Blog and Free Projects

The story I chose this week was inspired by a review I read on Google+ by Hazel Nutt of a new book by Joanna Gray called The Little Raindrop. It is a lovely story about the journey of a little raindrop and is a great way of explaining weather and evaporation to young children.

With Mothering Sunday coming up we had a collection of stories about mothers and then we discussed how much our mothers do for us. although most said they did everything themselves! Until I asked who read them a bedtime story and tuck them in at night.

This week we are celebrating St David's Day, usually I start the session with a story but this week we got stuck in to making our daffodils first.

We painted the egg carton sections and pots first so that they could dry whilst we had the stories.

This week's stories were inspired by a post by Edspire about the tragic loss of her daughter Matilda Mae. In the post was the story of Waterbugs and Dragonflies which I thought was a lovely story it is written by Dorris Stickney. Although it was written to help explain death to you children I didn't feel it was my place to go into school and explain death to a reception class; so I kept it nice and light and explained that sometimes when things disappear they are not really gone we just can't see them. We then had a discussion about how butterflies change from caterpillars, this helped introduce the next story George and the Dragonfly. This is a lovely rhyming picture book about a boy who wants a snake or a lizard but his mum say no, so he decides to live in the jungle. As soon as he leaves the house he meets a friendly dragonfly who show him all the amazing creatures in his own back garden - who needs the jungle!

I was glad when I found out the teacher wasn't going to be doing any specific activities this week for Chinese New Year as that left me with an opportunity.

Firstly I wanted the kids to know about all the animals of the chinese zodiac I had downloaded this story to read. This year the chinese will be celebrating the year of the snake. So we set to work making sock snakes.

This week was my first week back in school after Christmas. This week's story was Rainbow Fish to the Rescue by Marcus Pfister. The kids loved the story then we made a rainbow fish tank.

This week the craft diary takes a new direction. I've started as a volunteer at a local primary school doing stories and crafts with a reception class. With the start of our create and show kits I wanted to get used to reading aloud to kids and doing crafts with groups of children. All skills i will need as we test our kits.

This weeks theme is 'a walk in the woods'. I chose Jez Alborough's Where's My Teddy which turned out to be very appropriate as the day before Little Man had lost his most cherished teddy, Hugo. Little Man has had Hugo since the day he was born and has been attached to him ever since. The kids loved the story.

We recently celebrated our 1^st birthday and fittingly we spent the weekend attending workshops at the Cheltenham Literary Festival but more about that in another post.

Carrying on our Halloween crafts we created these pumpkin pictures. The activity is particular suited for preschoolers. We created the picture by printing with potatoes and apples.

Recently I've been reading our ebook Harry the Hapless Ghost to Little Man. He is a bit youger than our intended age but he seems to enhoy it. To help bring it to life for him we made these handy ghosts for the main characters Harry and Barry.