It is divided up into helpful and concise sections like “How to get on with children at yard” “Encouragin good behaviour” “Sanctions” and “Children beyond”

It has some really creative ideas around wet playtimes, playground friendships and how to promote them, dealinng with bullies and most importantly how to tie in the School rules into the yard rules. If you are using the Jenny Mosley system of Golden Rules, this will slot in even more perfectly for you!

This handbook is sold as a multipack of 3 and costs about €11.40 or £9.99 from the Positive Press website.

Playground games is a 22 page booklet consisting of 20 different playground games. You may know some of the games, you have played some of them when you were little! For example, we have “duck, duck, goose”, “Oranges and lemons” but we also have less known games like “I sent a letter” and  Jamaican games like “Slip”.

The booklet is perfect for its purpose, it can fit into your hand or pocket and the instruction are quick and easy to follow. Children have become more used to playing digitally but this little booklet is a great way to instill the enjoyment that can be had in the playground.

They come in a pack of 3 at €9.10 or £7.99. They can be purchased on Positive press’ website.

September is always full of energy and optimism for teachers, parents and children! After a few weeks (even days,  sometimes),  it may feel like you never had the summer holidays – you are tired, the children are listless and unmotivated and they are finding it hard to keep the class on task.

Jenny Mosely and Zara Niwano have put together a book containing energizers that will certainly make the class more alert and ready to listen and learn! This book works in the same way as the Big Book of Calmers which I reviewed a fortnight ago.

The Calmers book moves the class into calm alertness from anxiety or over stimulation, whereas the Energizers book moves them from listlessness towards focussed alertness. They both achieve the same thing but the children are at different starting points.
Relevance to Curriculum aims: 5/5
Extremely relevant like the Calmers book. This is perfect for SPHE, the Arts subjects and indeed at any point of the day, whenever you feel the class need that boost! Think of using the Energizers book for the month of June and the Calmers book for the month of December!
The activities are broken into clapping/singing/follow-my-leader games, miming, kinaesthetic learning, healthy living routines, drumming, rhythm and rhyme and challenges for children to exercise their minds as well as their bodies! The Mind exercises are particularly good for mental maths starters or oral english language lessons.
Teacher usability: 5/5
Easy! I could pick this up at any point of the day and begin a simple activity. There are 1 of 3 symbols at the top of each activity. The first symbol is an activity that can be played quickly and easily. The second symbol will take a bit of organising by the teacher-maybe the night before or at lunch time. the third symbol tells you that this activity will need a large space outside as this may be a physical energizer. This makes it incredibly easy to use and makes it more likely that you will use it more.
Value for money: 5/5
At €22, It is excellent value for money as this will last you for your teaching career as no matter what curriculum changes happen, (the curriculum is nearly 12 years old! I sense a change!), this book will be relevant. Also, because the activities can be easily slotted into any lesson or time of the day, it is perfect. As a Support teacher, these activities would be very worthwhile too. With 120 different activities, your class may never be bored again! (Wishful thinking!?) This book can be purchased from Jenny’s website at www.circle-time.co.uk and Outside the box, Naas usually supply all good books like these!

Absolutely, though not a stand alone lesson, this book can be used in many ways. As an SPHE starter, circle time or in general anytime during the day you feel stressed or you sense the class or a students are becoming overexcited. It would also be excellent for the other Arts subjects like Drama or Visual Arts.
You can use “Calmers” to start the day, end the day or to calm children down after a loud, wet play.
This toolkit of “Calmers” is suitable for young and old, special needs and for teaching the children the independent skills they need to help them calm down!
Calmers links in brilliantly with the whole Jenny Mosley package of circle time, golden rules and golden time. They help the class to turn negative thinking around and build up self esteem. Everyone( including the teacher!) can benefit from this! Many of the activities focus on anger management, emotional self awareness and teach the children how to interact positively with each other. What amazing life skills! If the children in our care could learn how to curb their anger, deal with negative thoughts and become more aware of their emotions, we as teachers would be doing a fantastic job!
Teacher usability:5/5
Really easy! The teacher can just pick up this book and begin the calming! The activities include stretches, relaxation techniques, controlled breathing, visualisation, stories, songs, role play and much much more!
The activities are marked with one of three symbols. the first one tells you that this activity can be played quickly and easily. The second one tells you that it will take a bit of organising from the teacher. The third symbol explains that you will need a large space. Great idea, this adds to the ease of use for the teacher.

Value for money 5/5
It works out at 18.95, converted using www.xe.com as €21.95. This represents excellent value for money as you will have this book for years to come. It would be a must for any SPHE/Drama/Visual Arts school resource as well.
Extras-0/5
No extras-it would be great to see how Jenny Mosley implements these herself, maybe she would consider showing some teachers in real classrooms how these activities can work and do work. These could be placed on her website or DVD.

Total score: 15/20

Well recommended-click on the link below to buy this from Amazon.

We have all probably heard of the Golden Rules. Well, “Jenny Mosely’s Small Book of Golden rules in action-Games and activities” focuses in on each rule in great detail!  These books come in a set of 6 and would be most suitable for 2nd-4th classes, with some of the activities being fine for a more senior class.

Each small book is made up of ideas and activities to help children really understand the rules in an active and fun way.  These books would be best used through the day or when needed to focus in on a certain skill or rule. SPHE is the subject that warrants from integrated teaching and learning and this is where these books would link in well. However, if you are using any of Jenny’s “bibles” of the Golden Rules/Circle Time, you may find that you don’t need any further activities. I’d recommend these to real hard-core Jenny Moseley fans!

Essentially this book contains about a year’s worth of cutting and gluing activities, which could probably be then used for other subjects.  For example, a lot of the activities involve cutting out a shape then sticking something on it.  For example, there’s a page which lets kids make a Mother’s Day card.  Once the children have glued and coloured in all the bits and pieces, they can write an individual message in it.

There isn’t really any activity that stands out as interesting and it’s really up to the teacher to make the activities educational once the craft work is done.

I think this book would probably suit a rainy day activity or in conjunction with a lesson the teacher plans herself.  In fact, if the book had have suggested curriculum activities to do with the craft exercises, it would have been a much better book.  I’m quite shocked that the book purports to support any curriculum aims from the Visual Arts curriculum.

It’s very difficult to find a commercial book that supports the primary curriculum.  Similarly before “Ceol”, there was little in the way of music programmes that supported the music curriculum.  There are a few decent art books out there but usually they’re found in the shops of art galleries rather than school book shops.  However, they usually just focus on one strand or one skill.  Whoever invents the Visual Arts version of “Ceol” may become a very rich person indeed.  Unforunately, it isn’t the author of this particular book.

Classroom Art and Craft is available from Prim-Ed at a cost of €24.95.

Céard É Sin? is not so much a game but a huge selection of worksheets, interactive activities and posters for classrooms.  According to its authors, there are over 1,100 illustrations and over 40 themes.  These are available to print out.

The interactive activities are Flash-based activities which are a choice between things like crosswords, wordsearches and matching exercises.  They are simple, to the point and work in any web browser.

The main positive thing about this product is that there is a poster or image for almost any occasion.  If you wanted to decorate your classroom with Irish posters, it’s a good resource.  The interactives that are provided are of reasonable quality and may be a good way to consolidate learning.

Having so much choice means that navigation is essential.  Unfortunately, this is where the product fails slightly.  There is just too many options on each screen and it is very difficult to read because of this.  Perhaps, reducing the number of options on each screen would help.  Another problem is the price. €125 for a bunch of PDF files and Flash-based quizzes is a lot to pay no matter how much time and effort that must have been put into it.

It looks as though Céard É Sin? took a long time to collate and as a series of PDF files and flash quizzes, they have done a great job of bringing these things together.  They need to work heavily on the navigation of the product to try and simplify it.  It’s great to see a piece of Irish designed software on the market.  While there’s nothing on the CD that a teacher couldn’t do themselves, it does have the potential to save them a lot of time.

It comes in a Big Book format with really child-friendly and colourful pictures, notation and words with teacher instructions on the same page. You have the option of teaching the song as a group, using the CD or if your children can read music, use the notation.

To bring it onto the next level, each song comes with a fun, interactive game for the whole class to play. these activities could be used for PE, Music, Drama and playground games with a buddy system. 5th and 6th Class children could be taught to teach these games to the younger children, creating a lovely sense of community while keeping them busy and out of telling tales!

I would highly recommend this book, the children singing on the CD are very convincing and they demonstrate that you don’t need backing track to enjoy music. Lots of better known songs are included with less known featuring as well. Every Infant teacher needs to get this! This gets Anseo.net’s Top of the Class award as you will get infinite use from this simple resource.

It retails at €22.75, included with CD and can be ordered through the Positive Press website at http://www.circle-time.co.uk/shop/show/113

The iPod Touch and iPad are tools that can very easily computerise a system like PECS and several companies have already done so.  One such company in Ireland has. The Grace App was developed by Lisa Domincan and her daughter Grace (who the app was named after) and Steve Troughton-Smith with the support of O2. Mary Moroney did the original drawings we use.

The one thing that one would notice upon opening the Grace App is its sheer simplicity.  Items are categorised into common functions including colours, my body, food and drink and more.  For example, if a child wants  to use his laptop, he can touch “Sentence Makers” and tap “I want…”, go back to the main screen and to the section “Things I like”, followed by tapping “Laptop”.  If he wanted the teacher to look at the laptop, similarly there are simple commands to do this.

It’s all well and good if your child only wants the items listed in the Grace App but what if her favourite food is broccoli? (Funnily enough there are no vegetables in the Food and Drink section!)  Luckily it’s a simple affair (particularly if your iPod/iPad has a camera).  Simply take a picture of the broccoli and click the + button on the top right.  Find the photo of the broccoli and click on it and it appears in the category.  You can also add your own categories as vocabulary is developed and needed.  One thing we spend ages doing is taking photos of all the teachers and classmates in the school and printing, laminating and sticking Velcro on each one.  One can simply add a new category called “School” and import all the photos they need.  Zero cost.

Speaking of cost, Grace App retails at around €30 (prices change on iTunes from time to time).  If it is being used instead of laminated paper, over time it can be cost effective.  The other aspect of having it on your iPhone is that the PECS system is always with you.  For example, Lisa gave the example of if your child falls in the park and can’t tell you how she is feeling, your PECS cards are no good at home! €30 is also a small price to pay for a system that gives a child a voice.

The Grace App’s big pulling point is in its simplicity.  There’s a tiny learning curve.  However, a feature that some people might like, which is missing is the ability for the app to speak the sentences being built.  I believe this was a conscience decision by the developers but it might be something to consider. It’s probably already happening but I’d recommend that Mary Moroney gets her drawing tools out to create extension packs.  The pictures she has created are excellent and very clear.  My photograph of a piece of broccoli is cluttered with other background objects.  If I tried to draw a piece of brocolli, I don’t think a child in my care would know what it was!

It’s great to see an Irish-designed product on the education market, where there is so little happening right now.  There is a huge market for iPad/iPod apps for the education market and schools that are using iPads/iPods are coping with adapting American or British apps, which more often than not fall short of truly integrating into our curriculum.  So if Steve Troughton-Smith is reading this, there’s an untapped market there for you!