ofamily learning together

Kids Mardi Gras Masks

Posted on February 23, 2017 by ofamily

The past week the kids have been going through a mask making spree. The kids just recently watched Rio for the first time so they liked the idea of making some masks like the ones some of the people were wearing in the parade. When I saw the Mardi Gras Masks from Activity Village I thought they would be perfect.

We downloaded three different versions – Mardi Gras Mask 1, Mardi Gras Mask 2 and Valentine Mask (all Masks are included in the Members Only package from Activity Village which is currently £12 per year). I printed all our masks onto thin card just so they would be a bit more sturdy.

I was really impressed with how hard the kids (and 2 of their friends) tried with these masks. My youngest sat very patiently and worked very hard on the details – making sure the patterns were just right (my daughter did help him with the cutting).

And we also had a go at adding some extra details to a few of the masks. We added some coloured feathers to a few masks.

And even some craft jewels that we have.

It is a really simple and easy craft activity for the kids to do and mine loved it.

As I am often asked about the craft supplies that we use. Here are the details on what we used in this post.

The craft jewels are a combination of jewels that I have bought over the years and include these ones Self-Adhesive Acrylic Jewels Assorted Designs & Colours Embellishments for Children’s Crafts (Pack of 200)
and Large Self-Adhesive Acrylic Jewels Assorted Designs and Sizes for Collage, Card Making, Children’s Arts & Crafts (Pack of 120). The feathers are from all over, I have a habbit of buying colourful feathers for our crafts whenever I spot them in a store.

The pens are the STABIL Cappi pens which I highly recommend. They have a lovely grip which places the kids fingers in the perfect position.

STABILO Cappi Felt-Tip Pen – Assorted Colours, Wallet of 12

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 own, use and love.

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Days of the week and story sums

Posted on February 20, 2017 by ofamily

I printed off these Hamish Cat Days of the week (from the Lighthouse Keeper story resources created by Twinkl – free to download) around 3 years ago when my daughter was reading the whole set of Lighthouse books (old post on the Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch). And as I may have mentioned before I rarely thow any learning resources away, so these days of the week baskets have been sitting in one of my files waiting for another go. (UPDATE – I have noticed that Twinkl have removed these Days of the Week – I have emailed and am waiting a response in the mean time I have found these FREE to download baskets)

This time the focus was my youngest. He knows the days of he week but I thought it might be fun to use them some “story-sum activities” plus he loves cats. Before I actually had time to set anything up he had the days of the week all set out on the floor and he gave each cat 1 fish to eat (the fish are these ones – Learning Resources Fun Fish Counters ).

So I started asking him some questions like if it was Thursday how many fish would Hamish have already eaten that week ? Or what colour fish did he eat 2 days ago if today is Friday. Nothing to fancy. He then suggested that Hamish might like extra fish. So I suggested he double the fish, which he did and I asked a few more questions. And we even mixed it up so that Hamish received different number of fish on different days.

We then fetched some of the toy food and had some fun allocating different food to Hamish on each day. This really ended up being a great lesson in greater than and less than and adding. My son did comment that by the end of this week Hamish would have a sore tummy with all the junk food he had eaten.

My son really started getting into the little scenarios. And even went to fetch a toy mouse for Hamish to eat on one of the days, he found a toy bottle of milk and even an eel.

The toy mouse actually lead to a whole new discussion about weight and how one object could be heavier than a number of other objects combined.

All in all a fun way of doing some Maths with my youngest.

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Posted in maths ideas | Tagged children's book, days of the week, free printables, home ed, home education, homeschooling, Twinkl | Leave a comment

Painting-in Book (easy art) – we Love this book !!!

Posted on February 19, 2017 by ofamily

I enjoy doing arts and crafts, it is definitely a “comfortable- learning – activity” area for me. But as a busy home-educating mom I always LOVE finding something that is easy for me (ie require little or no preparation), is good quality (and I do mean this) and something that is enjoyable for the kids to do. I was quite happy when Laurence King Publishers asked if I would like a copy of the Painting-in Book (I mean really any art book is welcome in my home) but I NEVER realised how much I would LOVE IT.

It is an A3 size book with a picture on each page (and the paper is good quality thick art paper). On each page there is a simple heading and some instructions which the kids can follow (but they do not have too). No preparation work required. Get the book out and let the kids choose a page (or 2 or 3 to do), some paints and you are set. So Easy and quick.

But what I love it is the Thought that has gone into this book. Yes it is simple, straight forward pictures where the kids just need to paint to complete them but on every page the kids are learning. Learning how it helps to add more than just one colour to get depth and movement, learning how to swish your paint brush stroke to create movement, learning about depth, colour, patterns, using small or big brushstrokes ………………..

I love this book. I think it is the prefect art book for a family where the parents are not “confident” in their own art ability. I think it is the perfect art book for parents who are busy and want to include some art projects with their kids but are not sure what to do. I think it is perfect for home-educating moms who sometimes need a ready, no-prep art activity for those crazy busy days. And it is even perfect for “art-confident” parents.

Would I buy this for my kids – YES YES YES !!! And in case you are wondering I have used this book with both my kids (ages 6 and 8) and I think it is great for both ages.

(and yes they do give some basic instructions on how to complete the page, but like my 6-year old always does the kids are can totally make the pictures there own by adding all kinds of different details – In the wave picture he added kelp – the purple bits – to the water).

The book has just been released and is available on Amazon – The Painting-In Book: 30 Paint and Play Activities

I do 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 we use and love.

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Posted in Art and Craft Ideas | Tagged art, children's art book, children's book, home ed, home education, homeschooling, painting book, reviews | Leave a comment

Times Table strategies we used

Posted on February 17, 2017 by ofamily

Over the weekend I received two emails asking me how I taught my daughter her times tables. I started writing my response and realized that what I wanted to say was a lot longer that a quick email answer so I thought I would try to put it down in a post instead. This is just the way we did it and what worked for us.

Before we started with any of the times tables my daughter learnt how to count in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. We made sure that she was very comfortable with this before we moved on (and I am so glad we spent our time on this first). Because once she had the basic skip counting down the 2 times, 5 times and 10 times came very easily for her. (Twinkl have some great free to download Number posters where the skip counting numbers are inside the numbers – we had these up all over the house.)

When we were looking at the 2 times at the very beginning we spent some time talking about what multiplication is. We did lots of repetitive addition (ie 2+2+2 is the same as saying 3×2) and exercises were we spoke about groups (eg 2 x 4 = two groups of 4 apples). When we looked at the groupings we used all sorts of different manipulative (snap cubes, beads, our fish counters – anything that was available).

We moved onto the 3 times and 4 times doing the same exercises. But by the time we got to the 8 times she started battling to remember them. Until one day we got her to work it out for herself (why it took me so long to do this I do not know). She wrote out the 8 times table up to the point she knew – 5 x 8 = 40 then she came to 6 times 8 and she was stuck. So she added 8 to 40 and got 48. Then 7 time 8 again we got her to add 8 to the previous total 48+8 = 56 and we continued doing this all the way to 12 times 8.

Okay so it probably sounds really simple and I am kicking myself that we did not do this earlier but for her it was the simple trick that worked. Once she sat down and worked out the totals by herself she remembered the answers and more importantly she knew a quick way of working out an answer when she was not sure.

We did the exact same thing for the 6 and 7 times tables (and this time I took some photos).

And we have ALSO played lots of games with her (like our bean bag throwing game) and we have made learning aids (like our multiple flowers) – I am a firm believer of trying to make Maths fun and interactive and I am also a firm believer that repetition is key but we do try very hard to make that repetition as enjoyable as we can.

Because I am often asked about the Maths manipulative that we use here are some links- for times table and division my daughter seems to like using these Learning Resources Snap Cubes (Set of 100). And the Times table cards are the ones from Twinkl that we have used A LOT – links for all of these cards are in my bean bag throwing game post.

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Posted in maths ideas | Tagged free printables, home ed, home education, homeschooling, maths, Times table | 1 Comment

Match and Spell Next Step Game

Posted on February 16, 2017 by ofamily

We were recently sent the Orchard Toys Match and Spell Next Steps game. We used the original game with my youngest last year (Match and Spell Game post) and found it useful in helping him with basic spelling words. The new version – Next Steps – is the same format as the original game however this one includes “harder phonic sounds” like sh, th, ch, all the long vowel sounds, as well as sounds like igh, ng, ph and a lot more.

The game includes 18 double-sided word boards (same idea as last time on one side of the board the word is spelt out and on the other side it is blank with a picture).

But this time both the word boards and the cards either have a line underneath or a single dot. The dot indicates when the sound is made up of a single letter and the line is when the sound is made up of 2 or 3 letters combined. My youngest found this added feature on the boards a big help when he was trying to spell the words by himself.

I think it is a great way for the kids to practice blending their more advance phonic sounds and for my son the big bonus is he is practicing spelling without having to do a worksheet. Because he is playing with sound cards he ends up spelling out a lot more words than he would if he was just using a pencil and piece of paper.

And he even used the sound cards to build his own words.

I am a fan of having educational games in the home as I think the kids learn best when they are relaxed. And I think playing games like this does build the kids confidence in sounding out basic words which will end up making them more confident when it comes to writing.

The Match and Spell game was given to us by Orchard Toys in exchange for a review. All thought about the game are mine and my children’s.