Twinkl Go

Posted on October 23, 2018 by ofamily

As Part of our Twinkl membership we were given access to the Twinkl Go activities and I must say the kids and I have been enjoying them.

Twinkl Go is a digital platform, so it is all paperless and can be used by the kids on a computer or device

Twinkl Go is split into  5 sections – Explore, Listen, Play, Watch and Learn.

  • Explore = lots of screens with explanation points so the kids can select and read for themselves. (My favourite section of Twinkl Go)
Twinkl Go Endangered animal hotpoint screen

When you click on the plus sign a description / explanation comes up

  • Listen = audio books. We have not really used this section yet.
  • Play = Learning games Maths and English.  We have found that the play section is more suited to my seven-year old than my ten-year old.  The games are designed to reinforce Maths facts like number bonds, halving, doubling and times tables and English concepts like rhyming, contractions etc.  We tend to use the games as revision activities for my youngest.
Twinkl Go. English game the kids need to place the food in the correct tense bowl

An English Game where the kids place the food in the correct bowl

  • Watch = Videos explaining concepts.  Some interesting and very useful videos.
  • Teach = lesson suggestions.

So why do we like this newish section ? – It is proving to be a fun, relaxed way for us to extend and reinforce some of the kids learning.  And some of the videos, even though they may be short have actually inspired some of our learning activities.

How do we use it ? At the moment we have really used the Explore, Play and Watch sections.

Twinkl Go - using the interactive screens as a way to test her knowledge

My daughter really likes the explore section.  She sits and selects topics then reads and learns by herself.  She enjoys the clickable hotspots that reveal facts, the screens where you drag and drop answers and she has even pointed out a fun animal spelling activity to her younger brother.

Twinkl Go. Endangered animal spelling quiz

She is finding this an independent source of learning.  I really don’t need to be that involved except really as the person that she comes to, to tell, what she has just learnt.

I am finding it a useful home education tool.  Over the summer my daughter discovered the Plants Interactive eBook and afterwards we ended up searching Twinkl and printed out a bunch of other pages, worksheets and activities for her to work on. (When you select a screen / activity on Twinkl Go, if you scroll down to bottom of the screen it normally provides you with links to related resources which you can print out.)

Twinkl Go. Parts of a Flower Interactive eBook

Now the pricing.  Twinkl Go is currently included in the Ultimate package but if you have Core or Extra you can add it on for an extra £2 a month (Please note Twinkl do change their subscription packages and pricing for time to time – the pricing mentioned is correct at time of writing this post).

For us Twinkl Go is proving to be a great additional learning resource.  Something that I can really “let the kids loose on” and let them find new and interesting topics which often lead to extended reading and learning.

You might also enjoy this post about one of the Twinkl animation clips – Roman Soldier

This is NOT a sponsored post it is just me writing about a resource that my kids have been using.

 

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Rabbit & Bear a funny book for young readers

Posted on October 20, 2018 by ofamily

My son recently borrowed a book called Rabbit & Bear from our local library.  He loves animal stories so it seemed like a good fit for him.

Rabbit and Bear Attack of the Snack by Julian Gough and Jim Field. A funny early reading book

And when he started reading it to his dad, the laughter started.  Big laughter.

The characters in the story are super cute and their little personalities really come through in the story.  But it is the humour that completely won my son – typical little boy humour – they talk about farts and blackberry pooh (yes blackberry) –  so if that is not your thing then this is not the book for you.  But if you have a little guy in the house and you want him to enjoy reading and you want him to laugh out loud while he is reading, this book is really worth a try.

Rabbit & Bear Attack of the Snack. Laugh out loud early reader

My son read it to his dad then he corned his older sister and read it to her (and yes she laughed out loud as well and then congratulated him on reading so well).  He has also read it to himself and to me.

reading Rabbit and Bear Attack of the Snack

The other wonderful thing about this story is that it deals with friendships and different personalities in a fun way and is a great way of talking to kids about how people have differences but can still be good friends – something my son actually pointed out to me.

The story is 101 pages long and is aimed at 6 to 8 year olds.  We used it as reading practice for our seven-year old but I also think it would be a fun read aloud book.  There are apparently 4 books in the series and we are definitely going to reserve the other’s at out library.

This is not a sponsored post in shape or form.  My son selected this book from the library and it has been such a hit in our house (including parents) that I really just wanted to write a post about it and it mention that other young readers might find it laugh out loud enjoyable.

As far as encouraging my seven-year old to love reading this gets a big 5 stars.

Rabbit & Bear Attack of the Snack. An owl. Such a fun reader for beginners

From what I can tell these are four books in this little series –

Book 1 – Rabbit & Bear.  Rabbit’s Bad Habbits

Book 2 – Rabbit & Bear. The Pest in the Nest

Book 3 Attack of the Snack: Book 3 (Rabbit and Bear) (this is the one we have read)

Book 4 – Rabbit & Bear A Bite in the Night

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.

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Fun Skeletons

Posted on October 18, 2018 by ofamily

The kids don’t know much about The Day of the Dead but they did have a childhood storybook which they loved –Funnybones: A Bone Rattling Collection – and ever since then whenever they have seen Day of the Dead colouring pages/ crafting activities they have always thought of it as a fun version of Funnybones.  My son especially remembers the skeletons as being very funny so he is always really keen to do any fun skeleton pages.

So when we spotted the new Day of the Dead colouring pages on the Activity Village website I knew my little guy was going to like them.  And he did.

Colouring in a Day of the Dead page from Activity Village

He and his sister did a number of different colourful masks.

Day of the Dead colouring pages from Activity Village

And because we have been doing quite a bit of  drawing lately we thought it might be fun to design some bodies to go with the masks.  My little guy went for a Day of the Dead combination with the BFG (yes The BFG – his explanation – I think when he says he combined the BFG into his picture he is referring to the size of the drawing).

Drawing a body to go with the Day of the Dead head

And his sister decided to stick to the skeleton theme and design a skeleton for her mask.

Drawing a skeleton to go with the Day of the Dead colouring mask

It actually proved to be a really fun drawing activity and I especially liked that the kids got to draw larger than normal  – we normally stick to drawing on A4 or A3 size pieces of paper but for this I unrolled some paper over our kitchen table.  I used to love creating art that was bigger than expected, there is just something about drawing or painting on  a super sized piece of paper that adds an extra fun element – my kids seemed to agree – the bigger size is fun.  The only problem is storing the larger pieces of art.

Skeleton to go with the Day of the Dead colouring page from Activity Village

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.

Fun Skeleton Activity. Draw a skeleton for the Day of the Dead pictures. Pictures from Activity Village

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Explanatorium Nature Book

Posted on October 16, 2018 by ofamily

Last week I was busy looking for birthday presents and I picked up this amazing book and immediately added to my shopping thinking it could be a present for my son.

DK Explanatorium Nature. An incredible book on nature

But when I got home and showed it to my husband he was so impressed with the book that he said we could not keep it packed away for 2 months we needed to give it to the kids immediately.

We did and my son loves it.  As soon as he saw the book he started reading and reciting animal facts to me.

reading the DK Explanatorium Nature Book

Now I must say straight away both my kids love learning about animals and we already have a number of good quality animal books in our house.  So any new animal book that we buy needs to be one that ADDS to their already impressive knowledge of animal facts.  It CAN NOT be a basic animal book – we are past those, it needs to be detailed and full of unusual facts to hold our interest.

DK Explanatorium Nature book includes lots of fasinating detailed facts

So the fact that this book impressed my husband so much that he did not want to wait to give it to the kids really does SAY a lot about it.

This book is BIG and HEAVY – really Heavy so please don’t think it is something you are going to pack into your backpack and take with you on outings.  It is NOT that.  It is a comprehensive book about nature.  Really it covers a lot.  If you are looking for a book which deals with Nature Science I really think this book is going to have you covered.

Let me give you a breakdown of what is included in this 360 page book (yes 360 pages)

There are 10 main categories

  • The Basics of Life
  • Microorganisms and Fungi
  • Plants
  • Invertebrates
  • Fish
  • Amphibians
  • Reptiles
  • Birds
  • Mammals
  • Habitats

We have not had time to read this entire book – although I am more than confident that both my kids will end up reading every single page, but it is going to take some time.  So I can not vouch for everything that is included.  But what we have already looked at has been really good – some pages out of the Mammal section about Hierarchy, Pack Hunting, Insect eaters oh and some really impressive skeleton pictures and explanations of how certain animals are built and move.

The explanations are concise and the photographs are stunning, and I really do mean stunning, they are incredible close-ups which show amazing details.

DK Explanatorium Nature book. Id filled with stunning close of phootos of animals

The illustrations included are clear and really well explained.  My seven-year old has been reading it by himself and understanding it  (but I must clarify that he is a good reader and he has a very good knowledge about animals).

DK Explanatorium Nature Book. Amazing detail. Incredible pictures

I have paged through the invertebrates section and I am thrilled with it as I wanted to cover this in more detail with my daughter.

DK Explanatorium Nature book. Includes a diagriam of a snail

Also I am very happy with the Plant pages that I have looked it – I have felt for some time that we needed to spent more time on plants and I really think this is going to do just that.

I do want to say that the first category – The Basics of Life does include 2 pages on evolution (I know not everyone likes this) but it also includes pages on cells and DNA and a lovely classification tree.

DK Explanatorium Nature book includes detail like what a cell looks like

This book really is a brilliant book.  I bought ours at £12 but I have seen it advertised at prices between £14 – £20.  Personally for our family and my kids area of interest I would have been more than happy to pay £20 for this.

I bought this copy of the book at a local store near us but you can also get it from Amazon  – Explanatorium of Nature

I have included 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.

Explanatorium Nature Book by DK. The best and only Nature Science book that you will need in your house

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Swimming with Sensory Kids

Posted on October 13, 2018 by ofamily

Swimming has been a major “thing” is our house forever.  Originally my two sensory kids hated the idea of swimming and I mean hated.  I have lots of memories of them screaming hysterically when we tried to go swimming and my daughter would honestly strangle me and almost climb onto my head so that she did not have to touch the water.  It was tough.

To try to explain why swimming is so tough for my kids let me give you two examples – my daughter used to describe drizzle as knives going into her skin and when she cried and tears touched her cheek she said they burnt her – so now think of her having to stand in water or even worse the fear of having to submerge your head when your whole body is telling you the water is hurting you.  I can’t imagine how hard that must be.

Then a few years ago we were at my brother’s house and my kids wanted to swim with their cousins – I was blown away.  But my daughter got onto the steps of the pool and after an epic meltdown my son got in the water (I never realized how the style of a swimming costume was so important until my son was wearing a wet costume – even now buying a swimming costume for him is something we takes ages over as it needs to feel right on his skin).

But the kids saw their cousins enjoying the water and they were both determined to get to that stage.  So when we got back home after our holiday we started weekly trips to the local pools.  It did not go smoothly in the beginning.  I made lots of mom mistakes – like not chosing the right pools, wave machines are a big no-no, not listening properly when one of them told me it was time to leave, and not having the right gear.  I realized that along with the right costumes wearing swimming caps, goggles and ever nose clips all helped the kids feel more confident in the water.  So we do.  And we played, no expectation.  We have fun.  We listen to the kids and when they have had enough even if it is after only 20 minutes we get out quickly and then we go straight home – no dragging them to the shops after an overwhelming swimming trip.

swimming with sensory kids

It has taken us a long time and I was often very despondent, wondering what I needed to do to make them more confident in the water, I cried a few times and they cried a few times.  But we have persevered (my kids may have SPD but they can be very determined when they really want to do something).  And now both kids go deep under water.  They float on their back and kick like crazy (floating on the backs was a tremendously difficult thing for my two – it’s the feeling of the water in their ears as the lie back).

We still have a long way to go but compared to how we were just a few months ago the improvement is incredible.  And if you ave told me just a year ago that we would be planning our week’s activities around our swimming trips I would never have believed you.

So if you have a sensory kids who hates the water please don’t give up.  I know it is hard, IT IS.  I know it is frustrating and sometimes you wonder if you are failing as a parent but please don’t give up.  Please.  Every trip, every small step in the water helps them build up that trust that the water on their skin is not sore and with every small step they DO get more confident.

 

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