- Songs- Music is a big part of the children's learning and it's amazing how much they can learn without even realising it just from listening and singing along to songs. The teacher aide showed me some amazing phonics videos from YouTube which we showed to the kids and they absolutely loved singing. It's so great because not only are they having fun but they are learning skills which will help them with their reading and writing too! Music is also good to use after break time to calm them down whilst they lay down on the carpet or before the day starts or home time. I think starting the day off with a happy song like "You can count on me" by Bruno Mars which you can make your class song is a lovely way to build relationships and start the day off on a positive note!
- Gross Motor Skills- A great idea is to get the kids to do gross motor skill activities like skipping, walking with a ball between their legs, monkey bars, hopscotch, ball catching and even doing little competitions between groups. They love getting outside and it's developing their gross motor skills.
- Spelling- When they are learning their spelling words a good idea is to sit them in a circle and give one person a little toy and it would be like pass the parcel but you would sing "just keep passing, just keep passing, pass, pass, pass and stop" (same tune as Dory's just keep swimming from Nemo) and when it would stop on someone, they would be given a spelling word and have to write it on the board. You can also do a similar activity using table groups which gives a bit of competition but you need to put the rules down first (no crying if you didnt win, be a good sport, congratulate the others etc).
- Art/ craft- A great art/friendship lesson can be done if you buy those little cutout people you can get from a discount shop or make yourself if you fold paper together and cut out a shape of a person. Give each student one and tell them to draw themselves in their favourite outfit. Then read a book on friendship and staple all the little people cutouts together creating a friendship train and talk about what they think you have to do/say to be a good friend.
- Reading- It's always a good idea to have a lot of books ready incase you want to read one after lunch to settle the children or before they go home. A great website for this is http://www.schooltube.com/. The kiddies love watching the video and then go to the whiteboard and write down each key part of the story in order. The kids then write a couple of sentences about it and drew a picture. http://www.storylineonline.net/ is another great online resource as it has a heap of books read by celebrities and the kiddies love sitting there and watching the story on the IWB. You could pick a book and then get them to draw a picture about the book after.
- Resources- http://pbskids.org/whiteboard/ this website is awesome too as it has lots of interactive games kids can play and you can choose it depending on their age level. There is one I love to play with the class which is the "Word World: Dogs Letter Pit" where they can practice words by matching letters and their sounds to form words. Kids love it because the dog jumps into a pit of letters and a bunch of letters appears and then it will say something like "Dog wants to build the word Cat, what letter makes the 'c' sound" and as you go over each letter it gives you its sound to help the kiddies know which letter to pick. They love it!
Tips for teaching preps.
Yesterday morning I received the much anticipated first phone call from a school asking me to do relief work! The Principal called me at 6am and asked me if I'd be willing to teach prep for the day and of course I said yes! I was very nervous, to be honest because I hadn't taught prep before and I wasn't sure how I'd do. In a mad rush I looked up some ideas of things to do with the kids and I didn't find much so here are a few things I learnt yesterday which might help others looking for ideas and which I will be using in the future as well.