ofamily learning together

Christmas 3D decorations

Posted on December 10, 2016 by ofamily

I will be the first to admit that Christmas time in our house tends to be filled with lots of crafting. I have never been one to care about a posh looking Christmas tree, with colour coordinated decorations, I want a Christmas tree filled with decorations made by the kids. And luckily for me my two enjoy making and hanging the decorations (although I think next year I may need to get a bigger tree with all the goodies we make each year).

The kids and a few of their friends recently made some of the Block Baubles (platinum from Twinkl). To help get the kids started I printed out one of the coloured Box baubles and made it up beforehand – I have found with my youngest this really helps to get him started if he can see what it is he is trying to make.

I then printed out the same box templates in black and white on some thin card for the kids and they got busy colouring in the patterns however they wanted.

There were four kids doing this craft and all four box baubles ended up being totally unique. I really do love these bright boxes hanging on the tree.

I also printed out the Cone Christmas Tree (also platinum from Twinkl). I printed ours out in black and white and also on some thin card (you can print these on paper but I have found that it does work better on the thin card). My two coloured the trees in, stuck some craft jewels on as decorations, cut them out and glued them together all while I was making some dinner. Both my kids have become mini-pros at the cone people / cone animals that we download from the Twinkl website so they don’t need any help from me with any of the Twinkl cone activities these days. (I am really enjoying the extra confidence and independence which is starting to come through with the kids and their crafting activities.)

My daughter is still trying to decide where she thinks these Christmas Cone Trees should go, I opted for a shelf in the lounge but she seems to like them under the actual Christmas Tree, I am not really not fussed I have the attitude that the kids can move and redecorate the tree and surrounding area as much as they like over December.

I just 3 different people ask about the pens being used in the box bauble picture above – we love them. We got them over the summer time and have used them a lot they are the STABILO Cappi Felt-Tip Pen – Assorted Colours, Wallet of 12

I do sometimes 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 own, use and love

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Posted in Art and Craft Ideas | Tagged 3D christmas decorations, children's craft, Christmas crafts, Christmas ideas, home education, Twinkl | 1 Comment

Maths pages from the Twinkl website

Posted on December 6, 2016 by ofamily

Every so often I try to write a general post which includes links for the worksheets and pages that we have been using from Twinkl. This time I am only going to write about Maths. I have written a few of these before so there might be some duplicate links in this one and the post might end up like a bit of a list (so sorry about that) but I know that sometimes we just want a list of possible pages to use. So here are some of the Maths pages that we have used a LOT. I will include if it is free or part of their paid for packages.

Addition and Subtraction Peg Cards

I always laminate our peg cards as we use them multiple times and we also like to use them with our white board marker pens.

Addition to 10 peg cards (classic) , subtraction from 10 peg card (classic), addition to 20 peg card (classic), subtraction from 20 peg card activity (classic)

Robot Number Bond Worksheets

There are a number of these pages. We have used them as practice sheets. Robot Mixed Number Bonds to 10 (Free) and Robot Mixed Number Bonds to 20 (free)

Build a house times table activity.

We love this and have done it every time we learn a new times table. There are so many options for these here is one – 2,5 and 10 times table build a house activity (classic). They also have now create a Basic addition build a house activity (classic). This is great for younger siblings who want to copy the work that the older ones are busy doing.

Times table folding cards

So simple but my daughter loves these. She has used them over and over and in many different ways (I have written 2 posts already about these – Folding cards and multiplication booklets) but I could not leave them out of this list.

Fractions

Circle Fraction Pieces (classic). We stuck these onto paper plates earlier this year and cut out the fraction pieces and boy have they been used. Great way for the kids to figure out equivalent fractions (take one 1/2 and see which other pieces fit on top of it)

$Circle fractions from Twinkl resources stuck onto paper plates$

Clock for learning minutes

This is the one that we love – Clock (classic). This clock is great. My kids love it. Perfect for when they are learning 5 past and 10 past etc. We actually used it in a very simple time folder here – telling time lapbook)

We have also printed out a different clock and stuck it up on a board in our kitchen. The kids often refer back to this one when they want to double-check that they have the time correct – Analogue Clock Flower labels (classic)

I know I have already shared links for these last two many times but they are great and are both Free to download

100 Number Square (so many uses)

And the Number Multiple Poster (skip counting) – love this poster

Sorry if that is a bit of a list but hope it helps some of you who also use the Twinkl website

You might also find the follow Maths post interesting

Place Value Ice-cream cone activity with craft sticks and Multiplication and Division flower learning aids

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Posted in maths ideas | Tagged addition and subtraction, home education, homeschooling, maths, multiplication, telling time, Twinkl | 2 Comments

My favourite Usborne Flap books

Posted on December 3, 2016 by ofamily

I recently received an email asking which book is our (my kids and mine) favourite Usborne flap book (they were referring to the Look Inside / See Inside Range of books by Usborne). Wow what a question. I thought about it a lot and my answer is – it really depends on the kids current interests. We seem to obsess over one of them while we are learning/ talking/ exploring a certain topic and then as the interest in that topic wanes so does the kids interest that book. And I know that is not the answer this person wanted, they wanted a name of one book so they could add it to their Christmas shopping so here is my top few favourites instead.

The Usborne See Inside the Your Body book. My kids love this book, they have found it fascinating and have spent hours reading through the book with their dad and also by themselves. (I wrote a detailed post about this book here – Learning about the Human Body). Probably my current no 1 Usborne book in terms of Home-education Science.

The Usborne See Inside Trains. My little man loves anything to do with engines / moving parts / vehicles and this book has been a huge hit with him.

The book starts with the Golden Age of Steam and shows how the trains evolved up until modern high-speed trains. There are lots of little flaps for the kids to lift and see details about the engines and other bits including train stations , the carriages and junctions. It is a great book for train-mad kids to page through and is also very informative.

See Inside the History of Britain. I love this book and it is great for helping little people re-enforce what order everything happened. It starts off with Early Britain, then The Middle Ages, Tudor Times, Georgian Times, Britain beyond Britain, Victorian Power, Britain at war and ends with Famous People. It is NOT detailed, so do not expected that but it is a brilliant summary of British History. I love paging through this book with the kids and find the illustrations such a good way for visual learners to understand the difference in the time periods.

I recently bought a new Usborne book as a Christmas Present for my son, and although he has not looked at it yet so I can not comment on his reaction I must admit that I love it and think it is going to be big hit. It is the See Inside How Things Work book. Topics covered are – Simple Machines, Movers and Shakers, Getting going, Making Music, Waterworks, Floating and flying, Everyday inventions, Up down and around and lastly Bits and Pieces. I really do my little man is going to love seeing what makes all these things work.

Here are links for the books that I mentioned above

See Inside Your Body

See Inside Trains (Usborne See Inside)

See Inside History of Britain (Usborne See Inside)

How Things Work (See Inside) (Usborne See Inside)

All of the Usborne books I have mentioned in the post are books that I have bought for my kids. This post has nothing to do with Usborne publishing it is just me trying to answer a question I received.

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.

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Posted in Book Ideas | Tagged children's book, Christmas ideas, home ed, home education, homeschooling, Usborne books | Leave a comment

I’m the Gingerbread Man

Posted on December 1, 2016 by ofamily

There is something about the weather turning colder, kids asking for warm baked biscuits and suddenly my two are singing ” run run as fast as you can you can’t catch me I am the …………………….. man” (they insert whatever biscuit I have baked or they are busy eating into the phrase).

So in the beginning on November the kids and I re-read the Gingerbread man story (yes I know it is now the beginning of December but we had visitors so my blog posts are a bit behind) and I did a search for some Gingerbread themed activities. We actually tried to bake some but the kids were not fans of the end result so hubbie got a whole bunch of Gingerbread men to eat.

I found a bunch of Gingerbread man pages on Activity Village so we had a go at some of those (Update – since writing this post all of the pages I used are now part of the activity Village membership package and are no longer Free). They both had a go at the Complete the picture Gingerbread man page.

We stayed on the “drawing theme” and tried the How to Draw a Gingerbread Man page next.

They both did really well and my daughter is now getting to that stage where she draws the shapes and then rubs out the unnecessary lines – my son is not interested in rubbing any lines out – he just colours over everything and moves onto the next project (rubbing out lines is just too time consuming for my youngest).

I few days later my daughter tried the Complete the Gingerbread Man on grid paper. This is a new idea for her. I am trying to get her use to the idea of breaking pictures down into grids as a way of helping herself when she wants to draw. This is definitely something we are going to do more of. I know from experience it really helps to break your drawings down into a grid so I want her to get use to seeing simple pictures broken into grids form early on.

We also managed to squeeze some writing practice for my youngest into our Gingerbread theme. My youngest is not the biggest fan of handwriting books but he seems to like these handwriting pages from Activity Village (gingerbread writing page link).

And while his older sister was doing some Division practice he also had a go at the Gingerbread colour by numbers (I was really happy to realise he can now do these colour by numbers all by himself as he can read all the words without help from me or his older sister).

I am trying very hard to cut down on all my printing so I am wherever possible I only print out 1 page and then slot that page into our Learning Resources Wipe Clean Pockets.
Then one kiddio does the page, wipes it clean and the second one gets a go.

I do include Affiliate links in my posts. 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.

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Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged activity village, Christmas ideas, drawing, Gingerbread Man, home education, homeschooling | Leave a comment

Colour Together Nature Book

Posted on November 28, 2016 by ofamily

The kids and I often do art activities together, we will sometimes jointly colour in a picture, draw together on a large piece of paper or even paint together. My oldest in particular enjoys it when we do joint art activities so when Andersen Press asked if we would be interested in a copy of the Colour Together Nature book I immediately liked the sound of it. Let me state at the very beginning we are not normally fans of colouring books but I liked the idea that each double page has been designed with a simpler and harder version of the same topic as a way of encouraging family members to sit and colour together (okay so you might ask why would you want to colour together ? – In my experience sitting with the kids and joining in normally results in lots of open chats).

When the book arrived I was not disappointed. The pictures are stunning.

And both the simpler page and the more complicated page are equally stunning.

And my daughter (who is currently eight years old) agreed. She thought the pictures were gorgeous and she loved the topics – butterflies, foxes, mushrooms, beetles stunning nature pictures.

She also liked the fact that the background of each picture is already “coloured” in. So you can concentrate on the stunning pictures and you don’t have to worry about the background.

We actually recently used the book as a calming down activity and it was great. We had been out to London on a very busy, noisy outing and by the time we got home my daughter desperately needed a quiet activity that she could do with me. The book was perfect. We sat next to each other and quietly coloured in a stunning butterfly picture. It totally did the trick and helped her to relax after the busy outing.

So as I mentioned we were given this book you might be wondering would I happily buy this book ? – YES. I would absolutely buy this for my daughter. And I am actually planning on buying a copy as a birthday present for one of my daughter’s friends. My parents who are currently visiting both commented on how lovely this book is and how it looks like a really good quality book. We really do LOVE it.

You can buy the book from Amazon – Colour Together: Nature