Relaxing on Holidays & Back to School

I am sure you all know what the end of the school year feels like... Relief... Exhaustion... Excitement... Cleaning... Unit review and re-writing... Preparing assessment for the first term of the following year... Class lists... Timetabling... It gets VERY busy but now it's over and 6 weeks of holidays are here!

The first week was spent with Kylie from DownUnderTeacher, her son Brendan, my husband, Max my step-son and Caitlin (we are her guardians) at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast.
Full of surfing lessons, bodyboarding, sun, relaxing, reading and most importantly, time together as a family.

Before we left we put up Christmas trees at both our home and at my Mums ('Grandma B'). Here is a photo of us together with Mums adopted Greyhound Tessa. We realized after this photo was taken that we were COMPLETELY blocking the Christmas tree! Oppppss....

Christmas Day was just beautiful and better than I imagined. I woke up still sick with tonsillitis so was feeling very average, but after relaxing at Mums with everyone I started to feel much better! :) Christmas Day we also had a good friend Maz join us for Christmas lunch. Caitlin and Max were also with us for Christmas day and present opening as was out blue-cattle dog Blackie!

Lastly my husband and I spent the other day 'fishing'... Well by fishing I mean throwing the line in, getting some sun, reading, relaxing and catching absolutely NOTHING! :)

Now its the time of year where I'm thinking about heading back to school! We have 25 days until students are back at school and 19 days until all teachers are due back for SFD. I'm in the middle of creating integer fast fact sheets along with more multiplication, addition and algebra fast fact sheets. It's great way to check for student understanding and for them to record their 'best time' and challenge themselves. 

First Blog & FREEBIES

Good Evening all you fellow Bloggers out there! I must admit, I'm actually a tad nervous as this is my first post here. I've had a TPT store called BaysideTeacher for around a month now and thought it necessary to create an interesting blog to go with it! :)

I thought I would begin with a very tasty topic- Look away now if you're hungry because this image won't help sorry!

I teach year 8 (12/13 year olds) up to year 12 (16/17 year olds) Mathematics and I've found that as we've developed relationships and grown as a class, I've really bonded with each and every student. I certainly admit that I don't have an extension class - more so the opposite, and that cupcakes are the way to a students heart when it comes to rewards.

This picture was a set of mini-cupcakes I gave out to my year 12 students on the day they handed in their third-last assignment last week!

In addition to these, in the last 5 minutes of my two year 9 exams last week I handed out one of these mini-cupcakes to all the students who sat the exam. It truly made a difference in these students lives, especially for those students who are D and E level even though they try so hard. This really is a nice reward for them :)

The downside, I baked four sets of 48 mini-cupcakes in the last week for students and a staff going away party! All cupcaked out! Phheww

To end my first post, I thought I'd link you through to two of my Freebies on TpT.

FREE Perimeter & Area Posters

&

FREE Integer Questions - 5 Levels