Water Tray: Glitter and Sparkle!

I'm now working at my new school in Seoul. Because the school just opened in September, we didn't have many toys and resources at first. But finally our water tray arrived, and we have been having so much fun with it! For this week we tossed in some glitter, sequins, and these linking toys that are in different shapes. You can use them to measure things or sort them by colour or shape.

 

This water tray is clear plastic, which is cool. Here's an undershot! You can see the view of the apartment blocks reflected in the water. So different from the view from my previous school in Tanzania!

Play Dough Castles

In in my classroom we've been learning about different types of sculpture and today we made this traffic light coloured play dough, with added glitter. I taught the kids how to make castle towers and walls and we all went to town making our own castles (long pointy sticks optional).

 See those yellow things at the front in the picture above? They're protective crocodiles!

Making play-dough models with kids is such a happy way to spend an afternoon and everyone was most impressed with the castle they built.

Bee Bots!

I wish they'd had these when I was at school. Programmable robots called BeeBots! You punch in your directions on the buttons on top, press go, and the BeeBot scoots off on an adventure. You can buy them from Educational suppliers and they cost around 100 pounds each. If you know what you're doing you can make them follow a road map or dance across the room, but most of my class are happy making them go around in circles!

Did you notice all the sweaters? Winter is here! It's rainy and cold and our roof is leaking in four places.

Toy Playground!

 Recently in school we've been making a playground for our toys. Each child designed and made their own piece of equipment and they look great! From the top: a ship, a sandpit, a trampoline, a slide, and a swing.

Teaching and Learning in my Classroom

A potential employer asked me to put together a PowerPoint on the topic of 'Teaching and Learning in my classroom'. I took some photos of us doing the usual stuff we do day to day and I thought that you might also be interested to see some of the activities we often do.

After I'd taken the photos my husband told me that PowerPoint presentations don't usually have many pictures in them. Who knew! I honestly haven't made a PowerPoint presentation since I was in school and I have never actually presented one to somebody.

Once Upon A Problem

 We did two performances: one for the older children and for other schools, and one for the parents. They both went really well and everyone had so much fun singing and dancing!

Set Design

Here at Braeburn we've been busy preparing for our KS1 performance of 'Once Upon a Problem'.

I did set design, in addition to other things like choreography and coaching actors. I wanted to paint the back boards with chalk so they would look whimsical. I thought it would take 100 years, until I enlisted some helpful Year Four students who did a great job!

ISM International Day

 A few pictures from a fun event that happened recently. ISM, a school just down the road from ours, have an annual international day. They always have great food and music, with parents from different countries selling food and playing games from their culture.

Water Tray Fun: Bears and Plates

 My colleague Gemma came up with this brilliant water tray combination: bears and plates. You can sort the bears onto the plates by colour or size! You can have a teddy bears tea party! You can try to pick up the bears on the forks or spoons! A whole lot of fun.

Walk like an Egyptian!

The Year Three kids are learning about the Egyptians and my awesome friend Brittany (the same one who gifted me the deodorants) dressed them all up and taught them a rap dance to perform in assembly. It was so cute and funny!

World Book Day: Teacher's Costumes and Activites

 

It wasn't just the kids who had fun dressing up for book day! We teachers did, too! In the above photo: Scrooge, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, A pair of pants from 'More Pants' (me), and a butterfly from 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'.

In the photo below: a Maasai from 'The Warrior and the Moon', me (again), Cleopatra, Katniss Everdeen from 'The Hunger Games', and the butterfly (again).

 

In our classes we did different activities related to the book we came dressed from. I had the kids make underpant crowns and necklaces. Here they are, hard at work!

 And the necklaces:

 Several boys from my class last year worked together to create this masterpiece: they wanted me to be wearing as many pairs of pants as possible!

Later in we had several 'experts' running workshops. I ran the creative writing workshop for years five and six. We drew out a grid for 36 possible things we could include in a story, and then worked in pairs to create a story of a particular genre by rolling dice. The kids had fun and the best stories are going in the school newsletter.