Five For Friday

This is the first time I've linked up with Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday. Here are 5 randoms from my week:

1. Is my cover blown?

Click on pics for pinterest links.

I've blogged before about my "secret identity" as Down Under Teacher. I know some teacher bloggers have their name and face out there and it's no secret (and that's great) but I'm exactly the opposite! In the last two weeks 2 other teachers at my school have asked me if I am Down Under Teacher... I couldn't lie but had to ask that they keep it to themselves! Thanks ladies!

2.
Last week (and continued this week) we had our first go at math rotations with a Valentine's Day theme. It .... didn't go to well. Well, that isn't entirely true. Most kids got the activities but they were just too noisy. They know that I can't stand noise! A soft hum of activity is great, but the really loud excited whoops when they win a game or talking really loudly so I can follow their conversation from across the room just drives me nuts! I can't seem to focus when there's too much noise and I get really frustrated because I can't think properly. So, we're going to have to work on that!

Skip Counting and 1-120 puzzles from Katie King, Even and Odd from Lory Evans.

3.
This year I'm teaming up CAFE with beanie babies. So far I've introduced Eagle Eye, Stretchy Snake and Chunky Monkey. My firsties LOVE them and are excited to tell me whenever they've used a strategy.

I bought Chunky from Big W (along with a few others for $2), the rest of the 2 bags of beanies I've bought came from the U.S.

4. To help us with the Chunky Monkey strategy, I made up these long strips of cardboard and wrote a whole heap of word families on them. This week we were working on r-blends so I also made up cards for tr, cr, gr, fr, br and dr. We simply move the blends down the word families and chunk the word. We then give a thumbs up for a real work and a thumbs down for a silly word.

5. I'm lovin my new book boxes and whisper phones (sent over from the U.S. - I'm crazy I know!). They just look so pretty in the shelves! I got the boxes and phones from Really Good Stuff.

This is what the back of the room looks like now. I used to have a whole class area but it was too small and not that functional so I got rid of it.