Vin's Learning Journey

We have recently subscribed to the Totschooling newsletter and we think it is such a fantastic site! Vinnie loves when I surprise him with little activities to do during his quiet time in the afternoon each day. Totschooling currently have a brilliant "Summer Activity" pack and I have made and modified some of the sheets from it. I chose a sheet to help with remembering the letters of the alphabet and a counting sheet. We have a sheet of magnetic material with an adhesive side like this -  magnetic sheet  (amazon affiliate link) which I thought would be perfect to use to make some of the worksheets reusable and fun! It only took a few minutes to stick little bits of magnet to the base sheet and then cut out the pieces that would normally get glued on and pop a little bit of magnet on them too. I glued the pieces onto thin card too so they wouldn't tear when the magnets are detached and put the base sheet into a plastic wallet (that all the pieces can be put in t...

4 year olds and preschoolers really love scooping and pouring and experimenting. Some of the things we have found fun for scooping are oats, rice and water beads! We have a big tub that's actually an under-bed storage box but is perfect for putting outside and filling with interesting things. Yesterday we put some water beads in, a couple of cups, a bowl, a spoon and a silicon pastry brush. Vinnie had loads of fun just scooping the beads into the different containers. Then he decided he wanted to try and get the same amount of beads in both cups. He discovered that when you put them in the sun, you could see the shadow of the beads through the plastic cup. Great measuring practice! Then the plastic dinos and some jugs of water were added to the mix! After that we thought maybe some ice cubes would be fun in there! Vinnie thought about whether they would melt. As it was a hot day he thought they would and that the water would get colder. Good bit of science ;) We go...

At 4 years old, our preschooler is not yet too interested in sitting down and doing any writing. He is, however, really interested in reading and in how words are spelled. What has worked brilliantly for this is having a load of magnetic letters on the fridge. Our fridge isn't in the kitchen so it is safe for him to sit there. If this would be a bit hazardous in your house, there are some great magnetic notice boards that would work perfectly for this. (For example this one is also a white board, so you can write words on it for your child to copy with the magnets: 5 Star Whiteboard Drywipe Magnetic with Pen Tray and Aluminium Trim W900xH600mm  - affiliate link) We usually just let him get on with it when he fancies playing with the magnets but as he gets older, we will think of some good games and challenges for him to attempt using the magnets. You can get similar magnets here : Early Learning Centre Magnetic Letters Lower Case  (affiliate link) Ours are a combin...

As a very active boy, Vin isn't that interested in stopping still to do much writing or drawing. For that reason, we try and find ways to get him to concentrate and do fiddly things when we can to help develop his fine motor skills and strengthen his hands for when he starts to be more interested in writing. The other morning during breakfast, he found his own way of doing this - making a cheerio kebab for his lego person! If I had planned an activity like this for him to do, he almost certainly wouldn't have tried it. If your child is a bit like this too, I hope this gives you an idea for something that your active boy or girl may pick up and try without much prompting from you! It's all about finding those moments during the day when they can try doing something themselves without too much input or instruction from a grown up!

Vinnie learns best by doing, and by talking - a lot! Because of this, most of his day to day learning is just done naturally in the course of our days. He is not yet 5 so I anticipate keeping this style of education for a while yet. This afternoon we baked Cheese biscuits. This was a great example of how much we learn just in the space of an hour! First of all I found a simple recipe and copied it into easy to read steps. This was so Vinnie could read the recipe and follow the instructions. We had to weigh the ingredients. The recipe was in ounces not grams but I think this was a bit of a tough concept for Vin to understand so he was in charge of pouring and measuring while I kept an eye on the weights! As he gets older he can be more involved in what the weights mean. Once the dough was made, Vinnie rolled it out and cut it into shapes. Today we just focussed on practice using the knife safely and practicing cutting things. But this could be a great way of cutting differen...

We have made the most of the warm weather this month by spending lots of time outdoors! We drew a chalk obstacle course on the patio We invented lots of fun games with the ball and old plastic bottles We made letter shapes out of trains On a windy day, we tied ribbons to sticks to make our own streamers We made musical instruments We volunteered at the park, weeding flowerbeds and cleaning algae out of the ponds We found a fun printable from Totschooling ( http://www.totschooling.net/ ) to make Vinnie's name out of icecream! We went to Hastings and Vinnie had a go on a Go-Kart We did lots of experiments with chalk and water We made our own Dentists Vinnie made some interesting monsters out of leaves, rocks and sticks We had fun with sticker books We did a wildlife survey at the park and saw some beautiful dragonflies and damsel flies We did a trail at the museum and learned about birds We found a lovely jigsaw at the charity shop and Vinn...

For June's theme, Vinnie chose Super Mario! We played some Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart We made a Bowser mask - scary! We found a Mario memory game to print out: http://halegrafx.com/printables/free-printable-super-mario-bros-memory-game/ We stuck it to some cardboard and cut it out. We made a Mario theme Café, "The Kirby Café" This was great for Vinnie to practice his spelling while telling mummy what to write on the menu, and lots of adding and money practice too! Super Mario came to eat at the café too We made a poster with lots of Mario bad guys on. Vinnie matched up the pictures with the names and glued them down. He did this all on his own! We found a picture of Mario to copy, and Vinnie drew him and then displayed the picture on the wall