ofamily learning together

Sensory Christmas

Posted on January 1, 2019 by ofamily

I find Christmas tough. I always loved Christmas time as a kid but since I have had my own and they have struggled with all the noise and chaos around the festive season it has become a bit more challenging for me.

Christmas is a bit of a sensory nightmare, everything seems to be louder, busier, more crowded, people are closer, more in your face. So I lot of the more traditional Christmas activities do not suit us. Every year we try a few – like going into London to see the lights, taking the kids to buy gifts for close family, going to see the reindeer etc but after just a few outings the kids start asking to stay home.

So when I start seeing all the wonderful photos and stories of all the other kids enjoying the festive activities my heart aches a bit and I get a bit despondent. Social media can be really tough in this aspect. As much as I love the fact that it connects me with friends far away it can also rub the fact that your kids are not doing all the “normal activities” in your face, over and over again. For the most part I have learnt to just scroll on past and try remind myself we are on our own journey and everything is happening at our pace, and this normally works, but somehow over the Christmas period I find it harder and it gets me down.

I wish we could be out enjoying all the fun activities. And I know some friends and family don’t understand why we aren’t. They think the kids manage fine, they don’t see the fact that one of them stops eating properly, their sleep goes crazy or the fact that the stimming starts going ballistic, they don’t see the tears over socks when we are trying to get ready – yes tears over socks / shoes / jackets that don’t feel good can be a massive thing when the kids are overwhelmed. I get that. I do.

Before we started doing our sensory journey I never understood what life with sensory kids would entail and I probably would have been just like the other parents, I probably would have just thought “those kids are spoilt”.

We have 2 more days of unusual festive activities and then the big unwind begins. I have learnt after Christmas and having guests to stay we need a LONG unwind session, with lots of outdoor walks and long reading sessions under a heavy blanket before we can really get back into our normal rhythm.

But through all the craziness that Christmas, a break in routine, noise and chaos brings to our little family I am still determined to try to celebrate the small victories. I need to. Victories like the kids trying mince pies for the first time and actually liking them (although it turns out they only liked mince pies from 1 shop), the kids managing public transport better than ever before even though it was crazy busy, and my darling daughter finally being able to use a hairdryer without it freaking her out. (For parents with non-sensory kids hair dryers have been a huge issue for us. We have never been able to use them on the kid’s hair, in fact when they were younger the noise hair dryers made meant taking the kids to have hair cuts was a big NO).

Sensory challenges. Using a hairdryer

Posted in SPD | Tagged home ed, home education, homeschooling, parenting, sensory processing disorder, spd | 4 Comments

2019 Calendar

Posted on December 31, 2018 by ofamily

We have had a lovely break over Christmas and I am very slowly starting to think about our home education again – although to be totally honest both kids have been learning a lot over the break – trip to a Science Museum, a lovely exhibit about animals in the dark, using a compass, researching British Kings and Queens – all unplanned and self-led.

But I do need some sort of plan in place just so I feel a bit more organised. I started off by printing out the 2019 Calendar pages from Activity Village to use as a planner for my own work activities – I like this set because you can choose from different colours / pictures for each month.

For my “work” planner I just attached the pages together with some colourful ribbon.

And I printed a second set out for the kids (well – really my daughter). She likes to have a schedule of what is happening and because we often do workshops and museum trips with friends a monthly calendar tends to work a lot better than a weekly one. She is also starting to become a bit of a planner and likes to plot out possible learning topics on her calendar. I must be honest I love this as it is great for me to look at to get some ideas and inspiration. For the kids calendar we actually inserted the pages into a small file, mainly because my daughter wanted to have some pages behind the calendar so that she can start making lists (not yet sure what these lists are going to be).

But like I said I am only very slowly getting back into the swing of things, so 2 sets of calendars all sorted and it is back to the couch to drink more tea and watch yet another festive movie.

Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged 2019 calendar, activity village, home ed, home education, homeschooling, planning | 3 Comments

Snap Circuits

Posted on December 16, 2018 by ofamily

We recently gave my son a Snap Circuit set for his birthday and we have all been so impressed with this set that I thought I would share some photos and info on the set.

Now there are a number of different snap circuit sets that you can buy and I honestly have not investigated all of them. I knew I wanted a basic set, something to get us started and this particular set was one that one of his friends has and he liked it. It is the Snap Circuits Jr. – SC-100

The set comes with all the goodies that you need to complete 101 different circuits (you just need to add 2 AA batteries).

The set also comes with a manual which sets out each circuit – showing diagrams of how they are set up and explaining a bit about them. (If you lose or damage the manuals you can download copies from their site)

It does have an age recommendation of 8 years and over and my son was given it for his 8th birthday and he was absolutely fine. In fact he happily sat and worked through the first set of circuits all by himself without any input from my hubbie or myself (he had seen his friend use this set so he was already familiar with the different components).

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His older sister who had never tried a snap circuit before also managed to work away at the circuits by herself. The only time she needed input was when she wanted to adjust some of the circuits and she wanted to check with us that she was on the correct path. I love this, I love that after building a recommended circuit she is finding ways to adjust it, change it and then can discuss why the changes she made worked or didn’t work. I actually spotted that there is a design tool on the website that the kids can use to design their own circuits. We have not had time to really do this (my daughter did draw a few of the circuits that she created) but after Christmas we are definitely going to give this a go – Snap Circuit Designer

We have only had this set for a week now but I am very impressed with it. I like the way the manual is set out with the examples, I like that you can order replacement parts if needed and I like that we can always move onto more complex sets.

The circuits are proving a hit with both my kids, they especially like the ones when you can make the fan fly or when there is noise (from a parent point of view the noise may be slightly irritating but I look at it as an educational irritating noise – he has some far noisier toys that really irritate me that have NO educational benefits).

Disclosure – This is NOT sponsored. We bought the set and really like it so wanted to share.

I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and love.

Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged electric circuits, home ed, home education, homeschooling, science activity, science for kids, snap circuits | 1 Comment

Surprising Animal Colouring Books

Posted on December 15, 2018 by ofamily

My daughter was given some realistic animal and bird colouring books when she was younger but they never really interested her. However I liked the look of the books so I kept them packed on our bookshelf (I hate giving anything away when I can see potential for us to use it in a future project of some sort – yes I HOARD educational goodies). Over the past week while we have been at home a lot more than usual (winter bugs) my son ended up going through the bookcase looking for something to do and he spotted these books. Now he loves learning about animals so he immediately took them out and started paging through. The first thing he commented on was that he liked the fact that colouring books included coloured pictures of what the animals look like in real life – he likes to be accurate with his animals.

And he started, first with the Colouring Birds book.

He sat and coloured for ages, moving onto the African Mammal book. Taking breaks to read the short blurbs about the animals

and having long inspections of the example pictures that are included in the middle of each book.

He flipped between the different books selecting all different kinds of animals.

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But it kept him busy for ages, and and he came back to the books the next day

If you have kids who are interested in animals and want to work on realistic yet not overly complicated pictures with good examples of what the animals truly does look like then this books definitely ticked all the boxes for my little guy. (Tip the paper is nice but I still would not use felt tip pens in these books as I think the ink would come through the pages – my son stuck to his colouring pencils and they worked really nicely)

And the other up side was I could show my hubbie that all those educational items that I hang on “just in case” they may come in handy actually do sometimes end up getting used.

The three books that we currently have are African Mammals (Read, Colour and Keep), Colouring Birds and African Birds (Read, colour and keep) by Sally MacLarty (2015-04-19) and after searching online my son found African Reptiles & Frogs (Read, Colour and Keep) and has just requested it as a Christmas present.

Posted in Book Ideas | Tagged african animals, colouring books, educational books, home ed, home education, homeschooling | 2 Comments

New Books we are enjoying

Posted on December 13, 2018 by ofamily

I feel like I have been writing a lot of book posts lately, not sure if it is just the cold season or the fact that we all seem to be going from bug to bug but we do seem to be reading a lot and finding lots of interesting books. So this time I am going to summarize 6 new books (well 4 totally new books and 2 that we have rediscovered).

My daughter is definitely on a “reading about strong women” trend at the moment and 2 of the books that she has enjoyed are Ronja the Robber’s Daughter Illustrated Edition and Seeker of the Crown (Prisoner of Ice and Snow). Very different stories but both with strong female lead characters.

Ronja the Robber’s Daughter is written by Astrid Lindgren (my hubbie was thrilled when he saw this as he remembered her books from when he was younger and has STRONGLY suggested that we find more as he rates her as an excellent author). The story is about 2 competing group of robbers who live in a forest with some unique magical creatures. As it happens both tribe leaders end up having a child each and the kids become friends which cause lots of problems. But in the end the friendship between the 2 kids ends the feud and both kids declare they will not follow in the family tradition of robbing. The friendship between the two kids is very sweet (and totally innocent so don’t worry about that) and they go on a few adventures together (nothing too scary). My daughter enjoyed the story and liked the fact that Ronja was such a head-strong, courageous, determined young girl. I personally enjoyed the writing style – descriptive, with good interesting characters that you get to know and understand as you story unfolds.

Seeker of the Crown. A more challenging read than Ronja and I did need to talk about the different characters and events with my daughter as she found it a bit more complex but we liked that. My daughter and I naturally talk about the stories that she reads and I often read the books myself anyway, so it was not an issue for us. The setting for this is Russia which we found interesting as it is somewhere that we have not explored that much and my daughter has actually asked if we can find more stories set in Russia as she enjoyed the context. There were two instances where she worried some of the main characters might actually die but they survived and it was not scary enough to put her off reading. Oh and she partially liked the fact that in this story only women could rule the land – ie be Queen, there are NO kings in this story – big plus for my daughter she kept telling her dad that if we lived in this story she would be Queen. I would definitely group this as one of the “older, more advanced” books that she has read.

Moonlight Tales (Animal Anthologies) is actually a book of short stories that I bought for my daughter 2 years ago but with Christmas around the corner the kids dug it out again and they have been enjoying the sweet festive animal stories included. They have been reading it together (my daughter reading sections to her brother and then him reading sections to her). It is an easy read for my daughter but it has been perfect for my son. I personally LOVE the stories they have included, they are festive and sweet and great as a family read together book. I recommend this for some lovely winter tales.

We have a habit of always taking a few Usborne Young Reading books out from our local library. Our library always has a good selection and I have found them a really good way of introducing some well-known stories. Last month we borrowed Anne of Green Gables (Young Reading 3) (3.3 Young Reading Series Three (Purple)) and Beowulf (Young Reading (Series 3)) (3.3 Young Reading Series Three (Purple)) and they have both been read and reread and the kids just asked if we could renew them for a 3rd time. We have never read Anne of Green Gables before and he daughter just loved it and she has now asked for a more detailed Anne book. My son LOVES Beowulf, really LOVES it. It fits in nicely with his current Viking / Mythology interest. Both books are definitely worth a read.

And lastly a book that we rediscovered because I was trying to clear out old books (books that are now too easy for my youngest). He went through my charity shop stack of books and immediately took this one out and asked if we could keep it because it was one of his all time favourites. So if you have younger kids and you have not yet read The Day The Crayons Quit my son strongly recommends that you do. He says it is hilarious and according to him all kids are going to LOVE it.

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Disclosure – the books include in this post are a combination of books that I have bought (Moonlight Tales and Day the Crayons Quit), library books (both of the Usborne Books) and books sent to us (Ronja the Robber’s Daughter and Seeker of the Crown). I was under no obligation to include any of these books. This is just a summary of a few books that my kids have been reading and recommend.