Butterfly doubling and halving

Posted on May 28, 2015 by ofamily

For some reason my daughter is happy doubling her numbers but freezes up if I ask her what half of a number is.  She seems to have missed the link between the two so I wanted to do and activity with her to help re-enforce it.

She loves butterflies and knows that the butterflies two wings match so I thought it would be a good idea to use this concept.  I downloaded this butterfly template from Activity Village (part of their membership pages).  I asked her to pick a number, she started with 7.  I got her to write 7 on the top of the first wing and then make 7 dots below it.  Then I reminded her that the two wings needed to be the same so she wrote the 7 and drew the 7 dots on the other wing.  Then I asked her what the 7+7 would make and she wrote the 14 on the body of the butterfly

Doubling 7 1I then asked her what would happen if she halved the butterfly or divided it is two, so she folded her butterfly.

Butterfly doubling and halving-2

And she naturally answered that half of 14 would be 7.

We continued trying this with a few other numbers

doubling 4 1

Doubling 10 on a butterfly 1Very simple yet writing the numbers on the two wings and then folding the butterfly in half seemed to help her.

Of course little brother joined in.  He practiced writing some of his numbers on a couple of the butterflies.  We have not done lots of writing with him so I was blown away at how well he is forming his numbers.

Butterfly doubling and halving

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It was a really simple activity using the Butterfly template but one which seemed to help explain the concept. She got that the two halves together double a number and when she folded the butterfly in half it just clicked that doubling and halving were opposites.

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Making our own mosaic letters

Posted on May 26, 2015 by ofamily

We have been doing a number of letter activities for our little man lately, he has been loving them and keeps asking me for more.  This time I thought we would combine our letters with some crafts and make our own mosaic letters.

I downloaded the paper saving blank display lettering from Twinkl (part of their gold package but you could also make your own letters), printed them on card and cut the letters out.

Twinkl lettersI collected a sample of goodies which I thought the kids would enjoy using. I included some red beans, kidney beans, corn, pasta, buttons, art gems, shredded paper some small art sticks and some coloured rice.  All of the items where either from my kitchen cupboard or from the kids art trolley.  We just used our normal PVA art glue.

Mosaic lettersI asked my son if he wanted to try and this is him doing a g

Letter g with pastaAs I suspected his sister could not resist joining in and she started off with the buttons and then went straight for the corn.

Mosaic letter f

Mosaic letter t

I was actually surprised at how long the two of them sat and how many letters they managed to get done in one go. They are determined to complete all the letters of the alphabet.

Mosaic letters completed

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The Snow Queen – writing a flap book and melting ice

Posted on May 23, 2015 by ofamily

One of the kids new favourite story books is The Snow Queen.  I was actually surprised by how popular the book has been as my kids are not normally fans of traditional fairy tales.  So in keeping with their new interest we used the book to do some ice melting experiments and some writing.

We started off by putting some ice cubes in a number of different bowls.  The bowls were placed in different places, outside, in the kitchen sink, in the fridge and in the freezer.  The aim being to figure out which ones would melt quickly and if any would not melt (my daughter already knew the answers but my son did not so he really enjoyed this little experiment).

melting iceBy the end of the day the ice in the bowl outside had melted and actually evaporated.  My son informed me that  “the sun was thirsty and had drunk the water.”  I loved his explanation.  And it was a great excuse to start introducing the water cycle to my daughter.

We also tried to make our own flap book summarising the story.  We downloaded the flap book  from Twinkl.  My daughter cut out the pictures and selected which pictures she wanted to use (our version of the snow queen is slightly different so some of the pictures did not apply but we just excluded those).

the snow queen cutting out the flap book

My daughter is not a naturally keen writer.  She writes lists and sentences but no more than two sentences at a time so this was a stretch for her.  But she really enjoyed making her own flap book and she has already been on the Twinkl website with me to select another flap book to do next week.  Fingers crossed her interest in making these flap books lasts so we can do a bunch more as it really is a great way of getting some writing and spelling in.

The snow queen writing the flap book

The snow queen flap book

My son who likes joining in tried his hand at the Spot the difference page.

the snow queen spot the differenceAnd interestingly the enjoyment of The Snow Queen seems to have spurred my daughter on to some other more traditional stories that she normally would not have been interested in.

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What our neighbours think of homeschooling

Posted on May 18, 2015 by ofamily

We have been homeschooling for almost three years now and I have had very different reactions from my neighbours over the almost three years.  I had a lovely neighbour who was fascinated by it and came for some tea and chatted about it, she was great.  I have also had a neighbour who assumed I just ran a free child care service and was always sending her kid over after school so she could get her chores done.  In fact if we where going somewhere she actually got quite put out.  We have also had a neighbour who was petrified that my kids contained some kind of homeschooling virus that was highly contagious.  This was a pity as I was convinced that her son and my two kids could have been firm friends.

homeschooling kids

So yesterday after totally ignoring all the boxes waiting to be unpack I went and sat with my kids in our new back garden and listened to them play and the thought did enter my mind – “What would our new neighbours think of this strange homeschooling family ?”  But I must be honest, I did not ponder on it too long as my daughter wanted to show me all the grass and leaf samples that she had collected for her toy animals and my son wanted to discuss why carnivores have sharp teeth and why some herbivores appeared to have no teeth at all.

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The very hungry caterpillar

Posted on May 12, 2015 by ofamily

The last few weeks have been very disruptive on the home learning front.  All of us have taken it in turns to get sick and now we are in a mad rush to quickly pack up the house so we can move this week.  We have two projects which I am dying to write about but due to everyone being sick neither have been completed so those will have to wait until next week.  Instead I am going to tell you what I do on those days when I want to provide some education for the kids but I am just exhausted and the house is in a total mess (more than normal that is).  We do a book.  We choose a favourite book, I search Pinterest or Twinkl to find some ideas and my sanity remains intact for yet another day.

This time I  asked my little boy if there was a book we should do and I was actually surprised with his answer.  He said he wanted to do The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (we have not read this book for ages) but it is a great book with lots of great learning for him and some good revision for big sister (she has just finished learning to spell the days of the week).

I found these lovely sequence cards on Twinkl (platinum package).  We printed ours in black and white so the kids had to colour them in and make their own sequence cards.  I was very impressed with how neatly they both coloured in the pages and how they tried to follow the pictures in the book.

The very hungry caterpillarAfter the kids had finished the cards we cut them out and my youngest had a go at putting the cards in the correct order.  These sequence cards really tuned out better than I ever could have expected, and the kids are very proud of them, I definately need to print some more off espically for my youngest as he is not always normally keen to colour in.

The very hungry caterpillar sequence cardsHe used his playdough to make his own version of the different food that the caterpillar ate.  The kids also had a go and making some playdough caterpillars and butterflies,  I really like this butterfly that my daughter made.

the very hungry caterpillar playdoughI also could not resist using the book as an excuse to do some words with my daughter.  We used the word matching page from Twinkl (Platinum) for this.

The very hungry caterpillar word matchingShe also wrote out her own list of all the food that the caterpillar ate (my daughter loves making lists) and we did a quick revision on spelling the days of the week.  I am always very happy when we get to squeeze extra spelling and writing in.

My daughter spotted this sorting activity on the Twinkl website and asked if we could print it out so she could do it with her little brother (she likes “teaching him”).  And she was correct her little brother did enjoy sorting and completing the page with her.

the very hungry caterpillar sorting activity

I really do love doing book pages and activities with the kids.  They always seem to enjoy the activities, I manage to get some good learning activities done and thanks to these lovely pages on Twinkl it was pick and pain-free for me.  If only the move was this easy.

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