Activities For Children: Library Visits

I love our local library. Its a fun, educational place to take the kids….and even better its free!?

We got Jake his first library card when he was only two months old and Rachel was just turned two and ever since we have been regular visitors.?

Our local library is very small, but the librarian knows everyone, and always has a smile and some kind words for the children.?

On entering, Rachel and Jake make a beeline straight to the childrens tables and chairs at the back of the room, and always play first with the bead frames and jigsaw puzzles. While they are occupied Gerard and I can choose browse the shelves and choose our books, I laugh at his weird choices, and he admonishes me for picking yet another piece of ‘chick lit’.?

The we settle at the back and read a few stories before letting the children pick some books to take home.?

Children model their reading behaviour on on their parents, and many studies have shown that children who don’t have parents who read, often don’t see any purpose in learning to read at school.?

Cultivating a love of books in your children at an early age is vital to ensuring they develop good literacy skills. Visits to the library are a great and enjoyable way to enforce their love of reading.?

I am especially grateful for the library in the winter time. The storytelling and craft sessions that they host for children are a great way to keep the family amused when the weather is too cold or wet to play outside.?

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Carnival of Homeschooling Week 19

For anyone interested in homeschooling, why not jump over and have a look at the Carnival of Homeschooling.

Its really informative and contains some very high quality links (including one to us of course).

A great one for any current homeschoolers or anyone interested in starting.

A Day In The Life Of A Stay At Home Mum (SAHM), Work At Home Mum (WAHM)!

The day begins at 6.30am with a cry from Jake that his shorts are wet.?I get up to discover his Huggies pull-up pants and pyjamas are wet through. He gets washed and changed and joins me on the sofa for a few quiet minutes cuddled under a blanket before the other two wake up.

The quiet moment passes quickly with the arrival of Rachel at 7am. She demands breakfast and complains because we have run out of Weetabix. A fruit salad and some toast later we have two full and happy children. The I hear Daniels tell-tale babbling in the baby monitor.

I lift him to discover that his diarrhea has not yet abated and quickly strip off his clothes, bedclothes and nappy and scrub him down.

The morning continues with all the children (and me of course) getting washed and dressed. I begin to prepare for the important meeting we have later that afternoon with a marketing consultant by printing out vital documents and emails while frantically serching for my car keys and purse.

11.30am and we are ready to leave. A friend is going to kindly drop Rachel to school so I leave her off first then?embark on?the 15 mile drive to Belfast.

After stopping for some vital?groceries I arrive at my mothers house in time to be vomited on by Daniel. Of course I haven’t brought a change of clothes, and I don’t think that smelling of stale vomit would convey a very professional image to the marketing consultant. So?I run about in my bra trying to wash out and then dry my top before the goop dries in.

2pm, both boys are washed and fed, Jake is watching Shrek, Daniel is sleeping. It is time for me to hand over to my mum and set off on my 20 mile journey to Antrim.

I arrive on time, the meeting begins and we start to talk about how we intend to launch our first ever product, a set of preschool educational flashcards. (Feel free to purchase a set, I can highly recommend them!)

We explain how Gerard?hand-illustrated?the cards?for use with Rachel when she was younger and we found them so beneficial in developing her early conversational skills and now her word recognition and reading skills, that we felt we could produce them commercially and turn them into a viable business venture.

The consultant spent almost three hours suggesting ways in which we could promote and market the product, most of which would cost way more than we can afford. It was highly informative though and definately a worthwhile experience.

We got home at 6pm, made dinner, got everyone washed and ready for bed, then collapsed in a heap in front of our PCs to try and plan the way ahead.

I wonder what tomorrow will hold?

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Educational, Fun And Christian. Why I Love VeggieTales!

Last year a friend who is currently living in The United States Of America sent Rachel a birthday gift.

I helped her unwrap it and found a strange looking video cassette with animated vegetables on the cover, it was called VeggieTales.

We put it on and it turned out to be a version of the bible story ‘David and Goliath’ with animated vegetables taking the starring roles.

Rachel loved it! I don’t know if it was all the songs or the funny looking characters but she watched it repeatedly for days. For Christmas she got the personalised VeggieTales CD which again tormented us for a long time. Its quite cool and features songs like ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’ and ‘God Is So Good’

There seems to be a whole range of this stuff and although I am by no means a super christan I do have a strong faith and I want to pass this faith onto my children. VeggieTales helps intoduce them to bible stories and christian concepts in a very fun manner and in my experience lessons that are learned through fun tend to be remembered most easily.

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Sesame Street: Recommended Site For Pre-School Children

I spent over an hour on the Sesame Street website with Jake this evening while the others were out. I’ve always found the Sesame Street website to be a fun learning resource for the children, and tonight was no exception.

Jake spent most of his time playing the Elmo games. Because of his age, I aimed him toward the easier games, but he surprised me in his ability to retain information.

Letters & Numbers

For example, the Keyboard Elmo game (that’s what we call it) allows your to press a key and a word beginning with that letter comes up on screen. If you press a number, Elmo counts teddy bears, hearts, etc up to that number.

After a bit of punching random keys, Jake began to work out the little animations he like and the letters that triggered them. He would keep pressing “R” to get the rainbow animation, for example.

Tallest & Shortest

We also spent some time on the Limbo Elmo game. This is a game where you have to select the tallest or shortest from four monsters to do the limbo dance. I was surprised that Jake could easily pick the tallest and shortest monsters – Rachel had some difficulty understanding the concept at his age.

One of Jake’s funny little quirks was he started noticing which monsters were ‘missing’ in each game. If the pink one had been in the previous game, but not in the current game, he asked me where she (yes, she) went! I found myself making excuses: “She went to get an ice-cream”, or “She went for a swim”.

I also let him have a go clicking the mouse to select the monster he wanted. I find these online games are brilliant for getting kids used to using the mouse.

Over To You

Do you have any favourite websites you like to visit with your children? I’m always on the lookout for something interesting and different, so I’d love to hear your recommendations!

Free iPod-ready stories for kids

Ray just loves story CDs. But she only has a few and they can be quite expensive to buy, so i was thrilled to come across this link to websites with free downloadable mp3 stories perfect for the iPod.

I am going to download a few tonight and let her listen to them in the car on the way to mother and toddler group in the morning.