So, we’re back at it again, this time we’re celebrating the change in the seasons – in both hemispheres! Here in Australia the weather is starting to cool as we start our journey from Autumn to Winter, while I know many of my Northern Hemisphere friends are cheering the warmer weather in!

For those of you who’ve not experienced the Swap, Share, Give linky, a few of my good teacher friends from around Australia have gotten together to swap a product for review, provide YOU with a fun freebie and offer a piece of advice based on our teaching experiences.

So, without further ado, let’s get on with the show!

Swap

I was so lucky to have the opportunity to swap a product with the lovely Lauren, from Love, Laughter and Learning in Prep. If you haven’t been to her blog, stop what you’re doing and RUN over there, especially if you’re a Prep/Kinder teacher. She always has such fabulous ideas and I’m constantly ~~stealing~~ borrowing them!

I was very fortunate enough to review her fun new pack that combines word work AND fine motor skills!

Now, Lauren has an amazing collection of Fine Motor activities in her store, and I’ve actually used some of them before, but this one looked amazing for my class at the start of this term, because I have some great little readers this year who are learning about word families at the moment.

We used this activity as a warm up for our reading, and students worked in pairs to complete the different word family groups.

This pack contains the four short ‘a’ word families -ag, -an, -ap and -at.

Each word family has a main card with four holes punched in it, plus 4 word cards belonging to that word family in one of three options – pictures (shown above), pictures and words, and just words, which is perfect for providing differentiation for your students!

Students find the cards that belong to the depicted word family and use ‘links’ (those ones that EVERYONE has stashed away in their classrooms!) to connect them together, utilising not only their word family knowledge, but also the ability to manipulate and connect small objects together.

My kiddos LOVED this activity and have asked to do it a few times since we last had a go. Next time we’ll be using the picture and word cards to extend students and get them focusing on what the words look like now that they’re starting to blend words!

Thanks so much to Lauren for swapping with me – click on any of the images below to check out her store! Also, don’t forget to stop by blog to check out her review of one of my products!

Celebrate the seasons with your class and create a fabulous seasonal bunting that showcases what students know about each season in this fun freebie for you! Simply click the image above to download, and don’t forget to drop me a comment with your thoughts!

This task works fabulous as an individual task, or buddy kids up to create a joint masterpiece that can be strung up in the classroom for an extra pop to your displays!

Note: There is an Autumn page and a Fall page, to cater for language difference! 🙂

Give!

Finally, the fun part! A giveaway from my friends and I to you! Simply fill in your details in the rafflecopter and you’re good to go!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And don’t forget to stop by and visit all of my friends, see their fabulous swaps and collect all your freebie goodies by following the links below!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Hey everyone!

My lovely, fellow-Australian teacher friends and I have joined forces again for another Swap, Share, Give blog linky this weekend! We had so much fun the last time around we’re back at it, sharing some of the fantastic resources you might have missed!

I was paired with the very lovely Jemima from Luck’s Little Learners. Jemima is a fellow Victorian teacher (woohoo!) and if you’re not following her already, you definitely need to stop by and visit her blog, check out her Facebook page, or visit her on Instagram.

*~ SWAP ~*

I was super fortunate enough to be able to review Jemima’s 100th Day of School Party Pack! Here in Australia we’ve hit the middle of our school year and 2 weeks ago (July 31st), my class celebrated their 100th Day of School! (Strange, I know, for my northern hemisphere friends who are only starting to head back to school now!)

First up, let me tell you: this pack is designed for the busy teacher. If you (like me) find yourself coming up on 100 days a little time poor, these activities are all PRINT AND GO and are so easy and fun to implement.

A peek at some of the things included in Jemima’s pack:

Great, detail activity ideas and instructions!

100s charts – a whole variety so that you can differentiate for your kids (or skills) as required. Also included (but not in the photo) is a hundreds chart with random numbers missing.

I used these as early finishers tasks on the day and they worked a treat!

Ways of Making 10 pages.

Tracing/writing 100 letters.

This was another early finisher’s task that I had for the kiddos – and can I just say, they were SO amazed that they could write ‘100 letters’ (Preps AND Grade 1s!). It was really adorable and they really, really loved this task.

100th Day Writing prompts!

We ended up using the 4 prompt option in the centre and I’ve got a couple of photos of my kiddos work to show you:

This was some writing by two of my Grade 1 students – I was just blown away by one of my boys who declared (very proudly) that if he had $100 he would give it to a charity. *heart-warming moment*

And some from my Preps!

(No matter how many times I tell them ‘Don’t colour over your writing…’ <- I sound like a broken record!)

Some great ‘100’ visualising mats and a 100 Days of school poem! My preps used the blank mat to stick down 10 groups of 10 objects that they all bought from home. We all read the 100 days of school poem and it was decorated and pasted into the back of their Literacy journals with the other poems we’ve read this year!

Some of our groups of 100!

Crowns and placemats and a fantastic colouring page!

One of my kiddos modelling her 100 Days of School crown!

All-in-all, I was blown away by Jemima’s pack – it was fun, easy to print and implement and provided a lot of options, which (for someone teaching a composite class) is just awesome!

I know for a lot of your 100 Days of School is still a long way off, but I would seriously urge you to add Jemima’s 100 Days of School Party Pack to your carts right now to have it ready for your 100 days of school!

*~ SHARE ~*

As part of our linky I’m going to share TWO freebies with you – one of mine, and one from Jemima!

First up, in keeping with our 100 Days of School theme, I’m sharing with you the photo sign I used for the day (modified slightly – mine had the name of the school and the specific date for our 100 days of school):

Click the image above (or here) to download this freebie! If you’re looking for my other freebies, simply click here.

If you’re looking for a great freebie from Jemima, look no further than her Digraph ‘ng’ as ‘ing’ pack! (Or check out all her freebies here!)

*~ GIVE ~*

The last component of our linky is probably my favourite: the giving part.

If you head over to Bec’s blog (Books, Bugs and Boxes) you have the opportunity to enter a giveaway to win ALL of the packs that were reviewed as part of the linky party.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
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However, if you want an extra chance (or two) to win a copy of Jemima’s 100 Days of School Party Pack and my Hens Love Tens activity, just enter the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway //widget.rafflecopter.com/load.js

And don’t forget to head on over to Luck’s Little Learners to see Jemima’s review of my activity Hens Love Tens: A Skip-Counting Game.