ofamily learning together

Trying to plan

Posted on August 6, 2015 by ofamily

I have been trying to do a bit of advance planning. I have not been that succesful as the kids keep seeing what I am doing and want to do it. Yes yes I know that is great and I am glad, but I am also trying to get a few activities planned for the days even weeks when I feel exhausted. I tried setting up a shelf with a few activities on it, only to find my youngest had discovered the shelf and dragged one of his chairs to it so he could climb up and examine all the goodies on the shelf. I tried making a list of my great ideas only to discover my kids has decided my list was a great pretend shopping list for their store and well you can use your imagination as to what happen to my great ideas list.

This is my daughter after she found some of the printouts on my shelf and thought it would be a good idea to “fix up” her one learning board (and I was worried about her not getting her counting in 3’s).

I had this idea of using some toilet rolls and stickers to practice our counting. So one night while the kids were asleep I wrote the numbers on the toilet rolls, leaving gaps so that the kids had to use the stickers to fill in the missing gap. I did a few for my son and some skip counting practice for my daughter. Apparently my idea was a winner because the next day both kids sat down with the toilet rolls and the stickers (they found them on my shelf) and completed the whole set while I was busy in the kitchen.

So I guess although my advance planning is not really working that well I can say with all honesty that homeschooling my two kids is creating kids who genuinely love to learn.

Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged counting, home ed, homeschooling, skip counting, toilet roll counting | Leave a comment

Jolly Phonics and Jolly Grammer resources

Posted on August 5, 2015 by ofamily

It is that time of the year again when I start to think about what new resources I want to buy and I start searching for as many reviews as I find so I can make the best possible decision. One of the resources that I am looking at again is Jolly Phonics. We used it with our daughter and now are probably going to use it again with our son. So I thought it was high time that I wrote a blog post about the Jolly Phonics resources that we have used. This is my personal opinion based on using resources which we bought ourselves.

When we first started using Jolly Phonics I bought the Jolly Stories book, the Activity books and the DVD. My kids love the DVD. Honest they love Inky, Snake and Bee. As an adult watching the DVD I thought it was a very basic DVD but both my kids did not notice that and they have watched and watched it over and over again. One big Plus with the DVD is there are NO American accents (my daughter picks up accents very quickly so for us this was a big bonus). The DVD is divided sections that correspond to the activity books so as the kids can watch an episode on the DVD they can then do the matching pages in the Activity books.

My kids also really love the Jolly Stories (Jolly Phonics). Our Jolly stories book is actually one of our most used story books. They really enjoy the adventures that Inky, Bee and Snake get up to and they both love the fact that the large letters on each page are textured. Both my kids are constantly tracing over the letters with their fingers. I have no doubt that we are going to be re-reading the stories with my son as we start doing his phonics. I am actually hoping that I might be able to get my daughter to read the stories to my son as I think it will be great reading practice for her.

The Activity books were also a big hit with my daughter. They are colourful and contain lots of stickers. I think they are great for kids who want to learn to read but might be finding the writing side a bit more difficult. The activity books do not contain a lot of handwriting. For my daughter this was a big bonus as she initially battled with her handwriting but the fact that there are lots of stickers and other activities in these books allowed her to continue learning without getting frustrated with her writing. I also need to mention that the pages in the activity books are not overcrowded. My daughter does not like workbooks where there is too much happening on one page. The activity books kept her interest but they did not overwhelm her.

The Jolly Phonics Workbooks: Books 1-7. These books are meant to go with the activity books. The workbooks are black and white and contain writing practice. I was initially a bit confused about the Jolly Phonic activity books verses the Jolly Phonics workbooks so we actually only started with these later on. They are different. The activity books are stickers and activities which teach the different sounds, the workbooks are pages of writing practice and later on other writing activities. I personally think the two sets work well together. My daughter did find using the Jolly workbooks helped her writing but we did have to supplement with other extra writing pages aswell.

The The Phonics Handbook: A Handbook for Teaching Reading, Writing and Spelling (Jolly Phonics). I wish I had bought this when my daughter started learning her phonics. The handbook is great if you are unsure about how to teach phonics, it gives lots of good ideas and it contains a number of extra pages which you can photocopy, these are great for extra practice. The handbook is written for teachers so gives lots of ideas on how to teach in the classroom but for me being a nervous first time homeschooler I actually found reading it gave me some much-needed confidence.

The The Grammar 1 Handbook: A Handbook for Teaching Grammar and Spelling: Bk. 1 (Jolly Grammar). I bought these as I felt like I needed a guide on what I needed to teach to my daughter next. It definitely does do that. It includes pages of revision of the jolly phonics program and it includes lots of pages on how to teach grammar. Again the handbooks are written for teachers and they contain lots of black and white pages which you can photocopy and use with the kids. Great if you are going to be teaching more than one child.

I also bought my daughter the Jolly Grammar Pupil book. This is a lovely colour workbook for the kids to do. Again the pages are of a high quality. They are colourful without being too overwhelming. Each page is clear. I must point out that the Jolly Grammar handbook and the Jolly Grammar pupil book were designed together so they contain almost identical pages. In the photo below the book on the left is the Handbook version and the book on the right is the Pupil Book version, as you can see almost identical. Depending on how your kids like to work you could buy the handbook and use the photocopy pages out of that without having to buy the pupil book.

We have also recently been give two copies of the Finger Phonics books by a friend. My son has enjoyed paging through them and running his fingers over the letters but they are already a bit too basic for him, they would be great for little ones just starting to learn some letters.

My son is now desperate to start reading so I have been looking at what route I want to go with him. He has a copy of the Usborne Big Phonics workbook which in my opinion is okay if you are using it to reinforce what the kids are learning at school but as my son is going to be homeschooling I do not think it is a proper phonics grounding. I feel that although I do supplement the Jolly phonics program with extra phonic activities and extra writing pages it does provide a good solid phonic grounding. So I am going to be including a new set of Jolly Phonics activity books on my new resources list and probably also a new set of the Jolly Phonic workbooks.

I also should mention we have never used the Jolly Readers so I can not give any feedback on these.

Update on the post – I have been asked by a number of US readers for links so here they are Jolly Stories in Print Letters (Jolly Phonics)

Jolly Phonics Workbooks 1-7

The Phonics Handbook in Print Letter: A Handbook for Teaching Reading, Writing and Spelling (Jolly Phonics)

The Grammar Handbook 1

The Grammar Handbook 2

I have included affiliate links in the post. 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 be the same.

Save

Posted in Book Ideas | Tagged children's book, home ed, homeschooling, Jolly Grammar, Jolly Phonics, ks1 english, Phonic resources, phonics | 1 Comment

Making some fun 3D Hama Bead pictures

Posted on July 27, 2015 by ofamily

This past week my daughter has continued with her Hama beads and we have been making some cute items including some flowers, a butterfly, trees and seahorses.

We thought it might be fun to see if we could use some of the Hama Beads to make a picture (it was very trail and error on our side but it actually turned out quite well). We started off by cutting an old cereal box

and then painted the inside blue and green so that it could act as a backdrop for a garden scene.

The Hama bead designs that we used included our trees (the tree with the red beads in it is my daughters version of an apple tree), two flowers and a butterfly. (Tip it really helps to iron these on both sides so that they are a bit stronger)

My daughter just used some blue tack when she made her picture (she says she might want to reuse the items in another picture so she did not want to glue them down). She also added some green shredded paper as grass

I thought it was a fun first attempt at some 3D art.

My daughter has made herself a pink seahorse (the blue seahorse is a combined effort by my son and I ) and is experimenting with making some fish so we are thinking about maybe trying something similar with an underwater scene.

Posted in Art and Craft Ideas | Tagged art, children's craft, Hama bead 3D picture, Hama beads, hama beads flowers, home ed, homeschooling | Leave a comment

Young kids number lapbook using FREE pages

Posted on July 24, 2015 by ofamily

This past week I discovered that my youngest was trying to do his big sister’s Maths. I found him sitting at the kitchen table with a page of her maths guessing what the answer to the sums was and then writing the answer out.

When I spoke to him about it he said ” mommy you never give me maths to do and I want to do my own Maths”. So I decided that I would make him his own Maths lapbook with some more age appropriate items in it and see how he gets along (he loves it and naturally now his big sister has asked for her own version).

Oh and all of the items that I have used are all FREE pages from Twinkl.

Starting on the left hand side

I included the odd and even number visual aid mainly because he has been asking me lots of questions lately about which numbers are odd and even and this is actually the way that my daughter learnt her odd and even numbers (we walked up our street a few times noting which numbers where on either side).

Next to the odd and even visual aid is the Money strip. We actually have a few of these printed out and have found them very useful when the kids are doing roleplaying games that involve money.

Underneath the Odd and even number visual aid is a pouch (made from a recycled envelope) containing the numbered seahorses. These sea horses go with the laminated mat on the back of the lapbook.

The center of the lapbook contains the 100 square at the bottom and then Numbered children at the top. I printed the children four to one page to get the correct size, and then I cut them all out and stuck their hands together. Both my kids love this.

In the pouch next to the children are the Greater than and less than crocodiles. Again this is something that my son has been speaking a lot about lately. We have used these crocodiles with two different items in the lapbook. First he used them with the numbered seahorses and he also later used them with the cauldrons.

On the other side sleeve of the lapbook I included some number formation cards for my son. I also printed these four to a page so that I could get the size that I wanted. These are laminated so my son keep reusing them. He really likes these as he likes trying to write his numbers inside the lines.

Underneath the number formation cards are the numbered cauldrons again I printed four to one page so that I could get the size that I wanted. With these cauldrons my son has been playing a game of making sure that each cauldron gets the correct number of ingredients added. For ingredients we have used some beads and some beans but you could use almost anything for this.

After I have finished making him the labook he asked if I could add a clock. I added the basic blank analogue clock for him.

His Maths lapbook is still very new but so far it has been a big hit with my son.

Save

Posted in foundation stage | Tagged home ed, homeschooling, Lapbooks, learning numbers, maths, Maths lapbook, numbers, numbers lapbook, Twinkl | 4 Comments

Ballet Show and Hama Bead coasters

Posted on July 21, 2015 by ofamily

This past weekend my daughter participated in 2 ballet shows. She loves her ballet and was very excited but we knew beforehand that the weekend was going to be a sensory overload weekend for her. I wanted her to prove to herself that she could do the shows but I also wanted to try to make sure that going into the weekend she was as calm and rested as possible. Taking a sensory child into a situation where you are expecting lots of noisy over excited kids is never going to be easy but taking a sensory child into that same situation when they are already overloaded would just be madness.

So the week before her ballet performances we tried to keep everything very low-keyed. No new experiences just our normal regular weekly outings. I also tried to provide calming activities for her to do at home and made sure we got some deep pressure in. One of the activities that she really enjoyed doing was her Hama Beads. We actually found her sitting at the kitchen table early Sunday morning making some Hama Bead coasters. When I asked she said she was trying to calm herself down and doing the Hama Beads helps to relax her.

She even got her little brother and dad in on the action.

So now we have some new brightly patterned Hama Bead coasters. I love them.

And yes in case you are wondering they do actually work as coasters (not the best photo but it gives you the idea)

Oh and in case you are wondering she managed the weekend beautifully. I unfortunately did not get to see her dance in one of the shows as she had requested that I remain backstage at all times, just in case. But I have been told by a number of different people that she looked really confident and happy on the stage. I am a super proud mommy !!!

If you do have an SPD kiddie who would enjoy dancing and you are in the greater Richmond area (UK) I can highly recommend Twinkle Toes Ballet. They have been amazing with my daughter. They have gone out of their way to support her. When she was younger she use to wear ear muffs to her dance class and they never made it an issue. I have no doubt that without their amazing teachers she would not have managed this busy weekend they way she did. Big thank you Twinkle Toes for making my little SPD kiddie so very happy and allowing her to prove to herself that she can be a part of such a lovely show.