ofamily learning together

Mommy wars – why ?

Posted on October 26, 2014 by ofamily

I do not use the word HATE often but I am using it now – I HATE these mommy wars. And I think the main reason is I do not understand why we have them.

I gave birth to my first child naturally – I screamed my way through the labour and even thought I screamed I wanted my second to also be natural but due to concerns he was born via a C-section. I desperately wanted to breast feed both my children but after months of struggling we ended up spending a small fortune on specialised formula. I never thought I would co-sleep with my kids but my eldest was is such pain and the only way I could settle her was if she was curled up on my chest, and even then for the first 18 months of her life she never slept for much longer than 25 mins at a time. I never planned on Homeschooling but my incredible, clever, gentle, kind, friendly daughter finds a classroom very overwhelming and just shuts down.

Lots of the things that have happened after I fell pregnant where not what I had planned but they where a result of me loving my children and doing what we thought was best for them. Our choices are not going to suit other families but why should they ? My children are individuals, they are different to their cousins, their friends, to your kids – don’t we want that ? I am different to my friends and to whoever is reading this. And that is okay. What suits one family will not suit another family. And that is okay. Isn’t the most important thing that we love our children and that we do what we think is best for them ?

Posted in Homeschooling | Tagged home ed, homeschooling, mommy wars, parenting | 3 Comments

The Owl’s lesson and Owl Babies

Posted on October 24, 2014 by ofamily

Pink is still reading the Owl Babies story over and over. So when a recent trip to our local Oxfam store resulted in us finding a copy of this sweet Percy the Park Keeper story called The Owls Lesson and at only 99 p for the book it naturally made its way into our shopping basket. It is a lovely story about how Percy and his friends find a nest with a little bird inside who had not learnt to fly yet and so could not join his family as they migrated. Naturally Percy and his friends set out to teach the little bird how to fly and eventually they succeed and the bird goes off to join the migration.

A lovely little story book which naturally lead to us discussing why birds migrate as well as which animals migrate which ones hibernate and which ones adapt. We had some pictures from 3 Dinosaurs Zoo and woodland packs left over so we cut some of those out and we started diving them onto 3 different pages – one for Migration, one for hibernation and one for animals that adapt. Pink asked me to make her some labels so I quickly typed those up and made her 3 pages with titles on top and she finished her pages. Very quick and simple.

She then reminded me that we still had not done an Owl word poster. So while the kids got back to their new construction play area I started drawing her an owl outline to use. But then an email conversation I had with someone recently came to mind. My friend told me that she hates reading posts where the person says “just draw a simple template”. Apparently my friends said it makes her want to shout at the computer “I can not draw a simple template”. So I thought I would have a quick look on the computer and see how easy it is it find a simple template to use. I found 2 FREE ones that we liked. There are some lovely templates on Activity village – autumn templates – and they have an owl which you could use. Or the ones that we used are actually the colouring in pages on Twinkl for Owl Babies (Part of their Paid for Classic package). I choose these pages as this book is currently one of Pink’s favourite books to read. I cut out the 3 outlines for the 3 Owls – Percy, Sarah and Bill and gave them to Pink for her to start writing her words.

I also gave her the Owl Babies word mat (Part of Twinkl’s paid for Classic package). She actually did not need the word mat but it seems to give her confidence to do the poster by herself.

After she had finished writing her words she sneaked off to get some stickers and added a moon and some stars to her poster. I am loving that these word posters that we have been doing are giving her more and more confidence with her spelling.

A friend asked so here are the very simple hibernation, migration pages

Migrate hibernate Adapt

Posted in Book Ideas, Homeschooling | Tagged children's book, Hibernation, home ed, homeschooling, Migration, Owl Babies, sight words, The Owl's Lesson | Leave a comment

Construction play area

Posted on October 21, 2014 by ofamily

We have a new sensory play area and the kids are loving it.

The blue mat is actually their large art messy mat, my attempt at trying to contain some of the excess sand. I cut open some old Amazon boxes and we emptied out our bean tub into one (our beans are largely a mix of kidney beans, butter beans, red beans and some corn).

I also added some lolly sticks and art match sticks from the art trolley, their wooden blocks, some water beads on a tray, some green shredded paper, some sand, our construction vehicles and a few labels. I am sure that as the kids play with this area they will naturally add a few of their own goodies.

The labels I actually downloaded as part of my preparation for our next book study – The 3 little pigs (we are going to look at the different types of houses that the pigs built). After laminating the words over the weekend I realised a number of the words would fit in with this construction area so I added them to see how many Pink would be able to read. Building site words (Twinkle platinum package)

This morning as soon as Blue woke up he climbed into my bed for his cuddle and asked “can we go play with the diggers?” Still in their PJ’s both kids dived in and had a blast.

And yes some of the sand has managed to creep off the blue mat but that is what hand-held vacuum cleaners were built for (well the one in our house anyway).

Posted in Homeschooling, sensory play | Tagged construction play, home ed, homeschooling, sensory bins, sensory play, sight words, Twinkl | 3 Comments

Children’s Dinosaur books

Posted on October 20, 2014 by ofamily

Over the weekend as my kids where sitting on the couch reading their dinosaur books I realised just how many we have collected. So these are our all time favourite books about Dinosaurs.

Our very first dinosaur book was purchased when Pink was just 2.5 years old and wanted to know the names of the different dinosaurs (I had no idea of what they where back then). We found this lovely book in a little bookstore back in South Africa – Say Hello to the Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow and Tim Warnes. It is not scary, the graphics are brilliant and the words just roll off your tongue, even now whenever my daughter sees a Diplodocus she repeats the phrase from the book – “your Diplodocus I suppose”. I Can not recommend this book enough for little ones. (the picture below is the Triceratops page – the pictures of the Dinosaurs are textured which adds to this wonderful book)

Pinks other favourite Dinosaur fiction story is the book Katie and the Dinosaurs by James Mayhew (affiliate link). We love the Katie series and this one does not disappoint. Katie and her Granny go to visit the Natural History museum in London and while her granny is taking a nap Katie goes exploring and discovers some living dinosaurs in one of the rooms.

Blue being the typical car crazy boy loves the series Dinosaur Zoom, Dinosaur Dig and Dinosaur Rescue books by Penny Dale. We bought these as a set from the bookpeople and it was well worth the money. I think most little boys would love these.

We have a number of dinosaur reference books in our house. Most have been bought second-hand from our local charity shops. Out of all the book we have ever read on Dinosaurs our 2 favourite non-fiction children’s books remain the same. See inside the world of Dinosaurs – an usborne flap book and The Great Dinosaur Search also by Usborne.

The graphics in both books are brilliant and they are both excellent at encouraging discussion and questions (the photos below honestly do not do the pages justice).

There are some picture of Dinosaurs eating other Dinosaurs but nothing to gory for the more sensitive readers. We have had other books that my daughter found too gruesome but these two she enjoys paging through time and time again.

Posted in Book Ideas, Homeschooling | Tagged children's book, Dinosaurs, homeschooling, Ian Whybrow, james mayhew, Katies series, Usborne books | 2 Comments

Witches and Wizards Role playing

Posted on October 17, 2014 by ofamily

The kids are still reading the Room on the Broom every day and have been acting out bits of the story so I thought I would add some extra goodies to their role playing.

We had some witches hats that we bought in Tesco last year and our witches cauldron but we needed the ingredients to go into the cauldron. I bought some cheap creepy crawly toys at Sainsbury’s over the weekend so I gathered those on the table. I also added some glitter pom pom balls and googly eyes to the cauldron. I printed off this great Potion Ingredient price list from Twinkl (gold subscription for just the price list or it is part of the Platinum potion shop role-playing set) but I really wanted Pink to be able to read her list and then add objects to her cauldron.

I could not think of anything suitable until I was packing some toys away and picked up the water bead tub. They have a wet look and wet feel to them so they where perfect for pretend ingredients. I used a mixture of coloured water beads. Lastly I added some word card out of the Potion shop role playing pack.

Blue was really taken with the water beads and the creepy crawlies and loved mixing them all together. For some reason he was not keen on using the cauldron he just mixed his potion on a plastic plate. But it kept him busy for ages so no complaints.