Five for Friday

I'm sure that, by now, you know how much I love this link-up with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

Here's my reflection on the week just gone and boy, did it go by in a flash!

This week I was introduced to Voxer!!!

Now, I'm sure that many of you are already familiar with this walkie-talkie 'whatsapp' style apication but I don't have any UK contacts who use it so it was all brand spanking new to me!!! 

Needless to say- I LOVE IT!!! 

Yes I can natter away to my lovely US, Canadian and New Zealander friends but I also love 

how we have used it with our classes!!! 

Erin over at Learning to be Awesome and I have exchanged voice memos wishing our respective classes a fabulous day and asking them to guess from our accents where we are from- my class thought that Erin was from the North Pole as she mentioned our new class visitor (more about that in a moment) in  her message. 

Since these initial intros, we've also had messages with children from Erin's class sharing facts about New Zealand and asking my children questions which we will respond to on Monday! 

How awesome is that? Free, easy and no worrying over children being on camera!!! 

So onto our little visitor…
Yesterday a very cold parcel arrived in class with some fancy writing on the front- we opened it up and inside was our class elf!!!
My little 6 & 7 year olds were beside themselves!!!!
As we read the story we discussed names and I used a graphic to figure out what our
elf names would be…

This gave us all a good giggle and provided us with lots of ideas!

We came up with suggestions and then voted- our elf is Merry Happyfeet or just Merry to those who

know him well!!!!
Do you use Elf on the Shelf with your class? Check out my Pinterest board for ideas…
year2tastic Christmas

 I've been wanting some kind of class media account for a while and seeing as our school has a Twitter account I figured this would maybe be the easiest and most accessible option. 

I spoke to our head teacher and got the green light- it is a private Twitter account meaning that I have to approve all followers and that our tweets can not be retweeted- I think this is a much safer and reassuring option that Facebook! 

We are going to have a 'tweeter of the day' who decides what we will tweet and will get to type it out! The arrival of our class elf is a perfect way to start our journey into the world of Twitter and provided us with our first tweet-

Do you use any form of social media with your class?

 Do you have any tips for me? 

And on the theme of Twitter- I taught my children all about hashtags this week!!!! 

We looked at a from cover and made evidence based predictions. As we had discussed that hashtags are used to lead people to a range of information about the same subject then no random predictions were allowed!!!

Of course I had to teach them how to make a hashtag with their fingers too…

This weekend I have been blessed enough to spend time with my amazing family! I live several hours away from all of my aunties and cousins not to mention my sister, niece and nephew! I travelled down in time to meet my sister for a festive mulled wine and I got to go with her to pick my niece up from school- her face when she saw me was priceless!

Me and my lovely little sis Xx

My very talented best friend, who just so happens to be my cousin too, organises the
  Fabulous Frost Fair every year which promotes local small businesses and charities- it is the perfect time to get your Christmas groove on and buy some unique gifts!
I got to go to the VIP night this year with some of my aunties and another cousin- sipping prosseco and shopping makes for a very happy Laura!

I'm totally in the Christmas mood now- how about you?