This post is sponsored by Toyota for National Tree Day.

Five years ago, the closest I got to this thing called “gardening” was watching it on TV. Somehow, somewhere along the way, after having kids, I became a gardening convert. I’ve got loads to learn still, but I really can say, I love gardening and wish I had more time for it. Why am I a gardening convert? Put simply – everyone should garden because having plants around you is good for you.

Toyota understands this and have partnered with Planet Ark to help individuals, families and schools reconnect with nature by getting out into nature and having fun in their local environment.

Planet Ark’s Valuing Trees: What is Nature Worth? report focuses on the value of nature. It explores the financial, environmental, social, and health and wellbeing benefits of having trees, plants and other natural elements in the workplace, at home, in the community and at school. It found that “…having plants in and around the workplace and classroom helps reduce sick leave and stress; boosts productivity and creativity; and filters and cleans the air.”

Getting children involved in gardening not only provides plants around them, which is good for their health, it also gives children an important opportunity to learn through active participation and experience. Gardening allows children to investigate, experiment, manipulate, contemplate, problem solve and succeed.

Children love to grow things.

Just a year ago, I started gardening with my children. Since then, we have:

• Laid new lawn in our garden;
• Planted beautiful trees along our back fence;
• Had a surprise guest at our front door;
• Planted some snow peas and watched them grow;
• Harvested some snow peas and  planted a herb greenhouse and watch it grow;
• Bought new gardening supplies for our mini urban container veggie garden;
• Put the kids to work, gardening since they decided to give up on their afternoon naps;
• Planted sunflowers, dwarf sunflowers, carrots and corn.

Gardening with kids is a hands-on way to promote environmental and sustainability learning and connect children with healthy food and lifestyles. As my children have gardened, I have seen them adopt caring attitudes and values and demonstrate and apply a range of skills. 

Every child can garden. Here are 25 ways to get kids gardening:

Prepare a Garden Bed:

1. Mark out garden beds – Using pegs and string to mark out your garden bed.
2. Clear the surface – Where possible pull weeds by hand.
3. Loosen the soil surface – Break up the topsoil (about 20cms) to help aerate it.
4. Add organic matter – Add compost or manure thickly over the surface. Five to 10cms is really good covering.
5. Mix the organic matter with the soil – Using a fork or spade, gently mix the organic matter with the loosened soil surface.
6. Leave the garden bed to settle – A great time to release some earthworms into the garden. Leave the garden to settle for at least two weeks.
7. While the garden bed is settling – grow your seedlings; place boarders around your garden beds; place straw on pathways to suppress weeds.
8. When your garden bed is ready for planting – remove any large weeds; rake the soil surface; measure out the areas where each plant will be planted and mark them with pegs and string. 

Direct Sowing Seeds:

1. Moisten soil – Soaking the soil two days before planting is most helpful for new seeds.
2. Mark out rows – Using any long narrow stick, lie it along the garden bed where you wish to plant the row. Press the stick gently into the soil to create furrows to plant the seeds.
3. Place seeds in the furrow –  If the seeds are very small or fine, you can first mix the seed into a handful of sand and spread the seed/sand mix thinly along the furrow.
4. Cover the seed – Make sure the seed is buried to the right depth.
5. Water the seed – Use a fine mist spray.
6. Keep bed moist – During germination the soil should  not be allowed to dry out.
7. Thin out plants – Once the new plants have merged you may need to thin out the number of plants.

Transplant Seedlings:

1. Before planting – water the seedlings to be transplanted the day before planting. Make sure the soil in the garden bed is moist for planting.
2. Planting out – Mark where each seedling will be planted with a planting stick. Tip your punnet of seedlings upside down holding your hand over the top of the pun net to catch the seedlings. Gently tap the bottom of the punnet with your other hand until the seedlings and soil become loose from the punnet in one complete block. Be careful not to damage the fragile roots of the seedlings. Don’t plant too deeply.
3. Water the seedlings immediately. Don’t let the soil dry out.
4. Lay some organic mulch around the seedlings as soon as they are planted to keep the soil moist.

Container Gardens:

Growing plants in pots has been my favourite way to garden with my kids. It’s easier to weed, they are movable and because we can use quality potting mix, we aren’t limited to growing only those plants that will thrive in our (poor) garden soil.

There are many different types of pots for growing plants:

1. Hanging baskets
2. Terracotta pots
3. Planter boxes
4. Fabric bags
5. Wall pouches
6. Recycled materials – like old tyres, or eggshells.

Toyota and Planet Ark, have created wonderful resources and initiatives for individuals, families and schools to reconnect with nature.

 

Each year, around 2500 preschools, kindies, primary and high schools across Australia take part in Toyota and Planet Ark’s Schools Tree Day. Kids learn how to plant and care for the seedlings they grow. Check out the National Tree Day website for more fun ideas to get kids gardening throughout the year. Mums and Dads, you’ll find everything you need there to bring Tree Day home. Teachers, there are great lesson plans, learning resources and activity guides to connect kids with nature.

 

I saw National Tree Day in action at a school this year and was absolutely blown away by how much the children benefited from the event. They saw adults who were passionate about the environment and they had the opportunity to get outside and garden.

 

Schools Tree Day is on the last Friday of July each year, although events can be held at any time during the year. Each year, over 3000 people run Tree Day plantings as part of a nationwide project to help send a message that the environment matters. Toyota in partnership with Planet Ark offers planting resources and support to site co-ordinators. Schools can also post requests for assistance with labour and tools. 

 

This year, my children’s school was fortunate to receive support for Schools Tree Day from their local Toyota dealership with a donation of $200 towards purchase of plants. Some Toyota personnel joined Year 2/3 on Schools Tree Day to assist with planting. It’s as easy as registering your school for Schools Tree Day via the National Tree Day website, and getting in touch with your local Toyota dealership.

 

(If you’re reading this post in an email, click here to see some really fun activities from 2014’s School’s Tree Day. Yep – that’s me, nodding my head like a silly woman on way too much caffeine lol).

 

I saw this fun activity during School’s Tree day and loved it! To get kids excited about gardening, they each brought a seedling home to plant in their own gardens. They planted some parsley in an ice-cream cone so that it could be transported home and planted straight into their garden; ice-cream cone and all. The ice-cream cone will simply break up after awhile once the seedling has been planted. So frugal, simple and fun!

 

 

The post Gardening: 25 Kids Activities by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

Mr E and Miss K made these for their morning tea. A note of warning for children with nut allergies as this activity uses peanut butter. Although we didn’t try it, I think you could easily substitute the peanut butter with jam or another spread of your choice.

Ingredients:

• Apples
• Peanut Butter
• Mini Marshmallows

Method:

1. Cut an apple into eight slices.
2. Spread peanut butter onto one side of each slice.
3. Place some mini marshmallows on top of the peanut butter.
4. Sandwich it with another apple slice.

So simple, silly and yummy!

We talked about the letter shape for a, and the short vowel sound “a”.

Here’s a free handwriting printable of lower case letters of the alphabet, including the letter a.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment; I’d love to hear from you. If you are new here, you might like to receive updates direct to your email. We have many fun ideas to share.

The post Letter A: Laughing Apples and Handwriting Printable by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

“Mum, my name is a sight word,” says Mr M. My mind is foggy most days (sleep deprivation and multi-tasking does that to you apparently). I had no idea what he was on about – “Huh???”. Then I heard myself in his reply, “If you sound it out it doesn’t make sense”. Term 3 of Kindergarten Reading. Well done, son. Well done.

Sight words, or irregular words, are words that can’t be read by applying the letter-sound correspondence knowledge that kids learn in reading programs. E.g. “was” is irregular because the typical sounds for “a” and “s” do not apply. (By the way, words that are irregular at one point in the year may not be irregular later on in the year because children may be taught to associate other sounds for letters/letter combinations later on in the year).

Sight words are basically words that children need to learn to recognise on sight.

My default method for teaching sight words is to look, cover, write, check, and use the word in a sentence. Practise, practise, practise.

However, for various reasons, there may be times when children aren’t quite up to the task of writing yet. E.g. they are just learning how to write so the task of writing and learning the actual sight word is a double whammy for them.

Here are some other (more creative) ways to learn sight words that don’t involve writing.

Sight Word Alphabet Threading

I have a set of these in my classroom and at home. There are commercial sets with sight word cards, beads and pipe cleaners ready to go. However, I have seen people create their own beads by writing letters on beads.

Sight Word Pebbles

So easy and fun. All you need is a bunch of pebbles, a sharpie, some index cards and something to store it all in. Children have to find the pebble with a given sight word.

Giant Keyboard

I have just created this to use with the Kindergarten classes at my school. To make this giant keyboard, you’ll need a plastic table cloth or plastic shower curtain and a sharpie. Tape the giant keyboard down to your classroom floor and have kids spell a given sight word using their feet.

Need More Sight Word Activities?

Practise, practise, practise is the key with sight words. After more sight word activities? Check out these playful ideas from my blogging buddies.

• Fridge Sight Words via Octavia and Vicky
• Sight Word Sensory Bag via Childhood 101 
• Sight Words through Office Play via My Little Bookcase
• 25+ Multi-sensory Activities for Learning Words via Suzie’s Home Education Ideas
• Word Toss Gross Motor Game for Learning Sight Words via Learn with Play at Home
• Sight Word Pop Sticks  and Sight Word Swat via You Clever Monkey

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment; I’d love to hear from you. If you are new here, you might like to receive updates direct to your email. We have many fun ideas to share.

The post Sight Words: 3 Fun Activities for Kids by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

Learning to read. I want to share these reading level pointers because I think it might help parents understand the seemingly bizarre world of home reading and levelled readers.

I’ve read a fair share of criticism about Home Reader Books – you know those (loved/loathed) little books children take home from class each day or week to read at home with their parents, as part of their homework. To put these criticisms into context, they are usually Facebook posts from mothers of children who have just started kindergarten, or are still in the infant years of schooling (Kindergarten / Year 1 / Year 2). They usually go along the lines of, “How on earth can you get kids interested in reading, when these books are so boring, etc”.

I’m not here to say these criticisms are unfounded. Even amongst teachers, there’s healthy ongoing debate about how best to help children learn to read. You have those who are passionate about surrounding children with authentic texts, interesting books and letting a child discover the skills of reading. Then you have those who are passionate about direct instruction and explicitly teaching reading skills.

I am of the view that there’s no one method suits all solution to teaching reading. Some kids really do just pick up reading at home, before they start school. Others pick it up quickly during the first few months of starting school. Others still, need direct instruction, possibly for many years before they learn to read.

I stand firmly by these points I shared before on how to encourage reading, however I share these reading level pointers with parents of students in my class, to help them understand what we are working towards during our guided reading groups during class. I also share these reading level pointers with them so they better understand why our home reader books are structured the way they are. To that end, I hope you find these reading level pointers helpful.

(A quick note about book levels. Each publisher / levelled reading book series has their own way of grading their book levels. Some use colours, others use numbers, letters, or a combination of these. The way each system codes their levels, rarely correlates with other systems. However, the numbers, letters, colours don’t really matter. It’s the skills associated with each level, that’s of interest. So, the book levels that I share here may not match the system that your child’s school uses. However, the general progression of skills should roughly correlate).

Book Level 1, 2

• holds book the right way
• talks about the pictures
• knows where to start reading
• reads from left to right, line by line
• points to each word as it is read

Book Levels 3 to 5

• can find known words in the story
• uses the picture and beginning sound to help predict an unknown word
• remembers the pattern of the story
• can find a particular word in the story and say how they know what that word says
• can stop, go back and read again to check

Book Levels 6 to 8

• uses eyes to follow words instead of finger
• uses sounds to work out small words or the beginning part of longer words
• stops and self corrects because: of known words; it doesn’t make sense
• notices word endings as well as beginnings, e.g. s, ing, ed, er
• can find rhyming patterns to work out an unknown word
• starting to read more fluently
• re-read as for levels 3 to 5

Book Levels 9 to 11

• able to answer questions and remember details of the story
• stops and self corrects because of known words, it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t look right
• can find small words in bigger words, e.g. to/day; h/and
• can break up words into syllables
• re-reading to check

Book Levels 12 to 14

• fluency
• phrasing: reads chunks of words e.g. “in the bath”, “before the game”, “under a table”
• syllabification
• punctuation: voice goes down at a full stop; voice goes up at a question; knows to use expression when ” ” are in the book; emphasis for a !
• re-reading
• reading on – when a word is unknown reads on, then goes back and tries to work out the word.

Book Levels 15 to 20

• continue with phrasing
• punctuation as for levels 12, 13, 14
• using many strategies to work out unknown words
• meaning – what is happening in the story
• noticing letters, all parts of the word
• syllabification
• re-reading
• reading on
• looking at known parts of words
• does the sentence make sense? 

Again, so this post is not misunderstood, these reading level pointers is not the cure-all key to helping kids learn to read. Ideally, kids should not just be reading home readers at home. After sharing these pointers with parents, I follow with these suggestions for reading at home:

What parents can do:

• Read aloud to your child every day in your home language. Encourage your child to be a keen reader.
• Talk about a book before you start reading it. Ask them about what they are reading.
• Buy a bed lamp and encourage reading each night before going to sleep.
• Praise every effort in reading.
• Be seen reading for pleasure yourself and make visits to the library. Talk about books.

Don’t nag about reading. The important thing is “Is my child finding interesting reading material and are conditions at home favourable to reading?”

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment; I’d love to hear from you. If you are new here, you might like to receive updates direct to your email. We have many fun ideas to share.

The post Learn to Read: Reading Level Pointers by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.