ofamily learning together

Autumn Sand Art Leaves

Posted on September 28, 2017 by ofamily

One of the side-effects of being a home-educating mom is I tend to hoard anything that I think we might use in crafts or some kind of learning activity (old boxes, glass jars, left over stickers from half-finished mosaics, toilet rolls – you get the picture). I never used to hoard stuff like this before we started home educating but now anything with a crafting value gets stashed. And if I have a themed / seasoned craft activity that we did not get around to using – it gets packed away for next year in the hope that I remember where I stashed that season craft. Crazy ? Quite possibly. But my cramped cupboards often provide the kids with just the right activity without me having to go and buy something – which in my eyes is a victory and totally justifies my crazy hoarding of all craft supplies (this also applies to books that I spot and think oh that would be great for when we get around to learning about the Ancient Greeks etc – but lets not go down that road now).

This week my crazy craft storing was totally justified. The kids had just read a book – Why Do Leaves Change Color? (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) (great book but it is American so has American terminology and spelling in it) so my youngest wanted to make some Autumn Leaves. And in my crazy craft / hoarding cupboard was a 2-year-old Leaf Sand Art set (from Baker Ross). Happy boy and a VERY happy mum.

I love using sand art with the kids as it is a great sensory craft activity and they always enjoy it but it does have a messy factor. My Top Tip when using doing sand art – get the kids to work on big trays – it contains the sand and it allows the kids to pour the excess sand into plastic cups to reuse again.

And if the kids find that not all the sections peel off nicely, don’t be scared of adding some glue to the non-sticky bits. It works.

And all that left over coloured sand ? We keep ours in a one multicoloured mixed sand cup and the kids often add it to their pictures just for fun or use it when we are making collages (ie to goes back into my crazy craft cupboard to get used again at some stage).

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Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged autumn, Autumn crafts, children's craft, home educating mom, home education, homeschooling, sand art | 1 Comment

Understanding Science – Our Bodies Workbook Review

Posted on September 27, 2017 by ofamily

One of the Workbooks in the Understanding Science series by Schofield & Sims is this one – Our Bodies. It is part of their Key Stage 2 range which means it is aimed at school years 3 – 6 in the UK.

The Workbook Covers the following

What is in food
A balanced diet
Animals diet
The digestive system

Teeth
Looking after your teeth
Keeping health
Drugs and medicines
Skeletons
Animals without skeletons
Muscles and moving
Heart and blood

Pulse rate and exercise
Resting pulse rates
Investigating pulse rates
Human life cycle
Changes in puberty

The workbook is written in the typical Schofield & Sims style – it is well set out with one topic on a double page, a brief explanation of key points and then some questions (all answers are included at the back of the book).

I like the way they have ordered the topics in the workbook. The way they go from Food to the Digestive System or from Muscles and moving onto the Heart and Blood, the topics flow nicely. But you could easily jump around and do a topic as you wish. (If they refer back to something discussed earlier on in the book they do give you the page number so you can always go back and read that section.)

Biology is not my comfort area but my kids love it so they have already done a lot of extra reading and activities with their dad. This meant that a few pages were a bit too brief for them as they wanted more detail. But that is really because they are fascinated by the subject and have done a lot of reading on it.

The book also brings in graphs when looking at pulse rates and comparing them, but they are not overly complex graphs and both my kids could easily understand the graphs. We actually liked the inclusion of the graphs.

Also to mention the book has 1 page on changes in puberty. Which includes a diagram of a woman and man and how their bodies change. I think the diagrams were factual and they did not offend me but I am including a picture below so that you can be aware of what is in the book.

I personally found this workbook very useful. We have covered most of what is in the workbook but it was a great way of checking to see if there were any areas that the kids did not properly understand and also if there were any gaps in what we had covered in our more informal learning style.

As a home-educating mom I am finding the Understanding Science workbook range a very helpful series.

In case you missed my earlier post – this is what is included in the Animals and Plants workbook

You can find the workbooks in most bookstores (have seen them in WH Smith and Waterson’s for £4.95 in the UK) and you can also buy them online from Amazon – Understanding Science: Our Bodies

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Posted in Home education resources | Tagged home education, homeschooling, Key Stage 2, Schofiled&Sims, science, workbooks | 1 Comment

Christopher Columbus

Posted on September 22, 2017 by ofamily

One of the books that both my kids have been enjoying is their Christopher Columbus (Young Reading Level 3).

They have found the story fascinating, lots of comments about how could people have thought the earth was flat, how did they not know which continents existed, travelling on boats must have been the worst without any fridges to keep the food etc etc. They found the whole story about the voyages really exciting and loved looking at our globe to see where he went (Oh and imagine thinking that the Americas was the Indies – my son). The text of the book is at the right level for my two (my nine-year-old can easily read it herself and my six-year-old follows along in the book word for word as I read it too him).

The book is well written (nothing scary) and is filled with interesting facts about his voyages as well as maps showing each trip and lots of illustrations depicting the scenes of his voyages and life.

So when I spotted some of the new Famous people pages on Activity Village I had a quick look to see if there was anything on Christopher Columbus and there was. We love the Activity Village How to Draw pages so I immediately printed out the Christopher Columbus one and one evening while I was busy cooking both kids had a go and drawing their own Christopher Columbus.

(We are massive fans of the How to draw pages – I keep ours in a home-made drawing book and we keep it on the kids bookshelf – it is great for when one of the kids wants to try to draw something and is not sure how to get started).

We also printed out the Comprehension pages.

And my daughter loved the idea of the Captain’s Log. (She is trying really hard to work on her creative writing and thought this was a fun activity to try).

My son’s favourite page was the map of his voyages. He loves using the map to help him retell (react might be the better word) the stories of the different voyages – where they landed and what happened on each trip.

I love using the Usborne Young Reading series as a way of introducing famous people to the kids and I really like the fact that I can now link some of the books to the famous people pages on Activity Village.

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Posted in History | Tagged activity village, Christopher Columbus, History, history books, home education, homeschooling, Usborne books | 1 Comment

At Home With Spelling 1 Workbook Review

Posted on September 20, 2017 by ofamily

I wrote a review about the At Home With Spelling 2 workbook which I am using with my son but I did not include anything about the first book as we never used it with either kid so I knew nothing about what was in the workbook. I have since been sent a copy of the first book by Oxford University Press so I thought it might be helpful for some of you if I detailed what is included in the book.

The At Home With Spelling 1 book is written for Key stage 1 ages (UK-based year 1 / year 2). Each page covers 1 topic. The pages are not cluttered and they provide space for large writing. They also stick to only black and blue text colours which means the pages are not visually overwhelming.

The topics covered are

The alphabet (giving examples of lower case and upper case letters)
Vowels
Consonants
Rhymes
Two consonants, one sound
Consonant blends
Double consonants
ar
or
Syllables
Word sums (introducing basic compound words)
Plurals (when you add s to the words)

Verbs adding er and ed
Endings er and ing
of verses off
Word shapes
Common words
Hard words

qu
Code cracking
Word search

The book is written as a revision type workbook. If you are home-educating parent you will probably need to reinforce the concepts explained again as there is not a lot of practice (eg they have 1 page for syllables which if you have explained syllables to the kids before is fine but if it is the first time you are talking about syllables with your children you will probably need to extend it with other activities. Same thing with the compound words you would probably want to extend that with extra activities).

The workbook sells for £3.99 – I have seen it in some bookstores and it is also available on amazon – At Home With Spelling 1

If I had not already covered most of what is included in this workbook I would have been happy to buy it to use with my son (I will be using the pages for the endings ed and er with him a bit later on).

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Posted in Home education resources | Tagged english, home education, homeschooling, key stage 1, sight words, spelling workbook, workbooks | Leave a comment

Jack and the Beanstalk Colouring Story

Posted on September 18, 2017 by ofamily

One of the reasons I love home educating the kids is the ability to adjust our schedule to suit the family needs. We don’t stick to school holidays, rather we take breaks as we think the kids need it and then often work through the traditional half-terms / holidays. It means that when their sensory systems need a break we can allow them time to unwind and it means that if they are exhausted or emotional we can take a few days off to recover.

This past weekend was a bit of an emotional one for the kids (their dad hurt himself and we ended up at the A&E late at night). Normally Monday mornings are a good learning session for us which typically involves Maths and English activities. But this morning my youngest was still exhausted and a bit tearful so we put aside our normal learning activities and I asked if there was something he would like to do. He loves the Mindfulness Animals (free to download) and Mindfulness Transport (platinum classic) pages from Twinkl

and asked if there was something similar that the three of us to work on (his sister, me and him together – his dad is home with us but not able to bend his one leg and can not sit comfortably at a table to join in). We had a look and choose the Jack and the Beanstalk Mindfulness colouring story. (platinum classic)

It is a stunning little pack.

He liked the idea that we could work on some pages and then put them all together to make up our own copy of the book.

On each page there is a short paragraph from the story and a stunning detailed picture to colour in.

And one of the great things about a colouring story, as the kids coloured in they read the story and we chatted about the different characters.

The kids have decided that we are going to complete the story and then show it to their dad. We made a good start today and I think it is going to be a great little project for them to work on together.