New Math Resource for Pre-Kindergarten Kids

I was teaching in a Year zero or Kindergarten classroom the other day and luckily I was given heads up on what the teacher wanted to me to do. I made a couple of great one page printables where I taught the kids about healthy teeth. You can check out my page and download it for free in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop. The actual post is in the previous post.

 Math Numbers Cut and Paste Activities.

But this got me thinking, I decided to focus some of my resource making on Pre-Kindergarten as the American's like to call it or Year One's as us Kiwis like to call it. I love puzzles and cut and paste activities. So I decided to do a bit of research and found ideas about how to make puzzles and cut and paste ideas work. I made the following math activity where kids cut out the pictures and paste them on a puzzle to cut and paste and then assemble. Sure at first it will be a bit of work for the kids, but after a few, they will get the idea.

At least I know have some resources for Math for kids this age in the future. I quite enjoyed teaching these little people and I am looking forward to teaching that age group again.

Now the behaviour of some of the kids in the other classroom was another story altogether and some day I will discuss that in future blogs. Thanks for being here and viewing my blog. You can check out the 20 page Cut and Paste puzzle activities here.

Look After Your Teeth free worksheet

Hi, are you a teacher of very young children, or do you have little ones at home and you want to reinforce the notion that kids should look after their teeth, or they will get cavities and rotten teeth? Why not use the free sheet attached.

Print and have your kids cut and paste the pictures under the correct picture. It is pretty self explanatory. Have fun. This activity should take about 15 to 20 minutes with 5 year olds and that's
without coloring in.

Click on the link and it will take you to my shop for the freebie. Oh, and hopefully you'll take a sneaky look at my other products, fall in love with them and buy them. Ha, te he he.

Getting to Know You Ice Breaker

These Getting to Know you Ice Breakers are fantastic way for children to get to know each other in a safe and fair environment. These questions are kid friendly in that most kids can find another kid in class who can fit the bill.. For instance one of the questions are; "Find Someone who has brown eyes." This is pretty easy for most elementary and primary school classrooms. 

Ice Breakers done well are a great way for kids to get to know each other quickly and which is fun. Who doesn't love fun? Kids get to find out kindred spirits and appreciate the differences in other children. 

This activity should only take about 20 minutes. Once your students have written in most of the given spaces, it's time to share with the class as a whole. Have them sit on the mat or at their seats and have volunteers to give some great examples of their Getting to Know you Ice Breaker. Once again by sharing this information, children get to know each other quickly and their likes. 

I hope you enjoyed learning about this ice breaker I am sure there are other great examples out there. 

Adding Fractions

Hello Teachers

Fractions, fractions, fractions. That's right ladies and gentlemen, it is a requirement within our curriculum s that we teach fractions. Children need to understand proportions, dividing and working out amounts using fractions. Using the following clip art set we can make up our own resources and worksheets which are best suited to our students.

How to add Fractions: here is a great example how to add fractions which have the same denominator (bottom fraction see below).

How To Add When the Denominator is the same

https://www.mathsisfun.com/fractions_addition.html

I have created a simple cake clip art set best suited to Grade 3 or year 4. This set includes all the clips as seen here, including white pieces.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Cake-Fractions-Clip-Art-2735920

Using these fractions in your worksheets are a great way to introduce your students to learning about fractions they way you want them to learn. Simply and easy to use.

It is quite tricky learning how to add when the denominator is not the same. What you need to do is to find the multiples from both of the denominators given. Find the lowest multiple of both which should be the same. See the example below.

How to Make Clip Art on Gimp

Creating Previews for Teachers Pay Teachers

How to create an animated preview for your Teacher Pay Teachers products or resources. These are now used by some Teacher Pay Teacher sellers on their Pinterest sites and now I discovered I can upload these to my Teacher Pay Teacher products as well.

I first discovered this from tptschool.com which also demonated how to create the files as well. But I thought I'd break it down into an easier to follow way.

Using the website gifmaker.me, simple follow the instructions below.


Instructions in How to Create an Animated Preview of Your Products

1.  Go to Upload Images and uploade your jpeg files. I have uploaded up to 20 with success.

2. You can view how your animated will look like in the top right hand side of the screen.

3.  Once you are happy with this, click on the button, 'Create GIF Animation'.

4.  After a short while the download will be ready. You will see a link which says 'View the GIF or Download the GIF. As I can already see what it will look like I tend to press download.

5. Should you wish to change the size and background of the images click, 'Crop, resize, optimize images.'

6. Once this file is downloaded to your computer you can click into your Teachers Pay Teachers product you wish to animate.

7. Fill in the information as you normally would, but under preview upload the gif file you created.

8. Press 'Submit' and view your product page.

9. View the preview to see if it works okay.

Note: I have come across a couple of times where it failed to animate, but once I completed the steps again, I found it worked.

I have also uploaded these to Pinterest in my teaching boards as well.


Check out my two examples below, I think it's such a cool idea. Thanks tptschool.com.

Oral Language Task Cards from Fun Creatives TPT site

My Science Borders from Fun Creatives TPT site.

Oral Language-Sticks

The importance of oral language for children. After many years working with young children and even older children I still have a sense of sadness when I come across children who can't express their wants and needs or even recount a fun experience with confidence.

I believe it is very important for children to have a sense of confidence in themselves when using oral language. Often it is girls who hold back and allow the same children to answers questions and make statements on whatever line or topic we are dealing with at the time. I can say it is probably sometimes teachers fault who allow or cater to boys speech more so thank girls. I am probably guilty of doing just that. However I am very conscious of it and steer away from sexist or racist pedegogy of teaching.

Oral Language Sticks
I use these when I am in certain classes where I know there are particular children who dominate the conversation. I use cards or sticks with children's names on them. I let the class know that I am going to pull out a name from my box and that child when then have to answer my questions or make a satement. That means the dominating child will have to allow others to speak AND require more reluctant children to build confidence in their speech when it is expected of them. Yes it's hard to immplement and yes you will get resistence, but in the long run you will see positive results.

I first saw this done on an English television documentary where a consultant was asked to change the dynamics of the school. The very confident students were quite angry that they had to take a backseat and within a couple of months they actually didn't like the change of answering questions, so they took out their names from their teachers jars. The teachers worked this out and the documentary crew asked the girls why they did what they did. They said that they knew they couldn't answer the questions when their names where pulled out of the jars, so it was easier to take their names out. Or in another words, they didn't want to be shown up for not knowing answers when in the past they often knew the answers and so were more than confident at answering questions.

If as a teacher you try this in your class, ensure you check out the number of sticks match the number of children in your class. Oh and by the way this works very well with children, teens and adults.