A bit of gloopy, messy fun

At school on Monday, I was with a Year 0 class and we made gloop. The purpose for making the gloop was to write instructions of the process afterwards (and to let the kids play with it in the afternoon).

It was so easy and fun that I decided to make it with the girls. Ella and I made it this morning while Faith was at kindy.

2 C Cornflour

1 C Water

Mix around

Play

You can add food colouring, but we were doing this inside so we left it white

And Seffy watched us while munching on Burger Rings

 

A cool little activity for us to do together. I'm sure we'll do it again when the weather's nicer and we can play with it more freely out on the driveway

Educational Games

 I find the teacher in me comes out every so often as a Mother. I like to wear my teacher/Mummy hat at the same time. Short of sitting down and teaching Maths, Reading and Writing, I do try to cash in on opportunities that come up in an authentic and natural way. That's always the way kids learn best and it's so much less stressful than sitting down and forcing learning upon someone. Here's some games/activities we do to 'feed our brains' cause sometimes they get hungry just like our tummies do (or so I tell the girls)

Faith unknowingly started an alphabet game last week. She was  in the back of the car on a kindy run and she started going 'b b b braces, that starts with b aye Mum'. And that's the game. We decide on a letter and take turns saying words that begin with that letter. She's getting quite good at it and I'm sure it will help her with reading/writing/spelling.
b b b ball
b b b bathroom
b b b balloon
b b b brown
b b b bed

One we do at the dinner table is count the things on our plate, like 3 carrots, 2 brocolli, 3 pieces of chicken and 2 potatoes. And if we're extra clever we add them altogether. That was such a hard concept to start with, and 'counting on' can be a hard thing for kids into junior primary, but Faith's got it now....yeeyah!

Memory Game - look at objects, cover them and then recall what was there. I love seeing their minds straining to recall what's been covered. I'm sure I can see the cogs ticking....

Numb3rs - How many legs on a chair? 4
                 What's Grandie's address? 18
                 How old's Mum? 29
                 How many sleeps until Church day? 2

Groups -goat, horse, cow, sheep are all alike because they're farm animals
              car, bike, bus, truck, scooter are all alike because they've got wheels
              milk, cheese, ham, eggs are all alike because we keep them in the fridge.
               jacket, socks, shorts, t-shirt, dress are all alike because they're things we wear

I love it when we find something new to do that's educational and fun. One of those things at the moment is colouring in
                

This was the best effort Ella's given to colouring in (on paper at least!)

Learning ABCs

A few weeks ago I'd started thinking about how to help Faith learn how to recognize the alphabet. She's got her name on lock and she knows Ella's name, and Mum and Dad. Apart from that I felt a little lost about how to help her learn all the other letters. (yes I'm a teacher but I never taught 5 year olds learning to read)

Then Grandma and Grandad Heke left some Alphabet cards at our house last week and they're just what I didn't know I needed. We practise them every night as part of our bedtime ritual/rigmarole. Faith's doing really well and Ella's a star as well.

Ella just has to say what she sees in the picture. Faith has to say for example:

Umbrella U U Umbrella U is for Umbrella.

I'm so pleased with how she's getting better and better every night (and not getting sick of doing them)

Then we move onto scriptures. We're onto our 4th round of the Book of Mormon at the moment and they're getting quite good at re-telling the storyline

This week we've been playing this game in the lounge before prayers and the girls absolutely love it. I'm just so impressed that after having it for about 25 years this game is still in such good condition and has no pieces missing. I'm struggling to keep all pieces accounted for and we've only had it for about 4 days!!!