This is probably my FAVOURITE lesson! I have used this to teach about Pentecost and also the Ascension  This lesson uses candles to show how Jesus came down to the world, lit the hearts of his disciples and so many others, and then returned to Heaven.  By blowing out the original candle and the children seeing that the other candles are still alight and can go and light more candles or hearts, the children can see how although Jesus is no longer on Earth with us, his light is still in our hearts. I have done this with Year 1s, 2s, 4s and 6s. They all love it. It was used here to demonstrate the light of the Holy Spirit.

All Souls day

Last week was All Souls Day (as well as black out day for the All Blacks!). We talked about how All Souls day was all about praying for our family members who have passed away and asking Jesus to take them into Heaven to be with them. I love how young children think. Our conversation quickly went from this to Halloween, and one of the children asked if it was All Souls day because it's so scary and people are dressing up as ghosts. We went and visited the crosses of loved ones children throughout the school had decorated. Some of the children went really quiet while we looked at them, and I could see they were really taking it all in. Bless their little hearts! 

We wrote a little prayer and made a class page with the people we wanted to pray for. The children decorated these and put them in their RE books. One of the boys in my class recently lost an Uncle to cancer and I think he enjoyed having the opportunity to remember him and talk about him with the class again.

This was from earlier on in the year, the children making groups to 10. They love working together. 

Mixed ability grouping has it's benefits definitely, and I use them a lot, especially for problem solving type tasks. Differentiated learning in classrooms is gold in my opinion. Whether it be mixed ability groups or similar ability. It needs to happen always. This is one of the reading groups we have in our class. We were learning to read to answer questions. I loved how they discussed their ideas with each other. Clever girls! 

Last week in my class I gave the children these cards to sequence based on the big book we had been reading (big books have so much learning within them!). The children had to problem solve, work as a team, share, talk, justify their thinking, compromise, and agree. That's a lot of work for 5 year olds. They did so well. I did this in mixed ability groups. All groups completed the task except one group who needed me to scaffold them with the book in hand. 

haere atu

This 4 minute movie was a whole terms worth of work. It started off in Te wiki o te reo Maori when we read the Ready to Read book Haere Atu as our shared book.

We rewrote the story, using a cheetah (because one of the students LOVES cheetahs!). We focused on so many different things from alliteration (Sneaky Cheeky Charli Cheetah for example), verbs, going back and adding detail/changing stories to make them better. All while integrating Te reo Maori.

Making the movie took a longggg time, but once we had finished, we invited the children's whanau in for the premier. The children loved seeing themselves on the big screen while eating their popcorn. It was a great learning experience for us all.

Thought I'd put these pictures on my blog. Sometimes as a Mum you have to do things a little differently! Sophia wanted to be in her carrier even though Mummy had laminating to do! Luckily, I could do both :)