ofamily learning together

New Books

Posted on October 20, 2017 by ofamily

I keep meaning to write regular posts about the books we find and enjoy and I never get around to writing them all. So here are four of our current top books we have discovered.

Coming Home by Michael Morpurgo

My son actually picked this up at our local library. I think he liked the fact that the story was about a robin and it’s journey (he is fascinated by birds). This book is stunning. Both my kids have fallen in love with the story and I love the way it is written, the words just roll off your tongue. I wish we had discovered this book when the kids were younger.

It is a lovely story about the obstacles the little robin has to overcome in order to get home – the bad weather, an eagle trying to eat him, getting lost at sea. My daughter actually found it was a great book to use as a way to practice reading with expression. Honestly one of the best books we have recently discovered and if my two were a bit younger I would buy us a copy to have at home.

Beowulf.

I must be honest I was surprise by this one as I thought it was a bit gory but my son found it in the library and has been reading it cover to cover for the past 2 weeks and even convinced his sister to have a read. It is an ancient story about how Beowulf fights off monsters and dragons and eventually dies in his final battle. My son did say it was sad that he dies but that he enjoys the whole Viking-time theme that runs through the book.

The Secret Garden

My daughter has just started reading this to herself and she is loving it. She has been listening to come Classical Audio stories – Ladybird Classics: The Complete Audio Collection and desperately wanted to find some to read. We had a look at our local library and could not find suitable versions for her (they were actually a bit too easy and too brief – she wanted more detailed versions of the stories). I eventually found the Oxford Children’s Classic series and Oxford University Press kindly sent us three of the books that she was wanting to read. She is thrilled and is happily working through the Secret Garden at the moment.

Animal Architects

We have quite a few animal books but this one has a unique twist. It is all about animal homes and how they have been built.

It compares the homes to human buildings like the hummingbird has a suspended home or a spider has a suspension bridge. My son loves this.

It is a new and unique way of looking at some of the interesting animal homes.

We love the fact that each home is broken down into how it is built (along with some diagrams) and what materials they use.

They also include a short fact-file about each animal. A lovely addition to my son’s animal book collection.

The Books mentioned above are these ones

Coming Home

Beowulf (Young Reading (Series 3)) (Young Reading Series Three)

Oxford Children’s Classics: The Secret Garden

Animal Architects: Amazing Animals Who Build Their Homes

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 love.

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Acorn Number Bond Tree

Posted on October 19, 2017 by ofamily

We have been working quite a lot on number bonds with my youngest and we recently chatted about how if 2 + 8 =10 then 20 +80 = 100. So I thought it might be fun to do something where he had to figure out the sums to 100 for himself. He is quite into drawing trees at the moment so I thought that would be a good starting point. I gave him a big piece of paper and he drew a tree.

Then I showed him the acorns and explained that he needed to combine the top and the bottom to create 100.

The set of acorns that I download also included multiple of 5’s that make 100. So his older sister and I showed him how he could add the 5’s together to get a 10 and then just add that 10 to the other tens (it helps to use a base 10 set for this as it gives a great visual for the kids).

And then he set off.

He did manage to drag his sister in to help him with all the sticking and also so he could check if he was doing some of the adding correctly.

It was really a simple activity to set out (I just cut the acorns out the night before) and he was really proud of himself because he did the whole page – he drew the tree and he managed to figure out the sums (with some big sister help).

We have actually hung the massive acorn tree above his desk – at his request.

We also dug out our Number Bond to 100 Dominoe cards and he had a go at matching the correct numbers. We both really like the Dominoe cards. I have noticed with both the kids if I give them something like Dominoe cards to practice a maths concept as opposed to a worksheet they really do end up practicing more. They will end up working out more sums and they will do it over and over again which is what you really need them to do with number bonds.

The Acorn printouts are from Twinkl Resources and are part of their paid for Platinum Classic package – Little Acorn Number Bonds to 100. They also have them for Number Bonds to 10 and Number Bonds to 20.

The Number Bond Dominoes are these ones – Number Bonds to 100 Dominoes

Please note Twinkl packages mentioned are valid at the time of me writing this (if you have queries about the different packages please email Twinkl directly)

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Posted in maths ideas | Tagged Acorns, Autumn tree, home education, homeschooling, maths activity, number bonds, Twinkl | 5 Comments

Encouraging writing with Story Starter Cubes

Posted on October 15, 2017 by ofamily

One of our areas of focus at the moment is story writing. My oldest is not a fan of writing stories, she says she never knows what to write. And when she does write she tends to write facts, not that there is anything wrong with facts but I want to try to get her comfortable writing creative stories (she has an amazing imagination so the stories are there it is just getting them out onto paper).

So we have come up with a fun activity that both the kids have been enjoying. We have been combining some themed writing paper with our story starter cubes and both kids have been making up stories (well with my youngest it is more just sentences).

It has been a great way of getting my daughter to stop focusing on the facts and just have some fun with her writing. We stopped worrying about would giraffes really be found on an island and what habitat do they need to survive and instead just went with the unusual situations created by combining the different words / phrases on the story cubes.

The Story starter cube set comes with six different cubes in the set – 2 character cubes, 2 situation cubes and 2 settings cubes. The cubes are made from a lovely soft foam and both my kids, who are tactile defensive have commented on how nice the cubes feel. My kids love rolling them and seeing what crazy scenarios they can come up with, the crazier the better.

And yes we started this as a fun writing activity for my daughter but as usual my youngest joined in. With my youngest we used the handwriting version of the themed story pages as he is still working on getting the size of his letters correct. And he would normally only write one sentence. But that one sentence included lots of new words for him and he was joining in every time my daughter did the activity. So he was writing a lot more than he would have usually just because he wanted to roll the story cubes and see what crazy sentence he could come up with.

And some times he would stick around and do multiple themed pages in one go (something which is unheard of with him).

So has playing around with story cubes helped ? Well this past weekend I found my daughter sitting at the table writing out a story. No-one had suggested it, it was just her idea to put a story down on paper. For us this is a massive step forward and something we really want to encourage.

The themed story paper that we used is from Activity Village – they have a wide selection of themed pages and they have normal lined pages and handwriting pages (handwriting pages are the ones with the dotted middle line to help the kids know where the small letters go).

Our Story start cubes are these one from Learning Resources – Learning Resources Story Starter Word Cubes.

I have included an Affiliate link. 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 own, use and love.

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Posted in English Ideas | Tagged activity village, home education, homeschooling, learning resources, story cubes, story pages, story writing | Leave a comment

Ronald the Rhino Book and App Fun

Posted on October 12, 2017 by ofamily

We were recently asked if we wanted to receive a copy of the new Twinkl original book Ronald the Rhino. Both my kids have already read the Twinkl original stories – Acorns and Bump into Space and enjoyed both of them so I thought a book copy of one of their original stories might be nice. I had no idea about the AR APP or how it would transform reading the book for my kids. I did not realize that by downloading a FREE App the kids would be able to see the animals in 3D (Yip you read that correct – you hold your device facing the book and Ronald and his friends come alive).

As you can probably guess the App was a massive hit with both my kids and yes I will admit it the adults in the house may have also played around with the App. The App works on the pages that have the blue square at the bottom (works on both the book and the eBook and Twinkl are planning on creating more resources that work with the App – we are waiting not very patiently for that – my kids are desperate for more). “It really is cool” – direct quote for one of the kids. My youngest (6 years old) did not want to put the book down. He read and reread the story just so he could use the App. And the story had some new tricky words for him so it was brilliant practice. He loved playing around with the App, getting the Rhino to move onto his feet or trying to get it go upside down – I am sure you can imagine.

The App is amazing and it is without a doubt a massive winner but the actual Ronald the Rhino story is also really sweet (you can also download it as an eBook – currently FREE to download). It is a lovely story about a Rhino who thinks everyone else has better qualities than he does. Luckily he has two lovely friends, Leopard and Snake who adore him and help him realise that he is unique and amazing just the way he is. It is a lovely story about accepting and appreciating how everyone is different.

It is well written with lots of rhyming words (my kids actually noticed the rhyming when they read the book and we had a chat about what makes them rhyme). And true to Twinkl’s style they have created a lovely rhyming poem activity which is perfect to use with the book.

It was the first time my youngest has ever tried to create his own poem and we loved the way they had set it out. He really got the hang of it (possibly a little too well as he is now trying to turn everything into rhyming sentences and I mean EVERYTHING).

We also loved the thought bubble resource

Really great for encouraging young writers. We are actually cutting ours out and using it to create our own mini-ronald-the-rhino-book.

My oldest is currently in a crossword craze so she also had a go at the crossword and the word search.

So yes the App in amazing and we LOVED it – and I really do mean LOVED the APP. But it is not the only good thing. The story itself is a winner and the kids are chuffed that they now have their own copy of the story on their bookshelf. And I have once again been impressed with the lovely story based resources that Twinkl have created for the story.

Twinkl did send me a free copy of the book in return for my review – all thoughts and opinions are my own. The book is part of the new Twinkl Book Club which they are rolling out (part of an add-on package or part of the Twinkl ultimate package and can also be bought from the Twinkl store for £3.59).

Please note prices and packages mentioned are valid at time of me writing this (if you have queries about the different packages please email Twinkl directly)

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Posted in Home education resources | Tagged books, home education, homeschooling, Ronald the Rhino, Twinkl, Twinkl APP | 1 Comment

The Drop in my Drink and The Pebble in my Pocket Review

Posted on October 10, 2017 by ofamily

The Drop in my Drink and The Pebble in my Pocket are two children’s books which look at the history of water on our planet and the history of Earth. If you are not teaching your kids about the Big Bang / evolution these books are not for you. However if you are looking at the evolution of earth these two books are filled with information and they are written in an accessible style for children (although I do think it suits older children).

A drop in my Drink starts off with a little boy watching a drop of water drip out of a tap and he is wondering where the drop of water came from.

The book goes back to when the Earth was formed and how the lumps of earth that fused together contained water trapped between the grains. The book takes the kids back and walks them through the different stages of the earths development and how the drop could have been in the ocean, in a river, under ground or in the sky as water vapour in the different stages.

It talks about how life on earth began as tiny single-celled organisms, how plants developed and that the drop of water from the tap would have helped those plants grow. It goes through the development of animals (including dinosaurs) and how that drop of water would have helped them to survive.

It talks about how the water has helped to shape the earth’s surface, how it has at some stage been in the ocean, been a part of an iceberg, part of a coral reef ecosystem.

And then it come back to how that drop from the tap in now a drop in his cup. And I love the way it is wrapped up – ” It has been inside an Egyptian princess and Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

It is an interesting look at the history of water on our planet. It is well written and very informative. At the end of the book they have a page about how we need to look after our water, a bit about the water cycle and some amazing water facts.

The Pebble in my Pocket is written in very much the same style as the Drop in my Drink but this book focuses on the geological process, how the mountains and the landscape that is our earth today has been formed over million of years.

It begins with a young girl holding up a pebble and wondering where did the pebble come from. It starts under a volcano and talks about how the molten rock is 9 time hotter than boiling water and how the crust of the earth is actually quite thin and how the lava coming out of the volcano actually ends up shaping the earths surface.

It talks about giant plates colliding pushing up against each other to make mountains and how water seeping into the cracks and freeze and slowly mould the shapes into the surface. It brings in how the animals evolved and how the animals evolution would have had an impact on that little pebble – maybe it would have been buried deep under ground. A dinosaur with huge legs could have cracked a hole and exposed the pebble. (Although both books are very similar I did not find that they overlapped more that they complemented each other). It talks about glaciers and how the weather changes. There is actually a lot of information that they manage to fit into the book.

At the end of the book they include a time-line.

I personally think both books are better for older kids as they do contain a vast amount of information and it would help if the kids already had a brief understanding of history.

For children who find prehistoric history fascinating and are learning about how earth was formed both books would be very interesting. But again if you are not wanting to go down the big bang, evolution path then these are not the books for you.

Both books can be found in bookstores and on Amazon – The Drop in my Drink: The Story of Water on Our Planet by Hooper, Meredith (November 5, 2015) Paperback

The Pebble in My Pocket: A History of Our Earth

I was sent these book by the publishers in exchange an honest review