ofamily learning together

Paper Plate weaving

Posted on November 3, 2014 by ofamily

We have been weaving today and I have to admit I have been surprised at how Pink has taken to it. When I was getting the paper plates ready last night I was not certain if it was going to be a hit or a miss (definite hit with Pink).

I divided a paper plate into 16 sections and cut the ends into triangles (Pink loved that as she said it looked like she was weaving a flower).

I then made a hole in the center and threaded some wool over each section

You now need to tie two of the strands on wool together so that you only have 15 separate sections. Thread a piece of wool through the hole in the center and start weaving away. When you want to add a new colour just tie the new piece of wool on the end of the old piece and continue weaving.

I suspected Blue might battle with this but I knew he would want to try so I started his off for him.

He gave it a go but he did not last long.

Pink really seemed to get into it.

It really is a great exercise for little fingers.

I was impressed with how far Pink got. This is hers at the end of today

Posted in Art and Craft Ideas, Homeschooling | Tagged children's craft, home ed, homeschooling, paper plate craft, paper plate weaving, weaving | 1 Comment

Goldilocks and the three bears

Posted on October 31, 2014 by ofamily

Pink has never been a big fan of traditional stories but the last month I have tried to gently re-introduce some of the stories. We have had some big hits and some clear losers. We managed to pick up a lovely Gingerbread Man reader at our local library which she loved and read over and over and over until we had to return it. I also got a Princess and the frog reader and she totally hated that so back to the library for that one. So far the big winner out of the traditional stories that I have tried reading to her has been Goldilocks and the three bears. Both Pink and Blue have loved it.

Pink was quite taken by how the bears are described and has spoken to me on a number of occasions about how Daddy bear was grumpy, baby bear was sad and that Goldilocks was sleepy and hungry which according to her is why she was naughty. So I was thrilled when I found these great Goldilocks character writing pages on Twinkl (Platinum).

I really like the fact that they have shown the words at the top. It gave Pink the confidence to use some of the bigger words in her sentences,

She also really enjoyed doing the wanted poster (Twinkle platinum). We are definately going to be trying some more of these wanted posters in the future.

And both kids did the labelling cutting and sticking pages together. My kids love being given labelling pages to do, it is always a hit in our house.

I also found this lovely Fairy Tale Theatre book at out local Tesco for around 3 pounds. Inside there are lots of great items which you just pushed out of the card pages. It includes clothes for Goldilocks and the three bears and items go to on the table and inside the house.

Both kids had great fun re-enacting the story with these and they went on to make up some of their own magical stories using these card pieces together with the Traditional Tale cone people (Twinkl Platinum). I love how simple items like the card and cone people they have encouraged them to use their imaginations to create their own unique tales.

Posted in Book Ideas, Homeschooling, ks1 English | Tagged children's book, cone people, Goldilocks and the 3 bears, homeschooling, traditional tales, Twinkl | 1 Comment

Water beads, beans and weighing

Posted on October 30, 2014 by ofamily

My kids really love their water beads and I love how they have been incorporated into their play (they make great pretend cargo for the trucks and trains).

Pink has had quite a sensory challenge with water so I am thrilled that she has taken to the water beads and is actually enjoying the feeling of them. I like to find ways of including sensory items into our learning and really wanted to do something with the water beads.

We got our measuring cups that we use for baking and our old kitchen scale and Pink got busy. I also included some ice trays so Blue could participate. He had a great time placing one water bead in each cube while he practiced his counting but he quickly left that to join his big sister with her weighing.

She started off by comparing how many water beads filled the 1 cup verses the 1/4 cup she then weighed them both. She was thrilled when she could see that the 1 cup full of water beads weighed more than 1/4 cup. I got a very excited ” I knew it.”

She wanted to compare the water beads to something else so she got her bean sensory tub out and compared the weight of 1/4 cup of water beads to 1/4 cup of beans. I got another very excited “mommy I just knew the beans would weigh more and I was correct.”

She was having so much fun with this that I suggest we try a few other items. Pink selected her Pom Poms from the art trolley and Blue brought us his wooden building blocks. Both kids got very involved in comparing the different weights of the different materials and the different weights of the different quantities.

Pink got so excited that she went to fetch a toy scale that she has but unfortunately the toy scale has a very confusing face which complicated maters. I explained to the kids that it was just a pretend toy and that it could not really measure, they where sad but they left it alone and focused on the kitchen scale.

I had a chuckle when later that evening as I was running the kids bath Blue got the “human scale” (his words) out and weighed himself, then he asked his sister to stand on the scale and he even asked me. Later while the kids where having their bath I heard them discussing the fact that mummy is bigger so her number on the scale was big and Blue is the smallest so his number on the scale was the lowest.

Posted in Homeschooling, sensory play | Tagged home ed, homeschooling, measurement, sensory bins, sensory play, water beads, weighing | 1 Comment

Christmas Tree Cakes

Posted on October 28, 2014 by ofamily

Yes I know if it very early to start doing Christmas activities but over the weekend Pink slammed two of her fingers in the bedroom door and she asked if we could make these and well how could I not agree ? I tend not to share lots of our baking activities on the blog as my photos are never the greatest and I really want the kids to do the baking and so the end result can often not look 100% (it is always tasty though).

I first saw these in a South African magazine about 3 years ago (not sure the exact mag one of the kiddies ones) but their version was a lot more complicated, it included a star on top of the tree. We do a simpler version, as I get the kids to go all the shape cutting and decorating.

We start off by baking a simple tray cake (I admit this time I cheated and used a cake mixture from Tesco’s – next time provided there are no sore kiddies fingers we will bake the cake from scratch).

Once the cake had cooled down I got the kids to cut out triangles (we are not fussy about how the triangle look – Blue did find this a bit of a challenge)

Then the kids iced their trees and decorated them. The kids favourite is using smarties for the decoration but we have used all kids of goodies that we had in our kitchen cupboard.

This is now the 3rd year that Pink and I have made these (first time that Blue joined in) and she still loves making them. Maybe next year we will try to get more complicated, we will have to wait and see as it is definitely a fun family tradition.

Posted in Baking with Kids | Tagged baking with children, Christmas ideas, christmas tree cake, homeschooling, shapes | 1 Comment

Spiders, spiders and some more spiders

Posted on October 27, 2014 by ofamily

When we first started homeschooling Pink, I would do all my planning, printing, filing while the kids where sleeping. It is much quicker and easier this way however I no longer tend to do that, crazy yes I know. But my reason is – whenever I am printing off pages or doing some planning my daughter likes to join in. She comes and sits with me at our kitchen table and she comments and tells me what she thinks. And sometimes I will get a “Really mom I am not sure about that” but I also get the “ooh that looks exciting” or “Ooh we should be doing more of those pages” and sometimes ” mom can I try that now”.

Over the weekend I was planning some Maths pages and I had some Number bonds printed out. I was not planning on doing them for some time but I had seen them and printed them to file away. Pink saw them and immediately wanted to try to match the spiders to the spiderwebs. Even though we have not done Number bonds to 20 yet I was happy to let her have a go. I was very chuffed that she got some beads out and used them to help work out what the answers would be. She selected 20 beads from her number tub. Then she put the number of beads that matched the number on the web to one side and would then look for the spider with the remaining number on. I left her to do this and she worked out the answer for all the spiders by herself.

These lovely spider number bond pages are FREE to download on Twinkl they have them for Number bonds to 20 and Number bonds to 10. (REVISION : Since writing this post these spiders are now part of the Gold package on Twinkl)

Since she enjoyed the spider Maths so much we decided to make our own spiders (I was saving the spider number bonds and spider craft for when she studied mini beasts but guess I will just have to find something else). We started off by getting some of our old plastic Easter eggs (we bought our eggs off Amazon about 2 years ago and we have used them for lots of activities).

We stuck pipe cleaners and a piece of string inside the eggs and then we closed the two halves (we had to use some sellotape to make sure it was properly shut). The kids used some stickers for their eyes and Blue used stickers to decorate his spider. Blue also used wool for his spiders legs – but I must be honest I thought the pipe cleaners worked better.

The string allows the kids to hang the spiders. The first spider that we made did not have any string and Blue got very frustrated as he really wanted to hang the spider on the back of his chair. We also found that adding some beans to the eggs before you sealed the eggs gave it a nice sound – Blue also really liked that.

And since we where making spiders we could not resist making some with our Pom Poms and pipe cleaners. We have done this numerous times before but both kids still enjoy making them.