Spelling – Look, Cover, Write and Check

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

The Look, Cover, Write and Check spelling method is an easy activity for learning new spelling words. First of all you need to write the list of words to learn onto a piece of paper – then you simply look, cover, write and check.

Look
During the ‘look’ stage get the child to look at the word. They should really study the word - taking the time to say it out loud, looking at the whole word, saying the letters aloud and looking for identifiable patterns or shorter words inside the bigger word. During this step they are looking for anything that will help commit the word to permanent memory. Before moving on to the next step encourage your child to close their eyes, picture the word and to try spelling the word from memory and then opening their eyes to check accuracy. Looking at the word one last time before attempting to spell it on their own can be of help.

Cover
Now they need to ’cover’ the word; they can use their hand, a bookmark, or another piece of paper so that the spelling is hidden from sight.

Spell
The ‘spell’ step is self-explanatory – they need to write the word down on the paper tying to recall the patterns that they saw in the look stage.

Check
The final step is to ‘check’ the accuracy of what they have written. This is done by comparing it letter by letter to the original. If they use both hands they can simultaneously point to each of the letters in the word to make sure they notice any mistakes. If there are mistakes, the process should be repeated from the beginning until the word is spelled correctly.

Top Tip
We found using the Reception Key Words Whiteboard a really useful tool for the learning this set of words using the look, write, cover, spell method. We worked one row at a time and practicing on the whiteboard saved having to re-write a new list each time we wanted to practice.

Posted in Literacy | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Learning Styles: Auditory

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

This final part of our series on learning styles looks at auditory learning - while most children will have a visual learning style or a kinaesthetic learning style as their preferred method of learning, there are children who learn best by listening.

Children who are auditory learners often:

  • have strong language skills
  • have ability to remember conversational details
  • often struggle to create meaning from written information until they can hear someone speak it
  • can be highly distracted by extra noise in the classroom
  • use active listening skills to interpret: tone of voice, speed, pitch and other nuances of speech in order to make meaning process information in the order it
    is presented
  • think in words and verbalises concepts
  • spells words accurately and easily, as they can hear the different sounds – so tends to learn phonetically rather than through ‘look and say’ techniques
  • have excellent memory for names, dates and trivia
  • are musically talented
  • are eager to participate in class discussions
  • have difficulty staying quiet - will think or hum outloud
  • can repeat multi-step verbal directions and fulfill them accurately
  • enjoys plays and dramas

Learning activities that encourage learning through auditory processing are:

  • getting children to dictate a story to you and watch while you write / type it out
  • reading aloud together and taping the session for later play back
  • listening to audio books
  • talking through and discussing concepts and information about why things happen
  • listening to information repeatedly – playing games with dictaphones
  • playing phonics games that involve saying the syllables, blends, digraphs and phonemes rather than simply matching e.g. making silly sentences in Slug in a Jug
  • singing nursery rhymes and number rhymes
  • creating plays and opportunities to tell stories (possibly using puppets)
Posted in Education | Tagged | Leave a comment

Pancake Day

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday and this means it’s Pancake Day – so a blog post about pancakes!

Shrove Tuesday is the feast day before the first day of Lent, the period of fasting that traditionally precedes Easter. Pancakes would have been used as a way to use up all of the eggs and fat in the house before observing a period of fasting. These days very few people actually fast during Lent (although the tradition of giving something up for Lent still
survives) but that doesn’t stop us from enjoying pancakes!

Here’s a basic recipe for the pancakes, and some ideas for fillings:

Pancake Batter
225g plain flour
pinch of
salt
2 eggs
400-500ml milk

Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the middle of the flour and add the eggs. Next take a whisk or fork and start whisking the eggs, gradually incorporating the flour as you go. Then start adding the milk gradually, beating well and making sure that all of the flour is mixed in. Stop when the batter has the consistency of single cream and leave the batter to stand, covered and in a cool place, for 30 minutes-2 hours.

To cook the pancakes, you’ll need a non-stick frying pan. Get the pan hot and then turn the heat down to medium. Add a little oil, melted butter or lard, making sure that the whole base of the pan is greased. Give the batter a stir and then spoon some into the hot pan (use a ladle or small cup to make it easier) and immediately turn the pan from side to side, swirling the batter around to cover the base of the pan evenly. You can tip any excess back into the bowl of batter.

Cook on the first side for about 30 seconds – you can check if the underside is cooked by lifting an edge with a fish slice or palette knife – and then flip over to cook the second side. If you’re feeling brave, why not have a go at tossing the pancake?

The second side will only take a few seconds to brown, and then you can slide the pancake out to a plate. Either serve each pancake as it cooks or stack them on a plate with greaseproof paper in between each pancake if you prefer. Keep them warm in a low oven or over a pan of simmering water, with a tent of foil over them.

Please make sure children are well supervised when
near the cooker / hot oil and frying pans.

The Toppings
A sprinkling of caster sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice
Jam
Chocolate spread
Sliced Banana with ice cream
Golden Syrup
Chopped ham and grated cheese
Or use ‘ice cream sauces’

So – learning and pancakes…

Making pancakes – this involves many fine motor skills; pouring /scooping the flour and milk, cracking the eggs, stirring the batter, ladling the batter into a pan, flipping the pancake and then squeezing lemons, sprinkling sugar or spreading on syrup or chocolate spread. Not forgetting the numeracy skills of measuring / weighing / counting the pancakes (or cutting them up to practicing fractions).

Click to enlarge

If you don’t like pancakes you can always have fun making pretend pancakes by rolling out play dough or cut out paper pancake shapes and flip pancakes in a toy frying pan to your hearts content! You could even hold your own pancake race.

Or celebrate pancake day by colouring this FREE pancake and pan picture.

Shrove Tuesday is also well known for Mardi Gras carnivals so you could get creative and making flambouyant hats and masks – sticking on coloured feathers, shiny paper shapes and sprinkling with glitter – the brighter the better. When you’ve finished bang drums, shake shakers and jingle bells and do a carnival dance!

Posted in Motor Skills | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Review: Slug in a Jug

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

We went to Grandma and Grandpa’s at the beginning of half term and they have a different selection of games to us – amongst which are the favourites Pop to the Shops and Slug in a Jug. Unfortunately the money from Pop to the Shops has got muddled into the till whilst playing shop so Slug in a Jug was the game of choice.

Slug in a Jug has all the fantastic features of an Orchard Toys game designed to teach children phonics in a fun way.

There are several different suggested games in the box but we play the simple matching pairs game where you have to find two words that rhyme e.g. frog and dog or moon and spoon or bed and shed and then when you have found them make a silly sentence using the two words e.g. I slept in the bed in the shed. This game is a favourite with Middle Littlesheep as literacy games excite him – he loves looking for the baboon as it makes him laugh.

One of the great things about this game is that the words are printed so that the rhyming part is in a different colour text (with each rhyming pair having a different colour e.g. king, balloon, bear) so children who are not yet secure in reading can still spot the matching pairs. As well as this Slug in a Jug also contains rhymes that are spelt the same there are also rhymes with different phonic patterns that make the same sound e.g. snail and whale which is great for reinforcing that words don’t need to look the same to sound the same.

We love this game and I’m sure that you will too!

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Happy Hama Beading

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

We spent yesterday Hama beading following the Littlesheep’s completing some at a friends house on Thursday.

If you haven’t come across Hama Beads before they are small plastic coloured beads that you place onto a peg board and then iron over to melt them slightly and stick them together. You can buy Hama beads from lots of different places but we got ours from Play Merrily.

Hama beads are a fantastic fine motor activity. Picking up the beads and placing them onto the board helps children develop a pincer grip which needed for the tripod grip for writing.

The filling of the peg board also helps develop a child’s concentration span.

Hama beads can also be used for a bit of colour sorting (the Littlesheeps found that having pre-sorted colours made it easier to complete their creations and reduced frustration when they couldn’t find the one they wanted.

The patterns you create on the board can be as complex or as simple as you like, you can use your imagination to complete your own pattern on the board, create a picture or practice following instructions by copying from a picture / illustration (if you look at BeadMerrily there is lots of inspiration there for you – I love the idea of making bunting that was posted for the Royal Wedding but that will be just as good for the Jubilee!).

The Littlesheeps are at various levels of exploration with Hama Beads. Littlest Littlesheep can completely cover a board with different coloured beads or a single colour whilst the older two are able to copy patterns. We searched for inspiration to fit their current interests on the internet (there is plenty there).

Middle made a (pacman) ghost and a Lightening McQueen with a little bit of help and then made himself a star and sea urchin from Mario Brothers. Biggest Littlesheep is completing some Angry Bird creations (so far he has done the blue bird and two pigs – small and king pig) and also did some free designs himself.

As you can see from the picture they went a bit Hama crazy today (and are already thinking of designs for tomorrow)… I think they have caught the Hama Bead bug (I won’t mention that I actually bought the beads and peg boards that they used today back in November 2010 and they have only played with them once to make coasters as Christmas presents!).

We have now run out of black and mint beads so Angry Birds are on hold until we get our new supplies (which might happen to also include some other shaped boards which should be fun for the Easter holidays).

Posted in Activity Ideas, Motor Skills | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Coventry Transport Museum

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

So following yesterday’s post about Kids in Museums we took the Littlesheeps to Coventry Transport Museum to see what we could learn whilst out and about.

Here’s how we got on…

The museum gets off to a good start as entry is free (but you should be aware that there are collecting tins and lots of slots you can put money in e.g. Postman Pat Van ride, Brum ride at various points round the museum).

This week was half term so there was also a trail around the museum (£1.50 for the sheet for children 5+ and £1 for the sheet for children under 5) – if children completed this they got a sticker… We bought one sheet for the three of them to share and the staff were happy to give them all a sticker at the end which was good as whilst the trail was fantastic for keeping them interested I don’t think I’d have enjoyed getting them to complete it if I’d paid £4.50 for the privilege!

To fit with the theme of the temporary exhibition (Wheels & Waves – more about that later) the children had to find ten cut out surfboards around the museum and answer a question about the nearby exhibit – things like what year it was made, how much it cost, what is the top speed plus drawing car badges and mascots. The sheet was of interest to all three of the Littlesheeps (the surfboards were just at the right height for Littlest to spot and the bigger two filled in the sheet) and kept them interested in continuing round the museum.

The museum has lots of ‘hands on activities’ – for example tipping the bus to see just how far a double decker can lean without falling over, pressing buttons to make different lights come on and a demonstration of how an engine works – these all engaged the boys well. There were also various colouring / activity tables throughout the museum for children do complete with prompts of things to draw / rubbings to complete but at a quick glance these seemed lacking in paper (not that the Littlesheeps were interested as they were far to busy looking for surfboards at cars).

There is a video display through the history of car making in Coventry but it was quite hard to focus on with all the people and other noises. We listened to bits of it but didn’t really manage to keep up because we spent different amounts of time with various bits of the exhibit. The Littlesheeps were very interested in the car factory clocking on machine, the conveyor belt and the blitz experience (which is very loud).

There is another video display around the Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC exhibition and you can go on a simulator for an additional charge (we decided that the Littlesheeps were a bit small). Then there is a room of model vehicles, an exhibition about the closure car factories in the city, a room with the history of the bicycle and another full of motorbikes.

Last of all there is the temporary exhibition area in the foyer – at the moment it is ‘Wheels and Waves’ with the history of surfing and a range of different camper vans, surf boards and other surfing paraphenalia. The boys found these really interesting exhibits – perhaps because a lot of these vehicles are ones that they had seen ‘on the road’ rather than just as museum exhibits.

We had a great low-cost afternoon and we all learnt something new whilst having fun – did you know that the first automatic traffic lights were installed in Wolverhampton in 1927 and the first roadside petrol pump was in Shrewsbury in 1913?

Posted in Activity Ideas, Reviews | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Kids in Museums

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

I’ve been following Kid’s in Museums on twitter for a while and whilst I was trying to work out what to do during half term I thought I would read more about them and what they are striving for.

Kids in Museums is a charity that works to make museums open and welcoming to all families. They have developed the Kids in Museums Manifesto and the Family Friendly Museum Award have been developed to encourage and guide museums and galleries across the country to make family visits engaging and enjoyable.

Over 300 museums have pledged their support to the Kids in Museums Manifesto 2012 – 20 ways to make a museum family friendly which lays out the expectations for musuems to be welcoming to children and families and suggest ways that this can be achieved. Things like being flexible in family ticket pricing and events because families come in all shapes and sizes, providing ‘hands on’ exhibits rather than saying ‘don’t touch’, providing trails / guides for families to enjoy together and displaying things low enough for children to see with simple explanations. It also suggests making sure that there are plenty of good toilets with room for pushchairs and baby changing facilities and providing healthy, good-value food, high chairs and unlimited tap water in cafés.

For more information on Kids in Museums visit their website http://www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk/ or follow them on twitter http://twitter.com/kidsinmuseums

Museums are great places for helping children learn and all children should be encouraged to visit. I’m pleased to say that some of our local musuems are listed as supporting the campaign so we’ll go and have a visit and I’ll let you know how we get on and what we learn. Please comment and add your suggestions for good museums to visit too.

Posted in Activity Ideas | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Featured: Act One Parties

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

Again with a slight deviation from the original plan for our ‘Featured on Littlesheep Learning’s blog‘ series about children’s extra-curricular activities we have a post by Joanne McGowan from Act One Parties. Joanne saw our request for features and asked if she could tell us about how children learn at her parties (and if you are local to her do check out her holiday events – sounds a lot of fun to me).

I’m Joanne McGowan from Act One Parties.  I specialise in creating themed active parties for children in Surrey, Berkshire and Hampshire offering a variety of activities such as treasure hunts, drama adventures, active games, dancing etc.  New for 2012 I have started offering craft parties too and I also organise regular holiday events to keep your little ones occupied on those long weeks off.

Parties are all about fun right?  Well of course but I am also constantly amazed at how much learning also goes on a party without the children even realising.  Parties are a great way of enhancing a child’s social skills.  For the birthday child there is learning how to greet people and how to cope with a lot of attention and for guests there is understanding that at times the world is not all about them, something that is not always easy when you are small, but that their friends can take centre stage and they can have just as much fun allowing this to happen.

At my parties I try to avoid elimination games as the children can get bored very quickly but parties are a good way to reinforce the concepts of taking turns, sharing and winning and losing – all important skills to carry our little ones forward in life.

Food is an area that parents worry about at parties.  Will the children just choose all the
unhealthy treats?  In my experience I am always pleasantly surprised at how balanced children’s choices are, they will always choose some fruit and veg along with the treats so it is a lovely way to reinforce a balance diet and get children used to making independent
choices.  It also provides an opportunity for children to get used to eating and enjoying food in a social environment.

It is often said that the best way to learn is through fun and you can’t have much more fun than at a party.

To find out more:
Website: www.actoneparties.co.uk
Phone: 07956 182 488
Facebook: www.facebook.com/actonecreativeandactiveparties
Twitter: @actoneparties

Don’t forget - If you run a children’s activity and would like to be featured on our blog please get in touch.

Photo credit: Kerry J Photography
Posted in Featuring | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Book Giving Day

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

Today 14th Feburary has been declared International Book Giving Day with Zoe who writes Playing by the Book and Amy who writes at Delightful Children’s Books encouraging readers, bloggers, authors and everyone who loves books to get involved by donating a book (or more) to a child (or more). It can be a new book, or a gently used one the important thing is giving a book to someone else.

If you want to join in here are some suggestions:

  1. Give a book to a friend or relative
  2. Sort a box of children’s books that your children have outgrown and pass them on to children who might not have books (your local Children’s Centre / school or nursery will probably know of families who could benefit)
  3. Leave a book or two in a waiting room or family friendly café to wait for a child to find it – you could leave a little note encouraging it to be taken away and read.

I took the opporunity to raid my stash of pre-loved books to give to the Littlesheeps – I have a feeling they will like these two Yuck books picked up at a bargain price from a NCT nearly new sale as they seem to be full of ‘boy humour’ – the yuckier the better!

Later today I’m also going to have another bookcase sort out and box up some loved but outgrown books to donate to others.

Littlesheep Learning will give a copy of every book sold today to a local school, children’s centre or hospital (as appropriate) – so why not take a look at our range of books and buy one with the knowledge that your book will have helped others have books.

Incey Wincey Spider Book

You can find more information about Book Giving Day on:
Twitter: @bookgivingday
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BookGivingDay
Website http://bookgivingday.blogspot.com/

Posted in Literacy, Littlesheep Learning, Special Offers | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Learning Chores: Laying the Table

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Elaine (Littlesheep Learning)

In the Littlesheep household we eat our meals at the dining room table which means laying the table every dinner time – for anyone who doesn’t know what I mean by ‘laying the table’ I mean setting out the cutlery for each person.

The Littlesheeps have been encouraged to help with this activity for as long as I can remember but does this activity meet the ‘learning chore’ grade?

Here are some of the ways that I think it can…

  • Laying the table is a great time to learn the household object labels (knife, fork, spoon, mat, glass, plate etc)
  • Laying the table gives the opportunity for incidental counting – how many people are here for dinner, how many forks do we need, if you’ve got two spoons how many more do you need?
  • Carry cutlery gives the opportunity to discuss how to carry knives safely
  • Lastly, encouraging children to handle cutlery helps them develop their fine motor skills!

For children learning to set the table this laminated table mat is a great learning aid to help them complete the task independently.

The shaped places for the knife, fork and spoon also help them to set the place setting and sort their cutlery to the correct hands.

So as a learning chore – I think that laying the table makes the grade!

Posted in Self Help Skills | Tagged , , | Leave a comment