ofamily learning together

Grow-A-Maze

Posted on June 14, 2016 by ofamily

I recently purchased a Grow-A-Maze Kit. A total impulse purchase. But when I saw the kit I immediately thought it would be such a fun activity for the kids and it would complement their current “grow our own vegetables” project.

The first kit was cracked but the garden store where we purchased it happily replaced it and we were off. Well not really. I did not read the instructions properly (naughty mummy moment). You need to germinate some seeds first before you can start building the whole maze. Oh well, false start no 2.

So we retrieved some lids our of our recycling tub, wet some paper towels and left a few seeds to germinate. False start no 3.

Our first set of beans did nothing so we tried it again with a new bunch, and luckily a few beans decided to co-operate.

We added the water to the bottom section and a bit of compost to the seed section and finally we could place our seeds in the maze. We kept our maze on a window sill in the kitchen as it gets lovely sunshine there and the kids can easily monitor how much the seeds have grown.

And finally after all our false starts I was amazed. Once the seeds were in they really took off. First the kids spotted the roots in the water and then they could really see the stems coming out and the seeds just went crazy.

The brilliant thing about this kit is the kids get an upclose view of the seeds step by step growing process.

A word of caution – it is better not to change the maze once the seeds have start growing. My youngest was very concerned that one of the plants was not making it and he tried to change the maze to help the plant but in the process he accidentally damaged another plant. So my tip is leave the plants in the maze and watch how they figure out where to grow – because honestly after doing this a few times now – we have seen that they really do find the gaps.

It is honestly is a very cool kit to have in the house. I have a feeling we are going to be doing this over and over in the next few months as my youngest is totally fascinated in watching the whole process.

This 4M Grow a Maze Kit by 4M has been a lovely addition to our home learning resources.

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Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged Grow-A-Maze, growing plants, home education, homeschooling, lifecycle, science for kids, seeds | 1 Comment

3D Butterfly and 3D Dragonfly Wall Art

Posted on June 11, 2016 by ofamily

My daughter recently informed me that we needed more pictures in the house. We already have lots of the kids art all over the house (we use pin boards and then rotate the art and goodies on the boards). My home-ed mom side naturally kicked in and I suggested we could make our own – she was not too sure as she said we needed some “fancy” pictures for the guest bedroom.

Our spare room is normally a dumping ground of laundry that needs to be packed away, my husband’s home office and anything else that needs a home. But we are getting a visitor in about 2 weeks time so we are doing a tidy up, hence my daughters insistence that we needed to add some art to the walls.

I had been saving these little canvases for myself (in my life before I had kids I actually painted) but they looked perfect for our new little project – so we had a base. I asked if she wanted to paint something on the canvases or maybe try some sand art but she wanted a professional looking picture for the room so she was not confident enough to try either options. And then it hit me, what if we added some of our favourite 3D butterflies. Yes, Yes we have used these butterflies over and over and over again but when you find something as stunning as these butterflies who can really blame us.

We already had a bunch of the butterflies and dragonflies cut out from some previous projects so we started using these but also ended up printing off a few more so that we could have the colours that we wanted.

To attach the butterflies and the dragonflies onto the canvases we used some Pritt Glue Dots. I have only recently started using these and I am loving them.

And I have to admit I am very happy with the end results. The only problem is now I can not decide how to hang them ?

And also I am wondering if they would not actually look better in my bedroom.

Links for all the products that we used

The black canvases are from Baker Ross here – Mini Black Canvases

The 3D printouts are from Twinkl (part of their paid for package) – Butterflies and the Dragonflies

To stick the butterflies and the dragonflies onto the canvases we used our Pritt HK30043 Gluedots – Clear, Pack of 64

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Posted in Art and Craft Ideas | Tagged 3D butterfly, 3D dragonfly, art, children's craft, Home-made pictures | 4 Comments

Yucky Worms a Nature Storybook

Posted on June 10, 2016 by ofamily

Last year when my kids started going earthworm crazy (honestly what is it about wanting to hold earthworms the whole time ?? I do not get that.) I bought them this book – Yucky Worms by Vivian French.

Both my kids love this book and I do too. The story is based around a little boy and his gran and how while he helps her in the garden he learns about earthworms. He starts off thinking earthworms are “Yuck” but ends up loving them and calling them his friends.

The story is sweet and the illustrations are lovely but what I really like about this book – it is actually very factual. A number of the pages include factual sections, like the page below.

So it is story time combined with learning actual facts about worms.

And there is a humour in the book too – the Mole with his shopping list gets my little boy giggling every time.

My kids and I highly recommend this book for all little kiddies who love digging in the garden and love holding, wriggling earthworms in their hands.

I bought this book for my kids. I have not been paid in any form to write about this book I just happen to think it is a lovely book to share with kids who find earthworms fascinating.

You can buy this book from Amazon UK here – Yucky Worms (Nature Storybooks) or from Amazon US here – Yucky Worms: Read and Wonder.

Update – this book was such a big hit with both my kids that we are now actively looking for more books in this series and often end up doing activities around the books.

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 Homeschooling | Tagged children's book, earthworms, home ed, home education, homeschooling, worms, Yucky Worms | 1 Comment

Historical Timeline and Cone People

Posted on June 7, 2016 by ofamily

We first printed out the Historical Timeline from Twinkl when we learnt about the Stone Age. The timeline includes all major time periods (World History and British History) without it being too overwhelming. My daughter was totally fascinated by it and loved that she could see how everything progressed.

The Timeline does require some cutting, lining up and sticking to get all the parts nicely fitted together. But it is worth it. It is one of those resources that once you have spent the time setting it up you can use it over and over again.

We recently started looking at the Ancient Romans as the kids found an interesting library book and after reading it with their dad and the questions just started pouring out. In-line with the new Ancient Roman fascination I wanted to make sure the kids had an idea of how it fitted in with the other time periods.

So out came our trusty Twinkl Timeline but this time I thought it would be fun to see how many Cone people we could add to our timeline (Full list of all the Cone people that we used and the links at the end of the blog post).

I set out our timeline as one very long line and the kids took turns trying to match the cones to the different time periods. As both my kids are fascinated by dinosaurs we added some Dinosaur cones to the very beginning of our timeline to reinforce the idea that dinosaurs existed before the Stone Age.

They loved it and once they had completed the timeline the kept walking up and down talking about the different periods and how the cone people looked different. It was a very big moment for my 5-year-old as he exclaimed ” Wow so much happened between the Stone Age and where we are now !”

I have packed my timeline and the cone people away very carefully as I am sure we will be digging them out and redoing this whole process a few more times in the future

Here are the Cone people that we used – all downloaded from Twinkl and all part of the Platinum package.

Castle Pack – I used the soldier from this pack to represent the Medieval period

Significant British Monarchy

Hope your kiddies enjoy this as much as mine did !

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Posted in History | Tagged British History, Historical Timeline, History, home ed, home education, homeschooling, World History | 1 Comment

Snails, snails, snails.

Posted on June 3, 2016 by ofamily

A while ago I picked up a Snail World for the kids. I have to admit for some reason we did not unpack immediately. Why – I do not know. The kids love it and it has been a great source of questions and discussions.

I bought the Snail world mainly because we have never done anything like this before and I heard that it came with a good book inside (which it does). The book sets outs what you need to do and should not do and it also is a great source of information about the snails.

If you have never made your own Minibeast home before then I would highly recommend buying one of these. It definitely gave me the confidence to do this with other MiniBeasts in the future (We are thinking of making our version of a spider world next).

As it turns out our snails like cucumber and they prefer it when we switch the lights off (bright overhead lightly scares them away), they also pooh a lot. Yes I am serous, after their first night in their new home, my son raced down to make sure they were okay and the first thing he shouted was – ” Wow they Poohed everywhere”.

Having a snail in the house which they can watch throughout the day has definitely encouraged their fascination with all things minibeast related. They have read books about the different creatures we find hiding in our graden, they have drawn pictures, coloured in pictures, created works of art. Almost anythiing snail related has been a hit with the two kids.

And in case your kids love snails as much as mine do here are out three of their favourite Free snail pages to print out.

This one is part of a Free to download Twinkl Colouring page set – Detailed Minibeast Colouring Sheets.

In the picture above my daughter was adding some Pritt all-purpose glue to the outlines so she could decorate her snail with coloured sand. We have also used the same Minibeast pages for collages.

My son loves this Snail Colour by pattern page from Activity village. He thinks it is such a cheeky snail because it is sitting on an apple waiting to eat it (his words).