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Speakaboos

June 2nd 2009 02:38
The Speakaboo website served a great purpose this week as it gave us an online version of The Ugly Duckling to read and view as well as a follow on activity, but the site itself holds an interesting premise.

Coming soon, as the site announces, is a record your own story section which will allow kids and parents to record their own voices reading (or singing!) their favorite story, song, or nursery rhyme. Anything that aids in the improvement and creation of kids wanting to read or listen to stories is a great idea.



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Ugly Duckling Week

May 31st 2009 07:02
This may sound like some poor joke but it is the book to which my daughter has chosen to base all of her crafts and activities this week. Again being a popular story like The Three Liltte Pigs, there is no shortage for either crafts or activities we can do together.

We have various Ugly Duckling and Swan pictures to cut out and glue together, although my favourite is this 3D duck. We are unable to source the plastic eggs although are going to amend it slightly by using small paper cups which should do the trick just nicely!


Paper plate crafts are so easy to create, especially for the little ones, so we are going to do this fun duck paper plate craft with handprint tail. For variety on a similar theme, Dannielle's Place also features a similar paper plate craft.

These cotton ball ducks are just adorable and the ducks in a pond craft from Crayola includes both painting and gluing.

We are going to try our hand at origami - the swan for beginners - is a great place to start and the black and white sock craft is a great way to show the transition from ugly duckling to beautiful swan.

There are a myriad of duck pictures to colour in and the Scholastic site features a printout whereby the children can create their own animal tale.
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Sesame Street Online

May 26th 2009 02:25
The Sesame Street website has some great games and clips for young children. We have visited the site in the past to play online games although it was only during my search for clown related clips that I realised we could actually access small clips aired on the television programme itself.

One of my favourite clown related clips was the one where a clown demonstrated how he removes his makeup (as pictured). The clip itself fascinated me as a young child and my daughter found it equally as interesting, requesting to watch the clip a number of times. Also of interest was a clip about a circus clown family which brought a realism to clowns that we otherwise would not have achieved just by reading and talking about it.

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Send In The Clowns

May 24th 2009 02:59
Admittedly I am not a fan of clowns, preferring to see them at children's parties rather than adorned all over my wall. So the inclusion of Clown Week into our schedule took me a little by surprise to say the least.

Loonette and Molly from the Canadian Series, The Big Comfy Couch, are a particular favourite in our house so at least I had a starting point on which to base our activities. And in particular I love the concept of a 10-second tidy which we are going to incorporate with a clown based cleaning chart.

Craft wise - cardboard megaphones, bow ties and clown hats will be a feature and face painting and juggling will no doubt be a daily occurrence this week.

Focussing on expressions and feelings this week, this blank faced clown drawing is a great place to start as well as the easy paint activity of just drawing simple faces onto paper plates.

First School again came to our aid with numerous clown pictures, simple clown crafts and a number of easy clown related jigsaw puzzles. And we found a number of sites which provided us with counting, addition and pattern activities to build on our number skills.

The Dr Seuss story, If I Ran The Circus, will be introduced this week and the online children's library comes to our aid with The CIrcus Procession and The First Circus. For the younger readers, Cbeebies features an easy story for children entitled Where's My Hat? and a song entitled The Funniest Clown.



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BBC Stories

May 14th 2009 00:50
CBeebies, the children's BBC website, has a great range of stories to watch and read along with and will easily inspire your children.

Currently my daughter's favourite, she enjoys listening to the stories and selecting her own depending on her mood. The stories are excerpts from the children's programs featured on the BBC channel such as The Tweenies, The Story Makers and Charlie and Lola.

It features some well known classics from Little Red Riding Hood, The Princess and The Pea and Dick Whittington to more modern stories like The Three Bears And The New Baby.

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The Three Little Pigs

May 12th 2009 04:39
From one classic fairytale to another, this week's activities surround the ever popular children's tale, The Three Little Pigs.

Being such a popular story, it seems that there is no shortage for inspiration on the web covering all kinds of activities, colouring pages and ideas to complement the story


[ Click here to read more ]
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Jack And The Beanstalk

May 3rd 2009 10:22
My daughter was very excited that today marked the first day of Giant Week aka Jack And The Beanstalk Week. Having changed her mind at the last minute from her original choice of The Ugly Duckling, she had me do some last minute website searching in order to come up with some creative ideas.

Thankfully the BBC had an online adapted story about Jack and The Beanstalk which she enjoyed watching which led us into a discussion about Real or Make Believe. Tina's fun little online game came to our aid just to refamiliarise her with our discussion


[ Click here to read more ]
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The Golden Egg Book

April 24th 2009 09:21
Whilst we may be a little late for Easter, next week's topic is "bunny week" as my daughter now constantly refers. We are basing our activities on or around The Golden Egg Book originally published in 1947, written by Margaret Wise Brown.

The story tells of a little bunny who stumbles upon an egg. The bunny becomes curious as he can hear something moving inside the egg. His imagination runs wild and the impatient bunny tries to shake, push, and even jump on the egg in his attempts to break it. But all his efforts go in vain as the stubborn egg refuses to budge. The mystery unravels when the egg begins to hatch and much to the bunny's surprise, a little duck comes out. The bunny and the duck then become friends


[ Click here to read more ]
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Behaviour Chart

April 21st 2009 13:06
We are using a behaviour chart this week as an inclusion in Barbie Week. It is more of a helpful chart than anything else as we had a discussion about Barbie and the good things that she does for other people and are trying to follow in her footsteps. Everytime my daughter does something helpful we put a star on the respective day - there is room for six so she has plenty of opportunities to help out if she wishes.

Not only does she acknowledge that she is doing something good to assist either mum or dad but she is also learning the days of the week as we go


[ Click here to read more ]
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Barbie Week

April 16th 2009 08:03
Next week my daughter has opted for Barbie Week which has really seen me scratch my brain for ideas and things to do.

We are basing Barbie Week on three golden books published in the mid to late 90's entitled Barbie In The Spotlight, Barbie Soccer Coach and Very Busy Barbie. The lessons these books teach are honesty, fairness and helpfulness so we shouldn't go too far wrong with these titles


[ Click here to read more ]
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Free Online Children's Books

April 13th 2009 02:26
As an expat abroad, I am always searching for new stories to share with my daughter.

The Children's Library is a non-profit organisation offering a wide variety of free paper books to be read online including stories such as Axle The Freeway Cat, Blinky Bill, Cinderella and Mother Goose


[ Click here to read more ]
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Little Mermaid Week

April 9th 2009 02:07
We are taking a theme from one of my daughter's books and are basing activities and stories throughout the week on the theme of her choice. Her choice this week - The Little Mermaid - apt for someone who currently wants to be a mermaid when she grows up!

Doing a quick search on the internet so far we have uncovered sheet music and lyrics for a number of the tracks including Part of Your World and Under The Sea
[ Click here to read more ]
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Play Money

March 17th 2009 00:56
Using play money for maths can make it easier for little brains to understand. If you are unable to buy sets of play money then consider creating your own.

Or failing that, Donna Young has play money already created for maths purposes. You just need to print it out and voila - you are ready to go.

[ Click here to read more ]
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Developing Alphabet Awareness

February 24th 2009 05:40
Starfall is a free site which offers educational tools for alphabet and phonetic awareness as well as stories and related activities.

My daughter enjoyed going through each letter of the alphabet and in particular enjoyed singing the vowel songs which were introduced individually. The activities were varied, the characters engaging and it was both fun and educational.

[ Click here to read more ]
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