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Monday 23 March 2015

Woven Easter Baskets

We only have a week and a half before we finish this term, so that means squeezing in some Easter fun!  We have been making these fabulous Easter baskets in anticipation of the Easter Bunny visiting :)



How did we do it?  Here is your step by step tutorial.  Just a warning.....loads of pics.



1. Using 2 different colours  we used strips of paper to start our weaving making sure you leave some ends out.  We only used 3 strips as the long ends so that the basket wouldn't be too tall.


The length of the woven mat will depend on the circumference of your basket.  Glue down the strips when you have finished, this can be easily done by lifting a strip putting a dab of glue and putting it back down.  Make sure you do both sides.  This will give your basket stability and ensure the strips don't move around.




2. On one long side fold up every second strip that has ended UNDER the last strip



3. Glue down the strip from the other side, folding it over the top.  This will be the top of your basket and the folded side will be part of the base.






4. Cut off any strips that are now hanging out. If they were glued down properly they won't fall out!


5. This is what your woven mat should look like now!  You just need two circles cut for the outer and inner base, I just folded over a piece of card, traced around a cup and asked the students to cut out the circle.  Make sure your students write their name on one side first.


6. Roll the woven mat up until it is roughly the circumference of the coloured circle.  Trim and glue down the edges of the woven mat to create a cylinder.


7. Put glue all over one of the cirlces then lower the woven cylinder onto the mat folding the longer strips in.


8. Put glue all over the other circle and then put it inside the basket to cover the long strips.  This will give the base of your basket extra support and strength when picked up......you're almost done!!!


9. Final touch is to put a handle on your Easter masterpiece.  We stapled them on and I will be tying 2 ribbons around the handle to hide the ugly staples.  If you staple it onto the join it will give it extra strength to hold together.

10. The only thing left to do now is to fill it with some Easter straw and wait for the Bunny to arrive.  







Sunday 22 March 2015

Five for Frunday

You know that commitment I made to blogging at LEAST once a week, well I am kinda struggling with that.  I think I had some kind of meeting after school last week every single day, I wish I was kidding but I am not.  We also started our swimming program, ugh nightmare city!

Anywho I am here now so time to share!




One of my gorgeous teaching partners brought lunch in for me this week, it was yummy!  This was a beautiful tomato salad after I had demolished half of it.  So thoughtful!





I got a lovely bunch of flowers from the hubs for just because!




I did do some school things!  In Year 2 we started our investigation into area using boxes.  Next week we look at perimeter.







This weekend my husband marched in the Operation Slipper march.  It was to officially welcome home the troops from Aghanistan.  



We managed to get in a bit of abseiling this week.  This was the first time our kids had done it so we chose a very small cliff face.  I was sooooo proud that they both went over the first time even though they were both really scared.  After the first time going down with Dad, they went solo, then together. I even managed a couple of trips down and did quite well.





I have been working on this little project and had hoped to have it finished.  It will have all the templates I have been using for our Personal Interest Project in our classroom.  Hope to have it ready to upload tonight.







Saturday 14 March 2015

Boxes for measuring

Oh yikes!  I have been a terrible blogger lately, life has been hectic now that I am on 2 different year levels.
So I am going to try to make a commitment to at LEAST one post a week.  I guess I have a lot to catch everyone up on but I wanted to share what we have been doing in my year 2 classroom today.

In Year 2 we have been using boxes to explore measurement.  First we made a list of what we could measure on our boxes, the kiddos came up with words like "around the outside" which I then put on the board and added the word perimeter.  We also identified length, width and depth as well as volume, area and capacity.  I did make an anchor chart which I am thankful I did NOT take a photo of because it had a spelling error on it (which my teaching partner delightfully pointed out).  So I have to redo the anchor chart.





We focussed on length, height and depth this week and used a variety of items to measure them with. We discussed that we would need to use the same item to measure the entire length and where they would need to start and finish.


We used unifix blocks, counters, pop sticks, paper clips and units blocks



Then they went for it!  






We had an interesting discussion about measuring height and length with the counters, all of them laid the counters down side by side to measure length but then stacked them to measure height.  Some of them were thrilled to find that their box was reaching 68 counters high on such a small box, heehee.  There was a collective Ohhhhh! when we talked about how we would need to measure length with the counters stacked as well for it to be accurate.

Next week we will look at area and perimeter with our boxes.