Education | A Mummy Too

Never too young to start reading?

Posted by Emily Leary on 10 May, 2012 8 Comments

When Little Miss J is older, I will teach her to read – JD, 4

I think reading is important. I think it has a part to play waaaaaay before notions of letter recognition and preschool literacy come into view. What do you think?

From birth, both our children had soft picture books that we’d look at together, and from about four months old, we started having reading time, pointing at the words as we read.

JD’s an early reader and I’m torn when it comes to the whole nature/nurture debate, but I do know both kids were able to enjoy reading from very small, so why not? And why save books only for bedtime – why not enjoy them all day long?

This week we received three Little Learners books from Parragon Publishing, each offering different experiences for children aged 0-2 years:

I Can Share has pull out flaps and looks at the simple things children learn to do, such as say hello and goodbye
Night Night shows some of the common items associated with the bedtime routine, with each one clearly labelled
Touch and Feel Animals features a range of farm yard critters, with textured surfaces, such as a wooly sheep’s coat or smooth duck’s beak

Little Miss J (6.5 months) seems to love them. They’re all printed on thick card so there’s no danger of paper cuts and she seems delighted that she’s allowed to grab and play with them at an age where most things are constantly being moved out reach.

She truly engages with them – she looks at the pictures, she touches the pages, she watches my finger trace the words. It’s a lovely experience.

No, I don’t think she’ll be reading on her own next week, but she’s forming an early love and appreciation for books and the written word. How great is that?

Disclosure: we were sent the three Little Learners books free of charge for review. No payment was received. All reviews are 100% honest.

Filed Under: Education | Tagged With: kids, learning, reading, reading age, reading with babies, review

Lulu and the Best Cake Ever

Posted by Emily Leary on 19 March, 2012 4 Comments

Have we ever been to Wagtail Town? – JD, 4

JD’s learning to read. We’re at that tough stage where he can read, he wants to read, but he gets impatient if the story takes too long to progress when read letter-by-letter.

On the other hand, he’s very taken with the signs, symbols, illustrations and punctuation marks that tell you something extra about the words. He’ll point out a question mark and repeat the same sentence, testing out how it would sound if the punctuation changed. He’ll point out speech and thought bubbles, chatting about the differences. And he’ll look at labels and signs, wondering about who they’re aimed at and what the accompanying illustrations might mean.

I imagine it’s all quite normal, but being my first child, I find it fascinating.

Meeting Lulu

With all that in mind, I suspected Lulu and the Best Cake Ever would go down well. It’s a story of a little dog who wants to bake a cake for an upcoming contest. She’s convinced she’ll win but doesn’t, and the story is really about taking part and enjoying the ride.

Since the main character is a French poodle called Lulu who says “Ooh la la!” a lot, I felt obliged to read her parts in an over-the-top French accent, which pleased me greatly.

Unusual layout

It has quirky, bright illustrations and while the bulk of the story appears in standard blocks of text, much of the dialogue takes place in hand-written speech bubbles dotted around the page, while other parts weave through the illustrations themselves.

Lulu and the Best Cake Ever is the kind of book you can read together again and again and find extra things to talk about each time, such as what the expressions on the characters’ faces are telling us and why Lulu ends the story happy despite the initial disappointment.

Good stuff.

Disclosure: We were provided with a copy of Lulu and the Best Cake Ever for review. No payment was received and all posts are 100% honest.

Filed Under: Education | Tagged With: children's literature, learning to read, picture book, reading, Wagtail town

Get green and teach your kids along the way

Posted by Emily Leary on 13 March, 2012 Leave a Comment

Make renewable energy and other green practices a permanent part of their lives – Good Energy

Good Energy shares some tips for helping your kids go green.

As a parent, you’re probably accustomed to thinking a lot about the future. And of all the investments that you make in the future, renewable energy should arguably be one of them. If you’re wondering how clean, green energy can benefit you – and how to get your family on board – here’s what you need to know.

The benefits of renewable energy

By far the greatest benefit of switching to renewable energy is that you get an opportunity to improve the environment for the use of your children and even more future generations. By joining renewable energy companies such as Good Energy in the goal of making the UK completely renewable by 2050, you can have the greatest kind of impact imaginable – a global one.

However, there are other smaller-scale benefits of using renewable energy as well. To start, the use of renewable energy gives you a more stable source of power, meaning that you won’t have to account for wildly fluctuating prices of electricity and natural gas. And with the forecast for these sources of energy maintaining that they will only become more expensive over time, switching to a renewable company will help out when it comes to creating a household budget that the family can stick to.

As an additional bonus to using renewable energy, you will be a part of a movement that’s sure to be the predominant way that we power the UK within the next few decades. This gives you a cutting edge when it comes to advanced energy technology and prepares you and your family for the future.

Talking to your kids about renewable energy

Depending on their age, your kids may not respond well to terms like “renewable” and “sustainable,” but this doesn’t mean that it’s too early to talk to them about green electricity. In fact, the earlier you start to stress the importance of its environmental impact, the more likely they are to make renewable energy and other green practices a permanent part of their lives.

When talking to kids about renewable energy, it’s important to give them information is small bits instead of barraging them with a ton of ways that they can save energy. Try to explain that the way most people get energy now is bad for the Earth, and that there is another, healthier way to get electricity.

Lastly, you can also take steps to make energy education fun for your kids. For instance, introduce them to one new energy-saving habit each week, and reinforce the practice for several days. When they take a step to save energy without being reminded, such as turning off unused lights or shutting doors or windows when the air conditioner is on, give them a small treat to reward them. You can also engage in family activities such as making an energy conservation chart that highlights all the ways that you can save energy around the house or having an energy scavenger hunt to search for places where you can save more energy.

The secret to making a renewable energy lifestyle work for your family is to become fully engaged and make sure that your kids do the same. If you can achieve this, you’ll successfully contribute to a clean energy future.

This sponsored post is brought to you by Green Electricity – see my PR policy

Filed Under: Education |

Do you remember Paddington Bear?

Posted by Emily Leary on 7 March, 2012 12 Comments

I’ve always had great respect for Paddington…he is a British institution – Stephen Fry

Do you remember Paddington Bear from when you were small?

My older sister had a stuffed Paddington Bear, standing at about 1.5 feet tall. He wore wellingtons big enough for my sister and I to borrow, in turn. She carried him everywhere and when my mum was pregnant with my brother, legend has it that Paddington spent some time up my sister’s jumper, and was regular being ‘born’.

You probably best recall him from the animated series that brought Paddington Bear to life. I loved it. Didn’t we all?

Things as distinctive as that stick in the mind – they get bundled up with feelings of childhood nostalgia. So when Paddington Goes for Gold arrived, the first thing I noticed is that the illustrations are new – well, new to me, at least – and my gut reaction? They’re lovely.

Drawn in fine ink and watercolour, they are true to the stories with a gentle humour and plenty of feeling. Paddington himself can only be described as super cute.

Along with the large and engaging pictures is a classic Paddington tale – a visit to a sport day, some farcical misunderstandings and a lesson that it’s the taking part that counts.

JD loves it. Little Miss J loves it. Definitely recommended reading.

Disclosure: We were provided with a copy of Paddington Goes for Gold for review. No payment was received and all posts are 100% honest.

Filed Under: Education | Tagged With: book, Paddington Bear, picture book, review

Mastering phonics

Posted by Emily Leary on 5 March, 2012 8 Comments

Read with Biff, Chip and Kipper – My Phonics Kit

This June will see the introduction of the Government’s new “Reading Check”, which will assess the reading progress of every Year 1 child.

I’m not sure how I feel about children being assessed on a national scale before they’ve even completed their first year of school, but I do like to support JD in his learning (don’t we all?) so I was looking forward to trying out My Phonics Kit from Oxford University Press.

My Phonics Kit

The kit is designed to support children as they move on from recognising simple phonics sounds like ‘a’ and ‘b’ to more complex sounds like the ‘ay’ in ‘say’ and the ‘y’ in ‘cry’. Apparently it’s totally in line with how children learn to read in school.

Since JD is four and not due to start school until this coming September, it’s about a year ahead of where he would be expected to be. Nevertheless, his reading and writing has come on leaps and bounds lately, so we thought we’d give it a go.

In the kit

You may know Biff, Chip and Kipper from story books in the same series. In this kit, there’s a workbook from each of them, as well as a CD-ROM and a progress chart with stickers. That’s quite a lot of material for £9.99.

The phonics texts

In each book is a series of activities around a set of sounds. The instructions are brief and the exercises themselves are a nice variation of story led tasks, matching challenges, colouring fun and tongue twisters. There are also notes for parents to help get the most out of the text.

The CD-ROM

The CD-ROM complements the texts well and allowed to JD to play and listen to the sounds. Admittedly with my support this wasn’t strictly needed, but it was useful to get him to concentrate for longer by promising some time playing on the computer.

The stickers

We used the stickers as we went along and I found that it was a nice way of recording our progress as well as giving JD a small sense of victory with each page he completed.

Overall, I found the kit friendly and useful – not something JD’s yet able to do entirely by himself, but something we both enjoyed doing. We’ll be revisiting it when his reading has come along a little more.

Disclosure: we were provided with My Phonics Kit for review. No payment was received and all posts are 100% honest.

Filed Under: Education | Tagged With: learning, phonics, reading, writing

Learning about birds: activities and a recipe for bird cake

Posted by Emily Leary on 17 February, 2012 4 Comments

JD with his feeder

My favourite bird is the blue tit because it’s the prettiest – JD, 4

Did you know it’s currently National Nest Box Week (14th-21st February)?

To mark the occasion, Nature’s Feast sent us a bird feeder, bird seed and a whole ream of activities so that JD could learn more about wild birds.

Learning about birds

JD and I set up the bird feeder outside but he seemed convinced the birds would swoop in immediately and start feeding.

To give them a bit of time to find the goods, we headed inside and started work on the activities:

Cut & colour birds
Bird watch bingo
Nutty bird facts
My observations (a birds study record)
Common bird species poster

JD had fun colouring in the birds (using the poster to match the colours – he’s a perfectionist), while I read him the fun bird facts.

For example did you know that “if you see a blackbird, with its wings spread and its beak gaping, lying on the ground, don’t worry – it’s probably just sunbathing“? Nope, neither did I.

The activities were also a great opportunity for JD to think critically about why things are the way they are. He asked some great questions such as, “why are birds are different colours?” and “how do birds fly?”

You can download all the activities free if you want to have a go with your little ones.

Bird watching

We’ve been going out to check our bird feeder every day and while the seed is definitely going down, we’ve yet to catch a bird in the act.

Not to be deterred, we made up our own bird cake recipe and put a couple of these on the wall opposite our kitchen window. Our garden should be teeming with birds soon.

How to make bird cakes

For each bird cake you’ll need…

250g of fat e.g. lard or Trex – nothing salty
250g bird seed
2 large plastic cups
30cm length of string
Something pointy e.g. a skewer
A stick or an old paint brush

Instructions

Pierce a hole in the bottom of one cup
Thread the string through and tie a knot on the outside of the base
Put the cup inside the second cup so that the knot is trapped between the two bases – this prevents any leaks
Melt the fat in a pan and allow to cool until it’s luke warm and safe for small hands
Pour in the seeds and stir well
Pour the mix into the cup, trying to keep the string in the middle – some of the fat will rise to the top
Wrap the string around the stick or old brush to keep the excess string out the fat and hold the ‘wick’ in place while the cake sets
Put in the fridge until set
Run under warm water and the cake should come out – you may need to run a knife round the sides
Hang in your garden and wait!

Hope you have as much fun as we did.

Disclosure: A bird feeder, seeds and activity sheets were provided to us by Nature’s Feast free-of-charge for review. No payment was received and this post is 100% honest. Please see my review/disclosure policy for more information.

Filed Under: Days out, Education | Tagged With: activities, birds, chidren, education, learning, national nestbox week, nature, review

5/52: bird watching

Posted by Emily Leary on 2 February, 2012 11 Comments

I can’t see any yet, mummy – JD, 4

It’s been freezing lately, hasn’t it? Frost on the windscreen, lingering smell of de-icer on blueish fingertips. Heck, it’s even been snowing!

But the sun has also been shining – really shining – and JD and I have started a new project to learn all about birds. Here’s JD just after we put out food. I think he expected the birds to swoop in immediately and start feeding. We’ll be out their again tomorrow.

Filed Under: Days out, Education | Tagged With: #366, #52, #photochallenge, #project52, 2012, bird watching, birds, feeding, learning, outside, photography, photography project

Learning about charity with Action Aid

Posted by Emily Leary on 26 January, 2012 16 Comments

There are children so poor they don’t even have computers?! – JD, 4

Last week I attended an Action Aid UK bloggers event. In case you don’t already know ActionAid is one of the UK’s largest international development charities, helping poor children, families and communities in over 40 of the world’s poorest countries – amounting to over 13 million people.

So why did I attend? Well mainly I wanted to find out how I could use this blog to help support the work they do, but also I wanted insight into how I can educate JD (4) about charity and its importance.

I wrote a few weeks ago about Operation Christmas Child and how creating a shoebox full of toys to send to a child in need helped JD to begin to understand the poverty suffered in some parts of the world in the context of a real little boy or girl who would receive the presents.

As I listened to the talks and chatted to other bloggers at the event, I realised that the same goes for adults. We’re much more likely to understand and therefore support a charity if we see where the money is going, and the real individuals it is benefiting.

Of course, if you sponsor a child with Action Aid, the money doesn’t just go to that child, it goes to that child’s community. The pictures and letters you receive are from that child and show the genuine progression of that community thanks to your money and Action Aid’s hard work. The easy excuse of ‘it just goes into a black hole’ just doesn’t apply when you can see wells being built, schools being stocked with supplies and the community you contribute to improving before your eyes.

If you thought small monthly charity donations were meaningless, that makes you think again, doesn’t it?

So here’s the plan: Mark, Little Miss J, JD and I are going to sponsor a child – we’ve signed up and I’ll post again when we have his or her details and at intervals so that you can see how they’re getting on, and what a small donation can help achieve.

As an avid supporter of home education (where you home schooling or not), I’m also going to chart the development of JD’s understanding of other nations. Of poverty. Of war. I’ll share the resources we use, the conversations we have and the lessons we all learn.

Filed Under: Education | Tagged With: #actionaidteaparty, action aid, charity, Mark Watson, sponsorship

My three books – what are yours?

Posted by Emily Leary on 4 January, 2012 27 Comments

If you only ever read one book in your life…I highly recommend you keep your mouth shut – Simon Munnery

Do you remember the enthusiasm you had for books as a child? I do. Starting my new book as soon as it came out of the bag, reading all night, totally engrossed to the end, and then wishing I’d made it last longer. Right through school, books were my very favourite things.

At uni I studied English Literature and my main ‘responsibility’ was to digest three books a week. Proper books. Books by classic authors and literary geniuses. Joy!

Then real life started. Proper jobs. Then children. Proper responsibilities. Over the next ten years, spare time became a thing of the past. Or rather, decent blocks of spare time became a thing of the past. Now my book reading time barely spans ten minutes on a good day.

And so the internet, seductress of the time-poor has reeled me in, giving me the comparatively quick hit of blog posts, short stories and *hangs head* YouTube. My soft-back novels (several thousand of them) gather dust. My Kindle lies neglected. I need to read more books. I really do.

To give me the kick I need, to reignite my passion for books and to encourage me to just read more, here are my…

#3Books

The premise is simple – share the three books you love most from your time as a child, adult and parent.

Childhood

When I was small, my favourite author was Enid Blyton and my very favourite book was The Enchanted Wood, the first of four books in The Faraway Tree series.

It’s about three siblings – Jo, Bessie and Fanny (no giggling) – who discover a tree inhabited by (among others) a man covered in saucepans called, um, Saucepan Man, and another man with a moon-shaped, glowing face called, err, Moon-face.

At the top of the tree is a purple cloud and beyond that is a portal to limitless other worlds. The worlds above the cloud rotate so that it’s anyone’s guess where’ll you’ll end up when you start scaling the tree, and if you don’t come back in time, the worlds rotate again and you’re stuck in that world forever. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

Sometimes the worlds they end up in are nice but sometimes they’re actually rather terrifying. Seriously exciting for a young child to read, although I’m still a little scared of Dame Slap and her school for naughty pixies.

Adulthood

So, so tough to choose a favourite book, isn’t it? But I’m going to go with Slaughterhouse Five. It’s a strange mix of wartime drama, historical account, comedy, autobiography and sci-fi.

Billy Pilgrim is an American prisoner of war caught at the heart of the fire-bombing of Dresden during WWII (as Vonnegut himself was). He lives his life in a non-linear fashion, experiencing his life, loves and death in entirely the wrong order, punctuated by time on planet Tralfamadore, where he is exhibited in a zoo along with another human – a Hollywood movie star – Montana Wildhack.

The style of narrative and plot throw up fundamental questions about the accepted nature of literature, humanity and free will. I’d like to say more about it, but I don’t want to spoil the story. Just read it. You won’t regret it.

Parenthood

Our favourite book to read once JD is curled up under the covers and ready for story time is The Smartest Giant in Town.

It’s by the same genius lady that brought us The Gruffalo and The Snail and the Whale and is so much fun to read. Unlike some of her other stories, it doesn’t rhyme on every line. Instead you have a page or two of prose, and then a little song.

It’s about generosity over vanity. Kindness over skin deep beauty. Friendship over material possessions. In short, it’s a lovely message to go to sleep with. And being a Julia Donaldson book, it’s also beautifully illustrated by Alex Scheffler.

So there you have it, three books that hold a special place in my heart. What are yours?

If you want to take part in #3Books, just write about your favourite book in childhood, adulthood & parenthood, then use the Linky and badge below.

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Filed Under: Education | Tagged With: #3books, adulthood, books, childhood, Linky, parenthood, reading

Operation Christmas Child

Posted by Emily Leary on 18 November, 2011 4 Comments

Do you think she would like a toy? And some crayons? – JD, 4

JD and I spent part of yesterday wrapping a shoebox, filling it with toys, securing it shut with a rubber band and then dropping it off at our local shoe shop. Why? So that it can be shipped off to a child in need in time for Christmas.

Operation Christmas Child is the largest children’s Christmas project in the world, run by the Samaritan’s Purse charity, who have been sending gift-filled shoeboxes to disadvantaged children around the world since 1990.

We read about it on Mummy…Mummy…Mum!‘s blog and got to work, digging a shoebox out from under the stairs and buying the gifts (chosen by JD) from town for just a few pounds. We wrapped, decorated and filled it together and JD enjoyed handing it over at our drop-off point.

Putting the box together with JD was a great experience. It helped him to understand that there are less fortunate children in the world without it being too upsetting, and he really seemed to appreciate the concept of charity.

I know it’s only a small contribution to a huge global problem, but I hope it makes a child’s day a little brighter. We’ll definitely be doing it again next year.

(Note: 18th Nov was the deadline for getting boxes in for this year, but there’s always next year!)