ofamily learning together

Planting a Rainbow

Posted on March 25, 2015 by ofamily

One of my daughter’s favourite books when she was younger was “Planting a Rainbow” by Lois Ehlert. My son recently discovered it and has been taken by all the colours.

The kids and I thought it would be fun to try to make our own rainbow garden. We started off by colouring in the flowers as per the book

The colouring page that we used is FREE from Twinkl (we just used the first page in the pack) – Flowers colouring in sheets.

My daughter even added a few coloured buttons onto hers

We laminated ours and cut them out. I love the way they turned out.

Then while the kids had something to eat I set up a little playdough area for them.

The kids made a couple of different versions of their own rainbow garden.

I wish my real garden looked as good as theirs.

Spring sensory tub

Posted on March 24, 2015 by ofamily

My daughter went through a slight Hama bead flower making craze about a months ago. They are lovely and I have been dying to add them to a sensory tub.

So last week I finally dyed some rice green and we made a spring sensory tub.

These flowers are great for hiding in the rice. My daughter still needs an excuse to dip her hands into textured tubs – having to find a hidden toy usually does the trick and in this case the hidden flowers where perfect.

We also added some plastic eggs and some litte chicks made from yellow pom poms.

My little man is still fasinated about the different animal classifications and which animals come from eggs and which are born from “their mummy’s tummy” (his words). He enjoyed helping the chicks hatch from their eggs.

He also liked using the rice to make it rain

And now some of the green rice is now being used as Cargo for Thomas the tank engine’s trucks.

Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged chicks, hama beads flowers, home ed, homeschooling, sensory bins, sensory play, spring, spring sensory bin | Leave a comment

Easy Easter wreath for kids to make

Posted on March 23, 2015 by ofamily

We have been working a lot on our cutting skills lately (out youngest is really starting to improve) so when my daughter asked if we could make an Easter wreath I could not resist the idea of including some cutting.

We started off by painting our cut-out paper plates a nice bright green.

Then I printed out the lovely images that are part of the design an Easter card pages from Twinkl. The coloured images are part of the platinum package but you can also download the black and white version of these which is FREE to download and the kids could colour and decorate them themselves.

We all cut out the images together and then the kids used them to decorate their wreaths.

A nice easy easter craft, which does not require lots of prep work.

Posted in Art and Craft Ideas, Homeschooling | Tagged children's art, children's craft, Easter, easter craft, home ed, homeschooling, Twinkl | Leave a comment

3D Butterfly crafts

Posted on March 20, 2015 by ofamily

The 3D butterfly cards (photos below) that we made a where such a hit with my daughter that I could not resist the idea of trying something else with these lovely butterflies.

She wanted to make some new pencil holders and I thought it would be a great excuse to use the butterflies again.

We started off with sticking some of our decopatch paper onto some old glass jars. Our little man joined in (he found it much easier to put the glue directly onto the glass jar and then add the paper). We used Mod podge glue for this.

We cut out the butterflies together (my youngest could not really manage this part so I cut most of his butterflies for him, but the nice thing about these butterflies is even if they are not cut on the line you still get a great effect). The butterflies that we used can be downloaded from Twinkl (gold) here – Printable patterned butterflies

We then started glueing our butterflies onto our glass jars.

My daughter really enjoyed this and ended up doing both jars (My son ended up making his own butterfly picture on some paper).

And my son making his picture.

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Posted in Art and Craft Ideas, Homeschooling | Tagged 3D butterfly, art, butterfly cards, butterfly craft, children's craft, home ed, homeschooling, Twinkl | 1 Comment

Our favourite FREE twinkl pages part 2

Posted on March 19, 2015 by ofamily

I love the Twinkl pages and we use them Lots. So I thought I would do a follow-up to an older post of mine where I shared some of our favourite free pages. If you missed the first one here it is – Our favourite free resources from Twinkl.

So here is our 2nd list.

We just love these colour words on crayons – there is an English, Afrikaans and an editable version which you could translate into any language.

And we have used these fab colour mixing display posters lots – they have an English, Afrikaans, Spanish and an editable version.

We enjoyed using the design your own tartan pages when we learnt a little bit about Scotland.

Two of my kids favourite play dough mats are both free – flower playdough mats and the transport playdough mats

Maths

Mixed number bonds on robots to 10 – my daughter used these pages to practice her addition

Double the spots on the ladybird – this is such a lovely way of doing doubling with the kids. It was a big hit with my daughter

Number Multiples Display posters – we love these

Science

Science experiments at home – if you know the lovely Science Sparks then you know these pages are just going to be brilliant

Solar system mat – great visual reference for when you are looking at the solar system

Water cycle display poster

History

The Egyptian Hieroglyphs sheet looks like a lot of fun – I am dying to give this a go with my daughter as a way of making up our own story

English

My son loves these road letter tracing pages

I have just found this recently and am going to print it out for my son – the alphabet train – I know he will love this

My daughter really enjoyed doing these sentence and picture matching cards. It was a great way of her practicing her reading. There are a number of different versions under the different phases.

She also really enjoyed making her Months of the year picture. All of the pictures used are free pages (when we printed ours out we did adjust the size by printing 4 to a page etc)

Months of the year on flowers

Months of the year on foxes

Months of the year on trees

Months of the year on suns

I hope that you will find a few useful pages and enjoy using the lovely Twinkl website as much as we do. We really do love their resources and find the staff super friendly and helpful.