A Great Advent Calendar

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Xmas/calendar/
I'm sure this site will come in very handy for many of you from tomorrow. The Woodlands Junior School have a great advent calendar on their website which also contains lots of information about Christmas customs in different countries around the world.

Sarah Brown

Can Sarah Brown contact me regarding her Greg Arious and the Lexicons order, please? The email that you submitted does not work. Thanks!

Playground Fun

I've been recently sent details of the new Playground Fun website...

"Playground Fun is a website aimed at getting children outside playing games. From Hide & Seek to It, and from Poison to Zombie, traditional favourites meet with new games in an inspiring new project - www.playgroundfun.org.uk - funded by Culture Online, part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Playground Fun offers children practical suggestions and ideas about how they can get outside and start playing - at home and at school. The project helps 7-9 year olds to re-discover the fun of learning and playing together, trying games played in other counties and cultures, as well as offering children the chance to share their own favourites.

The site, featuring lots of colourful cartoon characters, includes nuts-and-bolts information about how to play games, vintage black and white film footage and guidance on how to help children enjoy group activities. There's also a fun game builder tool that allows children to create their own versions of games on the website. Teacher and parent notes are included with information about how to keep children entertained, fit, safe and well. The site aim is to become a growing online compendium of games, as played by Britain's children."

Site Update: 25th November 2005

There's been 35 new resources added this week. They're all marked with an red NEW symbol. Full details are below.

*** Please support Tommy's (http://www.tommys.org) by recycling your used printer cartridges (see http://www.inkagain.co.uk/charity/tommys.shtml for details) ***

MATHS: Little Red Addition / Easter Counting / Word Challenge / Coordinates (ppt) / Multiplication Facts 3x (ppt) / Mixed Fractions (ppt) / Simple Tenths (ppt) / Simple Tenths 2 (ppt)/ Multiplication Facts 4x (ppt) / Finding the Perimeter (ppt) / Measuring (nearest half cmm or mm) (ppt)
ENGLISH: Rhyming Words / Word Origins (ppt) / Complex Sentences (ppt) / Complex Sentences / Little Wolf's Book of Badness Guided Reading Plan / Literacy Resource Card / The Sheep Pig Guided Reading Plan
SCIENCE: Microbes (ppt) / The Earth, Moon & Sun / Muscle Groups (ppt) / Healthy Eating Quiz (ppt) / Energy (ppt)
HISTORY: The Spanish Armada (ppt) / Tudor Exploration (ppt) / Tudor Timeline (ppt) / Tudor Buildings (ppt)
GEOGRAPHY: Mountains (ppt) / ICT: Introduction to Spreadsheets Y3/4 (ppt), Y4/5 (ppt), Y5/6 (ppt)D&T: Musical Instrument Project Booklet / Fairgrounds Project Booklet
MUSIC: Peter and the Wolf (ppt) x 2

Contributors:
Thanks go to the following people for providing the resources this week: Lisa McIlwaine, Mike Watson, Suzanna Doyly, Leo McCloskey, Mark Dolphin, Kerry Parsons, Samantha Scott, Sabreen Chaudhari, Carol Dawson, Tony Chapman, Steven Moore, Faye Hemming, Jonathan Davies, Lorraine Bastone and Helen Ferguson.


'Primary Extra' http://www.primaryextra.co.uk

Our first commercial release, the 'Greg Arious and the Lexicons' teaching pack is still available on the Primary Extra site. 'Greg Arious and the Lexicons' is based on the popular download on Primary Resources.

This new version has been completely redrawn, coloured and updated. The primary focus of the story is on teaching about synonyms and the use of a thesaurus but it also covers lots of other areas of the KS2 Literacy Strategy.

The pack features lots of new material and contains printable versions of the book (both in full colour and black and white), a presentation of the story for use on interactive whiteboards or large screens, a teacher's guide and activity sheets.

The teaching pack is available to purchase as an online download or delivered by post on CD. There is a special discounted price for teachers who are buying copies for their own individual use as well as additional discounts for ordering online.

Northumberland ICT Resources

http://ngfl.northumberland.gov.uk/ict/default.htm
There's some nice ICT activities on this LEA site including the Colin's Coffee Simulation that I've mentioned before. There's also some really nice early mouse skills games/activities that are well worth looking at as well as a pictorial animal database which is great for KS1.

City Creator

http://www.citycreator.com/
This is a fun little site that allows you to create your own towns using pre-made components. Useful when you're looking at simulations/modelling in ICT. The snow town might be quite nice for Christmas week!

Interactica

http://www.interactica.com/
This quirky site is a popular resource for those working in the Foundation stage and Key Stage 1, particularly the Poisson Rouge mini-site. There's lots to explore and click on which makes it great fun.

Newseum: Today's Front Pages

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/
Newseum's site brings you the front pages of newspapers from all around the world. Just click a dot on the map and up comes up a page of a newspaper from that country. It's great to use when looking at the format and layout of newspapers in your Literacy lessons.

Geograph

http://www.geograph.org.uk/
Another great site that I'm sure you'll personally have lots of fun with, nevermind your class. Geograph is a project that is attempting to collect a geographically representative photograph for every square kilometre of the British Isles.

You can browse all the photographs submitted so far (over 73,000!) and you can also contribute images of your own.

Furbles

http://www.furbles.co.uk/
This has been around for ages and is something I've used a lot in the past. If you've not already come across Furbles then you really must check it out.

Furbles is a free program created by teacher Alec McEachran that creates random little creatures that you can sort and graph. You can display the creatures in bar graphs or pie charts and when you click on the button they run into their places. It's great for looking at probability and statistics... really fun.

Alec is currently developing a commercial version with educational publishers Sherston... certainly something to watch out for in early 2006.

Every Object Tells A Story

http://www.everyobject.net/

Every Object Tells a Story is a project run by the Victoria and Albert Museum, Channel 4 and Ultralab, encouraging people to share stories on the web about their favourite things: about objects with a personal meaning or relating to their interests.

It's a very interesting way of creating a virtual museum from the objects and memories of the contributors.

It is for all age-groups, and great for practising literacy, learning about history and story telling or just trying a bit of creative writing! Take a trip to their website www.everyobject.net to find out more and sign up to add your own stories.

Site Update: 19th November 2005

This update sees 70 new resources added to the site. They're all marked with an green NEW symbol. Full details are below. Due to recent personal events we have adopted the charity Tommy's (http://www.tommys.org) as the site's official charity. One of the easiest ways to support the work that they do is through their printer cartridge recycling scheme (see http://www.inkagain.co.uk/charity/tommys.shtml for details).

MATHS: Number Bonds (to 10) / Perimeter Cards / Tables / Small Clocks / Fractions Cards / Improper Fractions Cards / Number Cards / Tables Match Cards / Hot Chocolate Problem (ppt) / Term 1 Unit 6a Handling Data (3) (ppt) / Division by 3 (Smart) / Y4 Problem Solving (Smart) / Y6 Problem Solving (Smart) / Shapes Y1 (ppt) / Measuring Mix Up / Multiplying Using the Grid Method / Dividing by Grouping / Adding More / Find the Difference Game / 2D Shape Properties / 3D Shape Properties / Proportion Word Problems / Proportion / Ratio Word Problems / Bear Multiplication / What's My Number (place value)
ENGLISH: Willy the Wimp Resources / Letter Cards / Reported Speech Questionnaire / Pluralisation (y ending) (Smart) / Pluralisation (f ending) (Smart) / Newspapers (ppt) / Narrative Setting Sci-Fi (ppt) / Punctuation Revision (Smart) / Comparisons Y1 (ppt) / Summer Breeze Y1 (ppt) / Turkey News / Author's Story Board / Story Review Record / CVC middle 'e' / CVC middle 'i' / CVC -at -an / Long and short 'i'
SCIENCE: Magnets Vocab Display / Changing Materials Glossary / Day and Night (ppt) / Animal Survival (ppt) / Hibernation and Migration (ppt) / Moving Around (ppt) / Teeth and Healthy Eating (ppt) / The Heart and Lungs (ppt) / Looking at Materials (Y5/6) / Temperature Investigation
HISTORY: Who was Anne Frank? (ppt) / World War 2 Jobs (ppt) / Children at Work (Victorians) / Queen Victoria (ppt) / Roman Numeral Hunt
GEOGRAPHY: Chembakolli (ppt)
ICT: K'nex Control / Crashing Computers
D&T: Which sandwich was best / Sandwich Evaluation (xls)
MFL: French Stationary Match / French Sports (ppt) / French Clothing (ppt) / French Christmas Wordsearch
ASSEMBLY: Human Body Class Assembly

Updates Suspended

Just a note to let you all know that due to personal and family reasons I will not be updating any of the sites (Primary Resources, the Blog or In the News) for at least the next week. All Primary Extra orders will be processed as usual.

Podcasts by Primary School Children

The Internet is full of surprises sometimes. I was just browsing through some sites, following a few links when I came across a reference to Mark Warner.

I've known Mark (through our correspondance over the Internet) for years. He doesn't just manage the successful Teaching Ideas website, he is also a full-time primary teacher who runs his school website and computer clubs. What I hadn't realised is that his school had been podcasting for quite some time now!

Check out this page on the Teaching Ideas website for details of what podcasting is and why it's a great activity for primary children to be involved in. Then check out The Downs FM, Mark's students own podcasts. Amazing stuff.

Becta Discussion Lists

Are you a member of any of the Becta discussion lists or communities? Becta (a UK agency that supports the use of ICT in education) manage lots of different email groups on topics such as Digital Media, Games in Education, EAL/Bilingual and High Ability.

One of my favourites is the Top Teachers discussion group which is a great place to get advice, share ideas and is also a good source of useful links. Messages from group members are emailed to you (you can also choose to read posts online or have digests sent to you instead if you wish) and you can email your comments back to the whole group. It's a great community and one well worth joining.

Go to... http://forum.ngfl.gov.uk/topteachers/ ...to learn how to subscribe.

Even More Random Links

I've not posted for a little while so here's five more links chosen completely at random from my Internet favourites...

Iron Age Celts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/celts/
This BBC Wales education site features lots of activities and information about the Celts.

Telford Teacher Blog
http://telfordteacher.blogspot.com/
A new blog for teachers in Telford (and beyond) to share ideas, resources and useful links.

Colin's Coffee
http://ngfl.northumberland.gov.uk/ict/qca/ks2/unit3D/colins%20coffee/colins%20coffee.html
A nice little online activity that I used last year when we were looking at simulations/modelling.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire
http://innovationssoftware.tripod.com/wwtbam/
Download this free software to make your own WWTBAM quizzes.

Mr Picassohead
http://www.mrpicassohead.com/
This is completely random! :) A Mr Potato Head creator in the style of Picasso.

Site Update: 4th November 2005

40 new resources have been added again this week. They're all marked with an orange NEW symbol. Full details are below.

MATHS: 2D Shape Mix Up / Writing Decimals (t h th) / Matching FDPs / Lunar Theme Park Challenge / Multiplication Problems (ppt) / Subtraction Problems (ppt) / Patterns (ppt) / 4 in a Row Multiplication (x6, x7)
ENGLISH: Kennings (ppt) / Personification (ppt) / Grammar Quiz / High Frequency Word Lists / Word Lists - Blank / Comparing Fiction and Non-Fiction / Non-Fiction Book Report / ie and ei (XLS) / Plurals (XLS) / More Plurals (XLS)
SCIENCE: Desert Food Chain / Artic Tundra Food Chain / Woodland Food Chain / Seashore Food Chain / Separating Soil and Water (Smart) / Habitats (ppt) / Will this circuit work? (Smart) / Woodlice Habitat (ppt) / Plant Life Cycle (ppt)
HISTORY: Journey into Tutankhamun's Tomb (ppt) / Egyptian Homes / Mary Queen of Scots: Early Life (ppt) / The Tudor Monarchs
GEOGRAPHY: India Class Assembly
RE: God Made the Earth (Assembly) / Interesting RE Questions
ICT: What is a database? (ppt) / Comparing Websites (Weather)
PSHE: Questions for Reflective Journals
FOUNDATION: Reception Weekly Planning Sheet / HF Lotto Cards / 3 Pigs Game / Five Little Pigs Counting Rhyme

Greg Arious - New Downloads Available

Registered users of the 'Greg Arious and the Lexicons' teacher's pack can now access some additional resources from the Primary Extra downloads section. Use the username and password you received when you purchased your pack. I will be periodically adding new resources to this section... let me know if there's anything that you would like to see.

'Greg Arious and the Lexicons' is available either as an online download or on CD from the Primary Extra website. Discounts apply for teachers who wish to purchase it for themselves. It's designed for KS2 literacy and comes complete with activity sheets and a teacher's guide. See what Little Miss Teacher thought of it here.

[Primary Resources blog readers can take a look at one of the new downloadable resources by clicking here (Macromedia Flash Player required)]

Happy Birthday to Us!

Primary Resources is seven years old this month!
The first version of the site went online back in November 1998 and I guess you can say it's grown a fair bit since then.

The site wouldn't be what it is today without the hundreds of people that are listed here. Thanks so much for all your contributions and support over the years. If you guys hadn't signed up to the idea of sharing resources (and done it in such large numbers) then this site wouldn't have lasted so long.

I would also thank a few other people...
RM for their fantastic support of the site since 2002 when it looked like the site would have to be closed due to escalating running costs.
Mark Warner of Teaching Ideas (which is even older than this site!) for all his help over the years as well as a decent amount of friendly competition. ;)
and... my family (Kim, Mum, Dad, Kayte...) for all their support with my various projects.

Time to target that 10th birthday... :)