ofamily learning together

Pens for on-the-go-learning

Posted on August 6, 2016 by ofamily

It is no secret we are fans of STABILO products. Both my kids have used the STABILO 3-in-1 pencils and the easycolour pencils and both kids love them. So when I heard STABILO have some pens designed for use when you are out and about I could not resist testing them out. STABILO kindly sent us a set of the Cappi pens to use in our home learning and I have to say we are now fans of these pens aswell.

The pens have been specially designed with caps that allow you to thread a loop through them (they call it a cap ring) which links all the pens together. This hopefully means there will be less chance of the kids leaving their pens behind or losing them while they are out. And as I found my kids were a lot more aware of the fact that they had not put the pen back in its cap once they had finished using it as they would see the empty cap on the ring when they went to get another pen.

My kids enjoy taking activities out with us when we go on our walks (they enjoy a good nature / colour hunt, anything really that involves them walking around with a clipboard and ticking boxes or making notes on the clipboard) which is why I was so keen to test these pens out.

We actually found that the plastic cord, which comes with the pens, is perfect for attaching them to the back of my backpack. This way the kids can grab a pen without me having to take the backpack off and unpack a pencil-case etc. For us this is a perfect solution for all our clipboard activities.

And then when the kids want to sit down and use the pens on the ground all we do is unhook the link. Super easy.

But apart from being great pens to use out of the house the pens themselves are really nice pens. I love the ergonomic grips. After watching my youngest use the pens on multiple occasions I could see that he always ended up holding the pens correctly (his pencil grip has been something we have been working on). Both kids fingers naturally rest in the correct position on the grips, I have never once had to remind or correct my youngest (the website does say the pens are for kids 6 years and over and my youngest is 5).

The pens also do not roll off tables (which is a real bonus if the kids are using them out at a coffee shop while I am trying to drink a much-needed cup of caffeine)

The colours are really vibrant and apparently you can leave the pens uncapped for 24 hours without them drying out – we DID NOT test out the 24 hour without a cap as we really like the pens and did not want to wast them.

Also my youngest is quite good at getting ink all over himself when he is “creating an art work” and with these pens it always comes off very easily (also wiped off our plastic table).

All three of us think these pens are great and I have no doubt my “clipboard happy kiddies” will be using them over and over again when we are out exploring.

The STABILO Cappi pens were given us by STABILO but I was not paid for this review. Also the Basic Transport Template shown in the photo above is from the Twinkl website and it is Free to download

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Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged felt tip pens, home education, homeschooling, STABILO, STABILO Cappi, stationery | 4 Comments

Activity Village pages for Home Ed (version 2)

Posted on August 4, 2016 by ofamily

It has almost been a year since I wrote my first post about using Activity Village pages in our home-ed and since then I have discovered a number of new pages on the Activity Village website which we have used (or I am planning on using) so I thought it was about time I wrote a version 2. (As Activity Village have changed their website I am now going to sdjust the post with the words FREE or membership behind every link)

I have to start by sharing the link for these Large Number cards with Dots (FREE) for younger kids learning their numbers. Mine are too old for this but I used something very similar with my daughter and it was great.

I am loving all the Ordinal Number pages that they have up on their website, my youngest is just starting to learn his ordinal numbers so I have spent quite a bit of time looking at all the different pages and worksheets that they have.

I like the ordinal number match up (membership) where the kids have to match the ordinal numbers to the correct words.

And my son loves the ordinal number racing cars (membership) We have had some fun games where he races his cars and then allocates the correct ordinal numbered car to his toy cars. He thinks this is great fun and has come up with little challenges for himself where he tries to get certain cars and in certain positions.

My youngest has also been doing a number of mazes (FREE) lately. I love mazes as they are a great pencil control activity for him and he enjoys the challenge. There are lots of mazes on the activity village website to choose from and the great thing is they are all slightly different and they are aimed at different aged kids. So my youngest can do a maze while his sister attempts a harder version. Perfect for the way my kids like to work together.

My daughter has used a number of the Rainbow number bond pages that are on the website, they have posters and worksheets which you can download and use. The photo below is of the Rainbow Number bond to 20 Worksheet. (membership)

My daughter loves reading about animals so I have started printing off the animal fact-finding pages for her. They have been great at encouraging her to do some writing (and her younger brother also has a bit of a go). They have a huge range of these pages for lots of different animals – Animal Fact Finding pages. (FREE)Iwas actually thinking the kids could use the animal fact-finding pages to make a small book.

My youngest is still a very early reader but he likes copying his big sister. She has just started reading some basic chapters books and as a result has made herself some bookmarks so naturally my youngest wanted his own bookmarks to go in his readers. I made him some of these High Frequency Word Bookmarks (membership). He thinks he is very grown up with his new bookmarks and it is helping him with his reading as he is forever practicing the words on them.

And in case you missed the photos I shared on our facebook page my son has been loving all the animal word puzzles.

The word puzzles in the photo above are the following (all membership)

– Whale word puzzle, Shark word puzzle, sheep word puzzle and kangaroo word puzzle

My daughter enjoyed using the vocabulary extension pages (membership) earlier in the year. It turned out to be a fun exercise in coming up with different words which we could use instead of good/ bad/ nice etc

And the animal alphabet challenge (membership) has also been a hit with my two kiddies.

And just in case you missed the original Activity Village post here it is – Using Activity Village for homeschooling

Also you might enjoy our – Froggy 4 times table post and our Autumn has arrived with some help from Activity Village

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Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged activity village, free printables, home education, Home education resources, homeschooling | Leave a comment

Animal classification Cards

Posted on July 31, 2016 by ofamily

Over the past two weeks my daughter and her dad have been reading and talking a lot about vertebrates and invertebrates. She has started coming up to me and saying things like – “Mom that is a vertebrate and it is a mammal because………………” which naturally often ends up in a bit of a discussion. So based on her current interest I thought if would be useful if I could find some cards which she could use to quiz herself (and helpful for me – I did not know that an octopus was a cephalopod mollusc).

Luckily I found some cards on the Twinkl website and they are FREE to download – Vertebrates or Invertebrates cards. I like the fact that these show whether the animal is a vertebrate or invertebrate as well as the animal classification of mammal, reptile etc and they include some of the lesser known animal classifications like annelids and gastropod mollusc (which is very helpful for me).

So some cutting and laminating later (I did reduce the size of the cards by printing 2 pages onto 1) we had our cards and I had a happy little Miss.

She sat outside going through her cards for ages.

And then little brother joined her and they “quizzed” each other.

And the cards even resulted in some extra reading. When the kids got to the jellyfish card my youngest asked a question which my daughter could not answer so both kids found a book on their bookshelf and she read some extracts to her brother until he had his answer.

Oh and my younger kiddie is also using the cards for another game – but he uses them for a game of guess what animal (so he will look at the picture of the animal and describe it to us and we have to guess what the animal is).

I have been asked about the laminated cards that we make and use. I tend to print onto some thin card that we have, laminate the pages and then cut them all out.

The card that we use is this – Lightweight White Card for Children to Use in All Types of Crafts 160 gsm (Pack of 100).

Laminating pouches I tend to look for bulk value deals and then stock up (I have used all different brands whatever has the best deal)

All links and information about the Twinkl products were correct at the time of writing this post. To download the free resources from the Twinkl website you first need to set up a free account.If you have any queries on the Twinkl products please contact them directly.

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 Key Stage 2 | Tagged animal classification, free printables, home education, homeschooling, ks2, science, vertebrates and invertebrates | 3 Comments

Connect 4 learning fun

Posted on July 29, 2016 by ofamily

My kids love playing connect 4. We often have a game on the kitchen table before or after dinner so I thought it might be fun to add a bit of maths to it. Nothing hectic just some basic addition (my youngest is always asking for sums so I thought this might appeal to him).

I wrote a bunch of numbers on some round stickers and stuck them onto the discs then our game proceeded as normal.

Only now when someone has 4 in a row we quickly add up what the numbers on the 4 discs are and we add it under the winning column (Red or Yellow).

We are keeping the running totals under Red or Yellow as there are 4 of us in the family and all of us end up playing games against each other so by keeping the totals under Red or Yellow it is not a personal competition but more an ongoing challenge. Also the kids enjoy the challenge of “trying to help the losing team”. So if Red is losing one of the kids will often be red and try to win so that Read gets more points.

The kids really took to the new connect 4 challenge so we added in an extra angle. On the back of the discs we added some stickers with letters (so now each disk has a number on one side and a letter on another side). Now once each game is over we go and look at the other side and see if we have managed to spell out any words (well words that make sense). This has resulted in lots of laughter as we often end up with bizarre words. Strange, nonsensical words that both kids still attempt to sound out. With lots of giggles and laughter and without realizing they are actually practicing their phonics and blending sounds together.

And yes sometimes one of the kids will insert the disc the wrong way (eg the letter side will be on the side of all the numbers) but then they use their fingers to move the disc back up and out of the game – and they think this is great fun so no big deal really.

A bit sneaky but now while we are playing our Connect 4 game the kids are practicing maths, phonics and writing all at the same time and they are enjoying themselves.

We have kept the numbers small on purpose so my youngest can fully participate, with older kids you could easily use larger numbers. Also we have left the focus on the game itself ie objective is to get 4 discs in a row and once that is achieved we have a look to see what the numbers and letters are. Again my logic for this is I do not want to discourage my youngest from joining in. Over the weekend when my youngest is busy playing with his father I might try to make it more of a challenge for my oldest by seeing if she can actually create words on purpose. But my main objective is to keep it fun for the kids.

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Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged 4 in a row, addition game, Connect 4 game, home education, homeschooling, phonics game | 3 Comments

July Books

Posted on July 26, 2016 by ofamily

It has been a while since I did a group book finds post. We have a few books that we have owned for a long time that have been given the place of honour in our house over the last month (if you are a book in our house the place of honour is when you get to stay next to the couch – in book terms this is a very BIG DEAL !)

One of my daughters favourite books is this one called Isabella’s Garden. I picked it up in a charity shop years ago and from the first day she just loved it. She seems to love the story about how everything grows and changes in the year and she enjoys the way the words roll together.

I have been thrilled to see that she has recently started reading it herself (well to herself and her bear and occasionally her younger brother). I love seeing how books that were once favourite story books are now becoming much-loved readers.

Speaking of readers my little reader recently finished reading The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark. We have dipped in and out of reading this one as it was 80 pages long but she is so proud that she finished it all by herself. The kids loved the storybook version of this a few years ago (library book) so when we spotted the more detailed version we grabbed it and I am so glad we did as it was just the right book for my daughter. Not too hard but it did contain some challenging words for her. And she has now started reading the The Brer Rabbit Collection to herself. It is 550 pages long so I think it might take her some time to get through all the stories but so far she is loving it.

A book both kids are enjoying is this South African book that we have called The Brave Little Penguin. It s about a strange-looking egg that is found on top of a table shaped mountain and how no creature knows whose egg it is. Then the egg hatches and out pops a penguin but no animal on top of that table shaped mountain knows what a penguin is so that little penguin has to go exploring until he can discover who he is. Along the way he meets some animals and even tries to eat some grass. My kids love it and highly recommend it, it is probably our favourite South African book at the moment.

And one of our most loved books has come back into favour again. The Usborne Great Planet Earth Search (Usborne Great Searches) by Emma Helbrough (2010-03-26) We first bought this book years ago and it has just been one of those books that the kids come back to time and time again. Each double page spread in the book deals with a different habitat eg Alpine Slopes, Mangrove Swamps, African grasslands. Then around the edge it highlights some of the animals found in the habitat and asks the reader to search for a certain number of them. Hours upon hours have been spent with both kids and this book. It is great of so many levels, the kids do basic counting while the learn about different animals and where they live.