Phonics Ball Game

Now I've been working as a TA for a whole year, I have a few more tricks under my belt not to mention that I'm starting to build up a bank of activities that I can call on when the need arises. I wanted to share this one with you because, as simple as it seems, the children absolutely love it.

When I was looking for a way to jazz up the way I teach phonics I remembered a toy that my daughter had for her first birthday. As luck would have it, I managed to find said toy in the attic and dust it down. Sadly most of the original balls were missing and my experiments with ping pong balls failed due to the fact they they were just too small and light and floated out in droves rather than one at a time. I considered cat balls  but luckily, 99p stores came up trumps with packs of coloured balls that fitted perfectly.

A permanent marker to write on the sounds and voila, an exciting variation on teaching phonics...

 I have loads of sets of balls with different sounds,  tricky/sight words but you could even use them to teach number bonds or add/multiply numbers.

Sometimes I use it with individual children, on other occasions I make a game out of it where children take turns to release a ball. If they can read it, they can keep it, otherwise it gets put back in.

You could even add a bonus ball which gives a treat if they get it. Good for teachers (and TAs) and parents who get sent home sounds to learn with their children.  Loads of fun, loads of potential learning.

Magical Reindeer Food Shakers

Today we have been thinking about ways to make sure Santa visits our houses on Christmas Eve.  So to help we have been using McDonalds lidded containers which make the perfect shakers for scattering reindeer food outside our doors.

We started with the tubs and their lids...(we just asked at McDonalds who were happy to donate them to us)

And cut some coloured paper to fit. we decorated ours with pens but you can use anything to decorate them with.

We added a little poem too...

We stuck the paper on to the cup..

Then we added magical reindeer food, we used oats and glitter...

And put the lid on. Top tip... make sure that it's on properly, they can be tricky.

The little spout bit just flips back and hey presto, you have a ready made sprinkler!

Perfect.

Our children were really pleased and excited with their magic reindeer food sprinklers and have taken them home to keep safe til Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas everyone. x

Moon Gloop

Following on from our Space centre we have been making moon pictures with what I like to call moon gloop.

This is basically flour and water but we added silver paint and glue so that we could stick pasta shapes into it for added effect and then we sprinkled it with glitter. (We tried adding glitter to the actual mixture but it just disappears)

It's a lovely tactile, gloopy mixture and we used glue spreaders to paste it into our paper. The glitter adds to the effect. I must say that our pictures look much nicer in real life, the photos don't do them justice. The texture of the gloop lends itself to the effect of the moon's surface.

Just to recap, here's what we used.

Mix flour, water and pva glue to make a quite stiff mixture.
Add paint if required.
Use glue spreaders to apply to preprinted circles.
Push in pasta or anything else you might want to use.
Sprinkle with silver glitter, we used a plastic spoon rather than the dispenser so that it would last for more than the first child.
Allow to dry.

We are going to cut ours out and put them on the wall as part of our space display, just not sure how long they'll take to dry!

Space Pod

Our children have been playing Star Wars a lot lately so we have been busy dismantling our Fairy Castle Role Play this week and putting up a very shiny Space Centre.

We used lots of Christmas wrapping paper and foil blankets (the kind given out to marathon runners or put in emergency boxes).

For the control console we used coloured counters (tiddlywinks) and bottle tops glued onto black card.

Google Images kindly provided a countdown timer and a pressure dial which were mounted onto black card and we also printed out labels for countdown, high pressure and danger.

Finally we glued a big yellow lid (from a sweetener jar) onto black card and labelled it 'Booster' in a suitably digital font.

Add labels, warnings, a space log, astronaught outfits if you have them and led fairy lights to finish it off.

We also added a couple of Phonics phones ( http://www.classroomdiy.com/2012/05/diy-phonics-phones.html ) an old laptop and the top of a tardis just for the flashing light.

Can't wait to see the children's faces on monday morning.

Update: This was  a huge hit with the children, prompting lots of new vocabulary, cooperation, imagination and much much more.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my new Blog. For the last eleven years I have worked with preschool children but now I have just started working as a Teaching Assistant at a small village Primary School in the East Midlands, in  Reception/year 1 class and this is hopefully a way for me to record my journey.

I am new to blogging so bear with me, any advice will be welcomed, but I've enjoyed reading all the wonderful blogs out there and now I hope to share with you our good practice, ideas, activities and ethos.

Watch this space.