture book ' Badly Drawn Dog' by Emma Dodson.  I have extended the possibilities of this lesson and have incorporated class discussion about 2-D shapes and angles, whilst the students are creating their artworks.  I have then been able to use the one simple lesson to allow students to achieve literacy, maths and visual arts outcomes.  This is a perfect lesson for casual / substitute teaching too!

Although I have put this lesson outline into a document, the original lesson was not created by me!  Thanks should go to my amazing mentor and friend J.R!  This is my version of her original lesson.

If you would like to download a free copy of the lesson outline, just click on the link below:

BADLY DRAWN DOG - GUIDED / DIRECTED DRAWING LESSON OUTLINE

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend!