Organisation

Our house can range from total chaos to semi-presentable, depending on How many people have been in the house for the and how long until we are expecting visitors.

Recently our house went from a three adult, two child home to a two and two. With the loss of that extra adult and his stuff, came the realisation that our house really is big enough for all of us, but that it required a great deal of reorganisation to make it a functional family home.

We have slowly begun the journey, starting with the play room. The tubs stay organised most of the time and the boys are learning to put things back where they came from and to play with one tub at a time and putting it away BEFORE pulling out another. I still have a bit of work to do in organising the shelving though...

One thing many of my friends ask is how do I have time to make/print all the activities for the boys. Simply, I do it at night when they are tucked up in bed. Sometimes I stay up past eleven, trawling Pinterest/blogs on my phone searching for new ideas and saving them, ready to be explored further in the morning.

BUT, I am not a morning person and the late nights probably don't help that. We get out the door on time, but usually there are a few fights on the way. So usually, all those things I should do in the morning like breakfast dishes and washing gets put off until later- in the day or the week. I know I should sweep my floors or wipe the benches or scrub the bathrooms at night, but the motivation to clean is just not there.

So I have decided to take up The Organised Housewife's 20 days to organise and clean your home challenge. Hopefully this will help to get my home looking and feeling like we love it. And hopefully after it is all finished I will be able to keep it that way!

And for N

My littlie N does not get forgotten in all of this. He is a smart little cookie too, however his attention span is pretty much that of a butterfly. He likes to flit from one task to another, sometimes staying for a while, others last around a minute.

It makes it hard to keep him entertained sometimes but also means I have taken it as a personal challenge to find activities that keep his attention for at least ten minutes. Many of the activities I have found are Montessori-inspired. I used these activities quite a lot with C before he started school and started showing more of an interest in traditional work books and activities. That's not to say he doesn't enjoy the Monte stuff still! And he loves to "teach" N how to do the different activities.

A lot of my ideas are found on Pinterest or on my friend Kate's blog What do you do all day?. Kate is a wonderful mother and an inspiration to me! She has two littlies whom she spends countless hours setting up Monte-inspired and creative activities for. Check out the blog and you too will be inspired!.

So today N was on a bit of a rampage, pulling out, or attempting to, every draw in our play room in an attempt to find something that would take his fancy. I quickly intervened as he was about to pull the third large tub onto the floor and found some pompoms which I know he adores. I quickly set up the following activity:

I usually use a bigger tray, but this was a lot quicker to get with N tugging on my leg :)

So the aim of this activity is to move the pompoms from the container to the bowl using the tongs. It is great for teaching left-right movement and also for giving those little hand muscles a work out, both of which are important for future writing.

So N started off with the tongs, and I helped him to squeeze the tongs around the pompom, lift the tongs, move to the bowl and release the tongs. I repeated this three times, and then watched him try to do it, reminding him to squeeze and release. He soon got the hang of it.

Of course, being N, this activity lasted one round, before he decided to change the rules. He ran over to his play food tub and grabbed a wooden spoon, which he then used to transfer the pompoms again. Again this works on the left-right movement and also holding a spoon correctly to ensure the pompoms don't roll off.

N is one of those kids who likes to eat with utensils, in fact would prefer to eat a sandwich with a fork then his hands, so this was not too challenging for him. The challenge was getting him to pack away- something we are STILL working on!

This is a great activity for the littlies but just remember to keep an eye on them so none of the pompoms are accidentally inhaled or swallowed.

School Readers!

Yay, so finally some good news from the school front. It turns out that C's teacher assessed C last week. I'm not sure exactly what areas they tested him, but she assured me that he did really well on everything they did with him. So after talking with the deputy principal, they are going to do some extension work with him at school.

One of the areas they assessed him in was his sight words. C has always been a bit hit and miss with sight words, sometimes he will see a word once and that's it, he has it, other times he can see it twenty times, including on consecutive pages of a book and still struggle with it. So I was quite shocked when she gave me a list of 20 words and said he only got four wrong. I was so proud of him! The test was for whether they would allow him to take home pre-primary readers, something we have asked about before as he has mastered all the level appropriate books we have in the house. He had to get 100% correct to be allowed to have them- the same rule applies for pre-primary students- so it is now a case of teaching him those four words so he can get the books.

In case you are interested, here is the list:
did                are             is                 I
the                can            get               look
like               at               in                 up
on                see             my               you
we                to              here             have

I don't know if this is a typical list, or if it is just created by his school.

So when I got home, I used some blank flash cards (click to download a blank flash card sheet) I had left over and wrote out all of the words.
I had already guessed the ones he didn't know but figured, the more practice the better. We played "Jumping Jack Flash". It is just a game where I lay the cards out on the floor- one to each tile, and C must jump on the tile with the correct word.

We also played a board game type activity where the cards are set out in a trail on the tiles, and used our over sized dice to move around the "board". The player must read the word correctly or they go back to their original space. I let N play this game too with a modified rule- he must tell me the beginning sound of the word.

They are just a couple of little ideas to make flash cards a little less boring. Having said that, we still do the occasional flash card session. They are very handy when in the car- while hubby is driving of course- and if you stick to less than 20 cards, they seldom get bored before you are finished. Oh, and remember to shuffle the cards every time so they do not learn the order of the words!

Hopefully, by this time next week we will have one of those little readers I remember loving as a child in his hot little hands!

Have fun and love to learn!

Verbs

One of the things we find ourselves correcting most with C's grammar is his use of tense with verbs. It is one of those hard topics because there are so many verbs and quite a few that 'break the rules' as C likes to put it. So one day after correcting him on the same word a couple of times we decided we would learn about verbs.

"Verbs are doing words" I said. I remember that from Year 3, there was a poster on the wall. I don't remember when I was actually taught it, I just remember that poster. "BUT.... there are different tense for verbs, so different words for the same action, depending on when we are talking about". So then as a nice general rule, we settled on 'yesterday', ' today' and 'tomorrow'.

We began to write a list, and I figured after a couple he would get bored and go back to playing Lego, but one and a half pages later, we are still adding to the list.

He would say for example "run is a doing word" and I would then say "Yes, so yesterday I ......" and he would reply "ran", "today I am ......", "running", "and tomorrow I will .....", "run" and I would type the words in.

We talked about the 'ing' and 'ed' suffixes and how sometimes the words 'break the rules' and change in past tense.

Here is the table we used and a blank copy too. C has a copy in his Language file where he can add words as we encounter them.

Verb Tense Blank

Verb Tense List

I hope you have as much fun exploring verbs as C and I have.

SO the first installment...

So it has taken me a few days to work out the details of just how to do what I want to do and post the documents for you are to download, but hopefully with the help of Google, this will be my first official resource post!

Oh and a quick heads up, I dont claim to be the best at any of this, and I am certainly learning as I go too. I am not particularly good at english (as my spelling and grammar will show) but I hope you can get past that and enjoy the posts and use the resources to help your little ones. To add an extra bit into the mix I am currently typing this with my 21month old on my lap yelling in my ear "look mummy, a '1'", "look mummy, a 'o'". Hehe the joys of life with a toddler.

Ok, so here goes.

C does one lesson of Reading Eggs most days, he loves it and is able to mostly work independently, allowing me to spend some time working with N on more hands on activities.

So while N was having his nap, we did a couple of little activities to get him in the mood for learning. Today was a couple of ideas I spotted on pinterest and whipped up last night.

The first was a missing number activity, where I had a 5x10 board with one number on each line, to help him. Of course you could adjust this to add more or less numbers, change the numbers shown, maybe even leaving out all the odd or even numbers, certain multiples etc. I am still working out how to upload excel and word docs so at the moment all I have to offer is the PDF, one that is blank, and one that has the numbers I used today. But feel free to recreate it in excel, or use the blank one and add your own numbers. oh and I have highlighted every second box to show even numbers.

Missing Numbers Board Blank

Missing Numbers Board 

The second was a numbers/colours activity. I created a graph on which C had to colour in a certain number of boxes for each colour. This is great for learning the names of colours and reading, counting and of course learning to colour inbetween the lines (something C is still learning). I have left the numbers blank at the bottom so you can fill in your own numbers and change them each time you do the activity. Click on the picture to download.

I will try to post a photo of C doing the activity or his finished product so you can see how he has used it and adapt it for your use :)

Oh and most of the time I print and laminate the sheets I make. They can then be used over and over, not just by C but by N to.

So I hope you find these usefull and I will endevour to add more of the resources as I go. And feel free to comment if there is any questions.

Us and why

My oldest son is smart. I don't say that to brag, he just is. He is also very uncoordinated -he gets that from me. I want to work on both. The first one is much easier for me to help with so most of the second one goes to daddy.
My younger son is also smart, but unlike his brother, he got that super-sporty gene from his daddy.
Since C began talking, we have worried about his education. My husband is a teacher, in the public system, and so we have seen first hand how kids, both gifted and not-so, can fall through the cracks.
C is currently at a public kindy, 2 and a half days a week. He goes to socialise as we have been told, and he is "taught" things he has known since before he reached 18 months. C has an insatiable appetite for learning. He has a terrific memory, and seems to just get stuff. He isn't a genius, but he is bright. So we have found ourselves teaching him at home, encouraging his love of learning and preparing him for full time school.
I am not a Nazi, I don't make a four year old sit for hours on end reciting his times tables. We simply supply the resource and he takes it upon himself to learn. Some days he does 10 mins, other days he will spend a couple of hours at a time happily doing "school". It is up to him and more often than not he will choose to do a bit of school.
So that's where this blog comes in- the resources. I have found it nigh on impossible to find resources that are both aimed at Australian students, and don't cost a fortune. Next year he starts at a private school, we don't have the funds to be buying homeschooling packages that he may or may not use. He enjoys all my little hand-made resources, and so hopefully so will other kids. I find ideas on the web or through necessity watching him learn of following a tangent of some conversation we are having that is full of questions. and then when my cherubs are tucked up in bed I tap out the next sheet ready for tomorrow.
Oh and what about my youngest N? He is at that wonderful age- not quite two, exploring the world and learning from all the Montessori inspired activities that I have kept from when C was that age. He will get a few mentions along the way, he loves to be just like his big brother!
So please join me, feel free to use my resources with your little ones and if you have any questions, ask away :)