Primary Bloggers Workshop

Hi everyone,

Myself, Infant Teaching Ideas (Lorraine) and Irish Primary Teacher (Niamh) have decided to team up and will be presenting a workshop together on 19th March.

This workshop will cover many areas of teaching including planning and preparation, classroom management, organisation, station teaching, Aistear and Visual Art.

Each person will present on their topics and there will be plenty of time for any questions/answers afterwards. Many educational suppliers have agreed to sponsor ‘spot prizes’ and ‘goodie bags’ for the day.

There are two different sessions available – one in the morning (10-1pm) and the seond in the afternoon (2 – 5pm). Each will last 3 hours and you will leave with lots of practical ideas, tips and advice.

The workshop will be held in Blackrock Education Centre on Saturday 19th March.

Tickets are available now for 15 euro per person and available from www.irishprimaryteacher.ie 

Christmas Classroom Reads

I love Christmas Stories! 

Here are some picture books that I've collected over the years and my classes always enjoy. 

If you have any questions about any of these books please comment :) 

1. Olive the Other Reindeer ( Seibold/Walsh)

2. The animals Christmas Eve (Wiersum) 

3. Bear stays up for Christmas (Wilson & Chapman)

4. Just right for Christmas (Black & Beardshaw) 

5. Snow Bunny's Christmas Wish (Harry)

6. The Polar Express (Allsburg)

7. Wombat Divine ( Mem Fox ) 

8. The Mitten ( Jan Brett )

  

1. The Wild Christmas Reindeer (Jan Brett)

2. Twenty-Five December Lane ( Ward & Anderson)

3. Melrose and Croc Together at     Christmas (Emma Chichester Clark)

4. Merry Christmas Big Hungry Bear ( Wood & Wood)

5. Santa's Stuck ( Greene/Cole)

I use 'The Mitten' and 'Santa's Stuck' as inspiration for art. I will do a post detailing how I use these books over the weekend. 

:) 

Christmas Paper Bag Art

I had hoped to get this post up ages ago! *hangs head in shame*

Here are four ideas for reusing paper bags this December. I have enough ideas for another post later this week so keep an eye out. 

1. Gift wrap

Open out the paper bag, if you can lay them out flat with heavy books on top it makes printing on them easier.

Use sponges or potatoes cut to the shape you desire to create a pattern. We printed the snowmen using a circle of sponge and the hat using a small cuboid. Once dry add details using markers.

2. Gift bags

We glued small pieces of paper over the logo on the paper bag and painted holly wreaths. Berries were added by dipping cotton buds into red paint. The wreath was painted by dipping the edge of an old loyalty card (credit card style) into green paint and then dragging in a circle. 

The bumpy effect is from the glued paper underneath. 

Any Christmas picture could be painted on your bag.

3. Paper Snowflakes

We cut large shapes from the paper bags, folded them and cut pieces from each side and edge to create snowflakes. These would look even prettier painted silver or gold!

4. Gingerbread Houses

On white paper we designed windows, doors and roof tiles. We coloured them in and cut them out. We folded an A4 sheet in half and glued it on for the roof. We then stuck on the tiles, windows and doors. 

You could make a pretty gingerbread village with shops or just lots of tasty houses.