I hate practicing Spelling and Handwriting!

We were asked this week to practice both these things. Mr I hates both of them so we tried a few of these...

Handwriting

Spelling

Lego Maths

Mr I's teachers have sent detail and easy to follow planners throughout the first week of remote learning. We haven't got through everything but to keep him engaged I have adapted some of his lessons. I found this excellent website of ideas for using Lego to teach Mathematics. They have some good ideas for our kinder children too.

Make the first half of a pattern and have your child complete it. Maths is full of patterns. 

Speaking of patterns. Write skip counting patterns on Lego blocks and have children break them apart and put them back together in the correct order.

The same activity can be done with the numbers 1 to 20 for younger children.

Any activity the requires a number line such as working out addition and subtraction equations can be done on this number line.

Lastly, place value is a really tricky concept. We used Lego. When you get to 10 blocks, you join them and move the tower to the tens column. Then record the number of 10s and 1s.

More activities can be found at

Lego Maths

 Catering For The Little One

Someone pointed out to me that you need heaps of activities with little ones as each activity only lasts 5 minutes max! Which is a shame when they take 10 minutes to set up and 30 minutes to clean up!

I attached paper clips to picture cards for Miss A to fish for and match with the letter of the alphabet that the picture starts with. My little man enjoyed fishing for the cards too. They actually worked very well for vocabulary development. 

We stuck stickers on paper and stamped paint with potato stamps. The stickers were great for mine motor development as pealing the backing of the sticker took a while. It was a great activity as it wasn't messy at all.

Unlike the potato stamping! Messy but fun!

Family Time!

Well! We normally talk about our day at dinner but at the moment we all know each other did and our days aren't that exciting! So I thought i would make and try some Conversation Cards at dinner tomorrow. Please change, add to or just print and use. Happy chatting! We are going to try and take turns to speak and also not interrupt each other. These are skills that would normally be practiced at school, kinder and playgroup!

Conversation Cards

Alphabet Antics

Miss A still thinks LMNO is one letter so we are working on the names of letters and alphabetical order. She matched the letters I wrote on the pegs with the letters on the back of the cards. Then we worked on putting the letters in order!

Writing And Maths

I know it is the holidays but if we don't do a little learning now it will be really hard for Mr I to go from doing nothing academic to sitting down and learning with me for some of the day. I'm not anxious about the teaching element of home learning but I am anxious about having time to spend with both the older ones as well as working, maintaining some kind of routine for Mr L and running the house. Anyway I know I'm not unique and will get through it just like everyone else! 

We did dome writing today. Miss A can write her name in capitals but isn't great with lower case. Her task was to glue objects onto her name and start to learn the shape of the lower case letters in her name. 

Mr I and I attempted a very simple narrative. Oh gee! I don't think coffee will be enough today! I knew it would be hard so we made a dinosaur world and acted out a story so when it came to writing the story the ideas were already there.

We also worked on reading, writing, making and for Mr I subtracting numbers.

Miss A rolled the virtual dice, represented the number with Lego and then wrote the number. While Mr I roiled 2 dice, built a Lego tower of the larger number and subtracted the smaller number. He recorded the equation,  

Just Because!

I have had these glasses of coloured water set up for a few days now and Miss A keeps going back to them and asking for Google to play different songs to accompany her. Apologies to all the musicians listening. I think singing and acting lessons are required.

Oh yeah! I have 3 Children!

So a post from 'Mom Life Keeping It Real popped up in my Facebook News Feed. It had 33 photos of homeschooling activities and I recommend taking a look!

I plan on trying out a few and they are fun, seen suit for the ages of my children and also easy to set up.

So I decided to start with Mr L and his colours. He seems to be last on the list of planning activities for at the moment.

I have always felt pressure to teach them things when the were toddlers and quite often find myself talking to a 2 year old about shapes, colours, feelings and trying to promote new language all at once. So I loved the simplicity of this colour activity. In the interest of full disclosure, I did pick the best video!

Palm Sunday

For those celebrating Palm Sunday tomorrow, this is a lovely ideas shared by some of my teaching colleges.

It was a great way to start a conversation about Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

Read More Here

At Least We Are Healthy and Safe!

So the kids loved the treasure hunt so much they wanted to go again! 

Miss A suggested we make cupcakes before we go so we could ice them when we got home. I agreed it was a great idea! 

So after a delightful bonding session we put the cupcakes in the oven. Then the printer ran out of toner and wouldn't the treasure hunt sheets. This wasn't that bad as I printed extra copies yesterday. However they were on orange paper and Mr I wanted them on green! Miss A didn't want to wear a white T-shirt with her bee costume and while I was dealing with them the cupcakes burned and Mr L draw on the wall. 

Anyway we iced the cupcakes, changed the T-shirt and at least the wall now matches the couch!

Treasure Hunt

Today we went on a neighbourhood treasure hunt. It made our daily walk much more enjoyable for the kids. Even 2 year old Mr L got involved pointing out cars and buses as well as "tweet tweets" and "woof woofs"!

Here is the link to my Treasure Hunt but I'm sure there are lots of clever Mummies who could make their own. Share it if you do!

Download the Treasure Hunt worksheet

Chalk Obstacle Course

Today I draw and Obstacle Course with chalk. I gave the kids tasks such as run, do star jumps, hop and skip. They did these and then took turns at following each other and making up their own exercises. 

I let them get bored!

Something I always believed in but needed reminding of at this time. I have been doing lots of activities with my kids, but I think it is important to let them get bored and allow their imagination and creativity show.

For Mr I, this is hard are he likes structure, routine and knowing what comes next!

For Miss A it gives her a chance to express her creativity.

She asked if she could make a rainbow out of beads. The result was a rainbow with clouds and sky!

The boxes I brought the shopping home in were quickly turned into 2 school buses for her toys, complete with number plates!

Mr I was super excited about completing his jigsaw puzzles and I got some work done! A good day all round.

Mr I asked to also make a bead creation but needed ideas so we searched 'Minecraft Bead Creations' on Google and this was the result. 

He also asked me if I could draw dinosaurs and got cross when i suggested he have a go. He needs to know what it will look like in the end. So I thought we would use the shadow drawing activity I saw on Facebok. Simply place your animals in front of a sunny window and trace the shadow.


We also love colouring in at this house and today we coloured with a difference! Coloring with nail palish! Now I'm hiding it so they don't do it unsupervised!

I hate Writing Mum!

Mr I and, in my experience quite a few boys, dislike writing. It can be really scary for children. There is the content, spelling and handwriting and punctuation all to think about at the same time. It would be like us being given a blank sheet of paper and asked to paint a landscape! 

Short sharp activities broken done into steps can help.

We have written a recount, shopping list, card and letter.

Day - Whatever It Is - I can't Even Remember!

Today's Challenge - Mr I's Energy Levels

There must be so many parents who are finding this time even more of a challenge as they are dealing with children with additional needs. This time is tricky for most of us but for some little people it just means a different routine, maybe different people at home with them and a lot of their extra activities such as OT session cancelled. 

We were not getting very far with the pen and paper stuff today so here is the Active Addition Lesson!

Active Addition!

Maths Magic!

Today we had a math lesson. Nothing hard! at the moment as we are not sure exactly what our children need to learn we just worked on number sense. Just counting and knowing how numbers are made up eg, tens and one. Ask your children questions like - What comes before a certain number? what comes after? what is ten more or ten less? 

We played Number Trains which is great for counting from numbers other than 0. It also has different levels so every child will find a suitable level. 

Number Trains

We also played a counting game called Traffic Lights. We used a iPAD 100's chat but a paper one is fine too. Play in partners. Place a green counter where you want your partner to start counting and a red counter where you want your partner to stop. Your partner then says every number between the counters. This game is awesome for different abilities. Eg Miss A does numbers between 1 and 20 and Mr I can do numbers between 60 and 120.

Day 3

Yesterday I was given the choice to work at home. However with fear of this picture becoming a reality I decided to go in. We had a meeting with our chairs spread out around the room. Our teachers are working hard to make sure online learning will run smoothly if needed. I sure this is the case at every school.

How is working from home going for others? Any tips and tricks?

Check out my page with links about dealing with the virus!

https://wymat2020.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Day 2
Hi! How did we all go? 
Remember it is technically the holidays so we didn't go to hard with the schooling today. Fighting was a whole different ball game. The older 2 mastered this in one minute! So... My behaviour management strategy is "The Kindness challenge" Each time they do something kind I gave them a token. We are going to see who fills up their side first. Worked a treat today!