5 Tips to get you and your your child ready for the first day back at school

The first day back at school is looming and you have either heard lots of moaning about it or lots of “I’m bored!” statements! So how do you prepare your child for the first day of school or their first day back, here are some tips:

·         Get organised

Get all of your back to school shopping done this week. As an incentive, schedule your back to school shopping trip one morning. Write out a list and for the older kids, give them a budget to work with. Tell them they need to get what is on the list but stay within their budget. Remember there are lots of sales on at the moment. Go look at Woolworths, Jet, Ackermans, Pick n Pay and Edgars for your white shirts rather than buying them from the school uniform shops. And, don’t forget to label!!

·         Get back into a routine

Start easing back into a bed time routine, so by Tuesday night there are no major tantrums about having to go back to bed early. This will also help with the breakfast routine and getting up earlier.

Also remember, times are going to be a little different at school, so find out when your child has their snack and try to reprogram their tummies.

·         Set up a homework schedule

Find a place in your house that is free from distractions and TV and set this up as the homework area. Also set up a timetable for homework. Remember, this is the work that needs to be reinforced and the teacher is checking for understanding here.

·         Lunchbox Prep

Make up a weekly program for different lunches that you can do in lunchboxes. Peanut butter sandwiches can become very boring after a while! Look out for our lunchbox plan a little later this week!

·         Create a ‘Launch Pad’

So, when homework is done, place it all back into the bag, check to make sure everything that is needed is in the bag, or the launch pad so that it is ready for the next morning! 

Bust the road trip boredom

Firstly, our apologies for being so quiet! It's the end of term and that means the end of term rush - reports and assessments! But that also means holidays are fast approaching and for many of us that also includes long car trips with kids who will inevitably become bored. So we have put together a list of games to play in the car, activities to do and even some apps to play! You can use these on a plane too!

• Scramble

Choose someone to start and tell them to think of a word (DO NOT say it out). They then need to scramble up the word and say the letters in a random order so if they think of the word chips, they could say the letters P, C, S, I, H. Everyone else then needs to guess the word. The person who gets it right is then next to think of a word. Really great to keep those spelling skills intact

• 20 questions

This is an old favourite! One person thinks of an object (or anything for that matter) and everyone else gets to asks 20 yes or no questions. Remember they have to be a yes or no question and there are only 20 questions!

• I spy

Yup, it's another oldie! Look for an object and say I spy with my little eye something beginning with ... And say the first letter of the object. The person to get it right wins the next turn.

• Mental maths

Look at the number plates of the cars around you and use the numbers to create a sum, or even the letters to make up a word.

• Eat the alphabet

So, this is a variation on the I'm packing for a picnic. Instead you start with "I'm so hungry I could eat an anteater", the next person continues with "I'm so hungry I could eat an anteater and a..." (something that begins with a b). And so you continue through the alphabet. Of course, you could play the original version, with this one the person starts with "I'm packing for a picnic and I pack a sandwich" The next person then says "I'm packing for a picnic and I pack a sandwich and a hotdog" and so you carry on using the last letter of the word. 

• Word Stretch

Every time you hear the question, "Are we there yet?" turn it into a game. Get your child to come up with as many words as possible with the letters in the question. So, you could have ate, weather, year and so many more.

• The house on the hill

This is a really fun creative game! When you see a mysterious house on a hill (or wherever really), come up with a story about the house. Who lives there, what do they do, how many children do they have, do they have animals. This is really great to get the imaginative juices flowing.

• Colour Safari

Choose a colour and then get the kids to find 100 objects of that colour. The first person to get to 100 gets to choose the next colour. 

• Sweet and Sour

Let the kids wave to passing cars, if the car waves back they are sweet, if they don't they are sour!

• Rock, paper, scissors

An all time favourite! I don't think we need elaborations on this one.. Except for a reminder: rock beats scissors, scissors cuts paper, and paper covers rock.

• Team Storytelling

Start off with one person saying "Once upon a time there lived a dragon.." the next person continues the story saying "Once upon a time there lived a dragon who had a mouse for a friend" and so you carry on. You don't have to start with Once upon a time.

• The banana game

Whenever someone spots a yellow car they get a point. This is a variation on the punchbuggy game, but may lead to less fights! You can decide on a number for to achieve to win or give a time limit, and the person who has the most by the time limit is the winner.

• True or False

This will keep those mental juices flowing! Come up with a statement and let the kids answer true or false. You can easily change the level of this game depending on the age of your child. 

• Rhyming

Think up a word and  then you say "I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with dog and starts with l". The first person to then get log gets the next turn.

• Alphabet game

Look for sign boards and find one with a word that begins with an a, then look for one that has a word that begins with a b and so on...

• Broken telephone

Start with one person whispering a story to another person, and then that person whispers to the next. The last person then tells the story out loud! This can often turn out to be quite funny!

• Name that tune

Choose a theme, movies, series games, cartoons etc. And then one person hums the tune, everyone else must try to guess the song.

• Dictionary

Someone thinks up a word, real or made-up, and then everyone else has to guess if it's real or not. You may need a dictionary for this or a tablet which has a dictionary or internet access.

• Backseat activity bag:

This is for when everyone just wants a little quiet time. Make up a bag with a colouring book/pages a clipboard to lean on, some crayons, books, and iPad or tablet (look out for our list on great apps for the car trip), magnetic board games, headphones and an iPod or MP3 player. Juice, water, chips and snacks. 

Mostly, make your journey part of your holiday. We have such a beautiful country and often we just want to get to where we are going. Stop and have a Wimpy breakfast, let the kids run off some energy and give yourself a break! Also remember your seatbelts and get a good nights sleep before a long trip!

Travel safely guys!

Transport theme

Transport is one of those themes that many teachers feel is overdone and has become quite boring, but a theme in your class is what you make of it and what fun we had over the last two weeks doing our transport theme. The kids absolutely loved it and worked like superstars!

If you are looking for a great theme board idea, why not paint your own none like Teacher Vicky did

with hers.

The kids had so much fun filling the board up with different modes of transport.

 We also painted up a big robot, and the kids then had to go and look for objects that were the same colours as the different light signals on the robot.

The kids loved making mosaic robots (probably because they could make a mess and not get into trouble) they had to tear coloured paper and then stick it into the correct circle. For this all you need to do is download our template at the end of this post and let your class do the rest. (Click here for the template)

 We then made aeroplanes out of toilet roll holders, these are so simple to make (click here for the tutorial).

 

To end off our first week in class we went on an outing to Kidz Traffic Land in Balfour Park Shopping centre. This was an absolute treat for the kids! They were all issued with their own drivers' licenses and had to obey the rules of the road (including watching the working robots) - such wonderful experiential learning took place. There were quite a few accidents and 'fines' issued but the kids loved every minute of it. Inspector Pana, who is the owner, was an absolute star with the kids and very patiently explained the rules of the road. (Go have a look at their website here http://www.kidztrafficland.co.za/)

 And to end off our fun filled two weeks, the kids brought in their projects! These ranged from aeroplanes, to boats, to trains. It looks like both kids and moms and dads had a lot of fun with these projects and we have some wonderful results! The kids then had to do a presentation on their project to the rest of the school, they told us how they made them and who helped them.

Bugs and Buttons is free!!

So Bugs and Buttons 2 is free... I am not sure how long this app is free for, but do yourself a favour and go have a look! It is usually $2.99 which is roughly around R33.
The graphics on it are incredible and it is a lot of fun, particularly for the little ones who are learning matching and sorting skills! Older children will also have fun with this app, and it's really great for developing hand eye coordination.

My only complaint with it is that it has an alphabet section which may confuse your kids as they use the letter names for the alphabet sequence. Barring this, I found the app to be a lot of fun and quite varied - your kids shouldn't get too bored too quickly with this app!

It includes 18 different games, which get harder as you play - really great as it keeps up with your child's pace and allows them to see where they are going wrong! Among these games your child can learn counting, sorting, pinching, balance, works on developing memory skills, shapes, visual perceptive skills, parts of the body and so much more! The games are fun and the bugs that come onto your screen every now and then are super cute!! And as I mentioned earlier, the game may get harder, but it never becomes too difficult for your child to complete a level.Because of the letter sounds, I will give this app 4 out of 5 stars! But, go and have a look at this awesome app and see what you think..

Apps and other stuff...

So we have decided to expand a little on our blog. It will no longer be me on my own, we will now have teacher Lianne joining and we'll be looking at more than just apps! This is a very exciting branch out for us as both Teacher Vicky and Teacher Lianne will be posting in "Two Proudly South African Teachers". We will still be looking at and reviewing apps! Don't forget about our code drops for some really great apps - so follow us! We are both South African teachers who have a soft spot and a deep passion for working with children with special needs. We each have areas that we tend to specialize in and often find ourselves bouncing ideas off each other.. We would therefore like to put this blog out to ALL educators, not just those in South Africa but worldwide and not just special needs, but remedial and mainstream educators. For the most part, we want to keep as many of our resources free, and will try only post links to free resources (we only get teaching salaries after all so we like to keep things free)! We would also like to ask you what you would like to see on a blog? What themes have you done that there is not much information on, or not enough resources? How do you make your resources? As well as your best classroom management strategies. So send through your comments and tell us what you want and we will do our best to post ideas, inspirations, resources and photos of our own inventions! We will be posting about our Halloween fun day soon so look out for it!

A good letter sound app and some indoor fun

The last week has been quite a fun week in class, but today I had to deal with some behaviour issues! Having dealt with all of this we decided to have some fun in the class again. And so started the mildly chaotic game of balloon tennis!
All you need is a few balloons, some paper plates and some rulers. Get the kids to decorate their paper plates - you could even turn this into a sensory activity and get them to use finger paints (also great for fine-motor)! Grab the rulers and tape them to the back of the paper plates - and you have some racquets! Now all you need are the balloons. Try and have enough balloons for each child (if your kids are old enough, get them to do some oral motor exercises by blowing up the balloons), blow them up and now you have balls! So you're ready to start, throw the balloons around and get them to hit the balloons. This is such a great activity for eye-hand coordination, as well as building that shoulder stability and strength that is so incredibly important for handwriting and fine motor dexterity!
Needless to say, the behaviour has improved from everyone! We all had a great time, and when we sat down to do some literacy work, the focus was incredible!!
So what literacy work did we successfully cover today? Well, it includes a free app!!

Get free premium widgets for your blog and website.

Little Matchups ABC is really great! It has an option to change the settings, so you can switch off the letter names, and it will only use the letter sounds - which for us South African Teachers is really fantastic! It teaches the child to identify the capital letter and the small letter. The voice over announces each sound as you touch it, you then have to match the small letter to it's capital. It's a fun app with some interesting sounds to motivate the child, and when an incorrect answer is put in, it gives a wrong answer sound and moves the letter away from where the child has incorrectly placed it! I have given this app 3 stars, as it is free, there are no in-app purchases, however it is rather simple and will probably have a very short lifespan in your classroom! Added to this, it does not provide you with any data about how the child has done so you need to be watching to see what they get right or wrong!

Sandbox

Are you looking for an app to use in your classroom that will restrict your students use of the internet? Perhaps you only want them to use certain sites? Or keep them off Facebook? Go and have a look at Sandbox by Float Media.
It's a little complicated to use, but may save you some grey hairs in the future.
This app is usually $2.99, but is currently free for a limited time so go quickly!!