Family Making

Kia ora koutou,

In the school holidays the boys reminded me they wanted bean bags. We found this lovely simple tutorial online and I let them have a rummage in my stash.

The boys helped with all the steps but I did the zips and overlocking.

It was great fun to make something together and only took an afternoon. Sometimes its only a matter of saying yes and we all felt great about ourselves.

love you more than a relaxing afternoon in a bean bag xxx

B.M.W.B - dates

Hiya friends,

It's SO looonnnggg since I've blogged about my whanau (family) but I thought I'd share a little thing we've been doing over the last few months.

Each month I schedule on the calendar a 2-3 hour stretch on a Saturday or Sunday. The appointment says 'mum and dad dates'. During this time we each spend an hour one on one with each of our boys. They set the agenda and we are activity trying to use this time to connect with them on their terms.

Last time Bounce and I made the baby suits for his teacher and then when Flip and I were hanging out he made a rhubarb crumble. (We have a fabulous rhubarb patch that continues producing rhubarb despite our complete neglect of it).

When The Atlas was with them he and Bounce when to a ceramics studio where they are going to do some ceramics making together. With Flip they went and hung out at a computer shop (among other things).

It's been great to be more intentional about giving our boys time where they get to choose what we do and we give them our undivided attention. Of course, we spend a lot of time together as a family and with the boys but these times have been really life-giving to our relationships with the boys.

Good times :-)

How about you, do you have specific dates or ways of hanging out with your littles?

For other BMWB posts (from ages ago!) 

Becoming the Mama I want to be is about taking time to enjoy the journey of parenting, to honour it's value and to hopefully inspire and encourage any mama. 

Simple. Achievable. Intentional: becoming the mama I want to be

love you more than the smell of rhubarb crumble xxx

Learning Together - family meeting

Learning together... it's been a while!

I know lots of people have family meetings and are very scheduled but the create hope inspire family is a little more laid back (or disorganised, or freaked out by 'programming activities'). However, a certain someone wanted to proprose something to the family so I suggested we had a family meeting.

The boys made the agenda sheet which was pinned to the fridge - not literally obviously, it was attached with a magnet! - a week before and everyone was allowed up to 2 items.

You can probably guess even without the names who added what.

So what skills do you learn in a family meeting?

• writing up your items
• writing notes so you don't forget what you want to say (only one of us did this!)
• making sure you select your most important issues - this is a life long skill to develop, sometimes you have to be able to distinguish the trees from the woods
• communicating your ideas clearly
• clarifying when questioned
• seeking clarification from others before you weigh in or take your vote

The Atlas took notes and we had a lovely time of it. The key results are that we will hire an xbox 360 one weekend per term (4 times a year) and 2 games each time, we will try to have a special family time on Sunday afternoons together where we will include a family meeting once a month, the boys will have the Christmas Tree (which will be small because that's what they wanted and the vote was unanimous) in their room, Bounce and I will decorate the house for Christmas and The Atlas is in charge of following up on sumer sports. Phew - I think that's it.

It's great for children to contribute and have their ideas heard and it's a good opportunity for them to take part in discussions, present ideas and learn to compromise.

Do you have family meetings? Do you track the formal or informal route of parenting?

Learning Together a series for primary aged children and their parents - activities that break up homework monotony, promote skills and create positive experiences together.

love you more than the chance to decorate xxx

And Just Like That You Are Six

Dear Boy,

Our beautiful, laughing, joy-filled bringer of joy - Happy Sixth Birthday.

It has been such a delight to watch you grow this year. The way you bring so.much.energy to everything you do. You are a complete investor in triumph or disappointment it's all there. I like that enthusiasm, it suits you well.

 You have shown to be a natural learner this year. There have been fascinating facts and emphatic knowledge of special information. You have loved Spanish and seem to have a natural ear for it. Reading delights you and your favourite day at school is guided reading day. So often I am given special insight into what you have learned that day - you love to learn, may it always be so.

 You love to be the cute little brother but you are capable of being a serious and concerted listener and effort giver too.

I love how you are so generous with your thoughts and feelings and the way that even though Dad has already hugged you goodbye in the morning you must give him one final enthusiastic squeeze just before he slips out the door. I love the way you are so keen to help and contribute to the family and to be a helper wherever you are.

 You have always been such a contagious laugher, and this year is no different, multiple times a day our lives ring out with true, unfettered, belly laughing. It's one of my favourite things to hear.

You have a great little brain in your head and you have learned some very long memory verses for church. Your little heart composes such beautiful and thoughtful prayers that I often whisper silent thanks at getting just to be there to hear them.

 As you go into this new year I want you to know what an incredible gift you are, how much life you bring and how much I love your enthusiasm and joy. Oh my darling - the best is yet to come and we will be watching with joy how it unfolds for you.

6 minutes, 6 days, 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years - all of those precious days we have loved you.

Happy, happy, happy birthday our one and only Bounce. xxxxxxxxxxx

Learning Together - picture word hunt

This was one of those crazy activities that sort of came from something random Flip said about hiding things for them to find around the house.

On afternoon about 10 minutes before I left to get the boys for school I scribbled down 12 different words I knew they could both read or figure out numbered each and stuck them in every room of the house including laundry, ensuite, toilets, my 'sewing room' (corner)....

When they got home I gave them both a piece of paper divided into 12 sections and numbered then I sent them off in different directions to find and draw each item.

Wee Bounce started by writing the first word (which could be a variation) but they soon got into it. They went at different speeds but because they started in different rooms it wasn't a race (which often takes the joy out of things here and means the little one doesn't want to play) and they were both super engaged.

They loved this so much and it was cute (and have me some time to prep tea). We'll be doing it again for sure.

Skills:

• Word recognition - they could check if they wanted to but only once they had their idea sorted. 
• Fine motor skills - we don't do a lot of drawing and fine motor work so some simple speedy drawings that don't have to be perfect but do have to be small are a good work out for little hands.
• Close reading/matching - they had to find the appropriate box for each picture which is good number recognition for the little one and careful checking for the big one - achievable but an extra thinking step.

In case you can't be bothered thinking of your own words ours were - ant, car, three, tree, family, hat, teddy, cat, rainbow, cow, angel, banana.

  

and we had lots of fun - result!

Learning Together a series for primary aged children and their parents - activities that break up homework monotony, promote skills and create positive experiences together.

love you more than a super cute picture xxx

Learning Together - silly rhymes

Take a 'sight word', by which I mean a spelling word or a simple tricky word like - there, turn, or whatever words cause consternation at your place, or a word that you have on a list of words to recognise by sight.

Now have some fun thinking of all the rhyming words you can think of. Record them on a chart/ white board/ piece of paper

make sure you throw in a few ridiculous ones for good measure like 'zear' - you know the baby of a zebra and a deer - I can't believe you've never heard of them! What are those teachers teaching you?

Now try to write a short 4 line poem together using some of the rhyming words.

Perform it in silly voices if the mood so takes you.

Skills:

• spelling patterns when a word like 'there' also rhymes with bear, pier, and cheer you start to 'see' that there are different ways to make a long e sound. Of course in NZ (and probably Aus?) pear, peer, pair and pier all rhyme - they don't in England! Yes happy to ruin those vowels for you English colonialists.
• playing with rhythm and language - when you try to write lines that rhyme you naturally have to adapt them to get the rhyme scheme to work properly 
• word recognition - if this is a spelling or sight word or just a word they perpetually get wrong by the end of this activity they will have seen it written, they will have written it and they will have said it aloud several times - all without the dreaded 'write it out 5 times' ever being uttered.

Learning Together a series for primary aged children and their parents - activities that break up homework monotony, promote skills and create positive experiences together.

love you more than that fat cat who sat on the mat and crushed his hat xxx

Learning Together - a little of what you fancy

One of the skills I believe is important is social confidence. Some children are naturally confident and others struggle with confidence but I want to know my boys will be equipped with social confidence to see them through different situations.

So this week rather than a 'homework activity' I'm going a bit 'real life'!

Bounce needed a new reading folder for school, which you get from the office. So in we went together. Rather than me asking it for it, paying, sorting it out.... I got him (with coaching and encouragement from the sidelines) to do it. We started with a 'good morning R (school receptionist)', 'Can I please get a reader folder'.

I did the payment as it was on EFTPOS but he also wrote his name on the folder. Of course I would have like to do that myself with fancy writing and what if he made a mistake?? but all of the greetings, asking for what you need, taking responsibility and thanking are special skills that I want him to develop.

If I was held up getting to school one day or there was some other situation arise then I want to think he will have the confidence to go to the office, speak clearly and ask for what he needs. Small situations provide good practice for him to relate to adults, communicate well and feel heard.

Photo Source Here

And for a little more, we went to the markets yesterday afternoon after school - sorry boys we're not walking home to do homework we're going out for a treat - when we got there I told them they could have up to $5 to buy a treat.

In this situation I want my boys to practice these skills:

• decision making - it is a smallish amount of money for them to handle but they can choose from a large variety of options. Looking at options, narrowing down favourites, checking and re-checking is a little tedious and not for the frazzled or time poor but it is a helpful skill to exercise. All through life there are times to make choices and learning to do this and live with the consequences after you tried the first mouthful is an important skill. (Been caught out on choosing something that looks good but tastes disappointing? Yeah, me too!)
• dealing with money and change - I would expect Flip to be able to tell me how much change he will get from his choice and Bounce is still working out what is less or more than $5 by looking at the prices, reading the amount to me and deciding if the dollar number is less or more than 5.
• social confidence - waiting your turn, speaking loudly, saying thank you, handing over money... these are all important activities that children don't get to practice that often in real life contexts

Of course this is also fun, it's a treat, it's building collective family memories and I am very blessed to be able to do these things so easily with the boys.

What about you? Do you encourage your children to take the lead in shop interactions or making requests of adults at school/ kindy? It's easier just to do it myself I admit, but I get such a feeling of delight in seeing my boys take these things on and have success and positive feedback from adults in our community and in the long run these are real skills I want them to have.

Learning Together a series for primary aged children and their parents - activities that break up homework monotony, promote skills and create positive experiences together.

love you more than a sweet treat for mummy too xxx

Learning Together - Putting it Back Together

Learning together is back again after a wee break :o)

Feeling the pinch to get through a whole book/chapter one night?

Too much to take it in one go?

How about taking a page from a book you know they can manage - cut up into sentences, words, or chunks and give it to them in pieces. In our case I just made some up along themes from the boys' nightly readers.

See what you can do with these words - can you make it make sense?

What kind of crazy combinations can you make?

If I read you the text coming up to this page does that change the order you will put it in?

Skills you will be developing in this activity:

• text literacy - capital letters go at the beginning of sentences,  full stops come at the end... this kind of activity enforces basic conventions of narrative stories and information like speech always starting with a capital letter, speech marks...
• sight words - when the words are broken down sight words can easily be identified and trickier words separated out
• reading for sense - does this sentence work? Also engages basic editing in terms of checking for all the words you want or need and eliminating words that don't work.
• multiple reading - sentences will be read, re-read, re-ordered and re-read.

Remember without context the 'tricky' words will be trickier so be generous with clues/help because you want it to be fun and confidence building rather than defeating. Make it fun (and difficult) for yourself by drawing the word they don't know, acting it out, telling them rhyming words...

My boys totally enjoyed this and engaged with it independently as well as being open to assistance and discussion together.

At our place Flip's story was long but he loved it - the story he made was rather nonsense-ish and that made him laugh even more. He re-read it aloud to me several times, to Bounce, to the teddies and to Daddy when he got home. The sentences still worked but the story was crazy and we got a lot of reading aloud with no protests! Success.

Learning Together a series for primary aged children and their parents - activities that break up homework monotony, promote skills and create positive experiences together.

love you more than a spontaneous activity loved by the participants xxxx

Learning Together - I Have My Eye on You

This is a very simple way to help reading stay on track.

As texts become denser it can cause problems with keeping focused on the right word. These little googly eye readers are simple and fun to make. One ice block stick and one googly eye is all that is needed plus some glue if you don't have adhesive eyes.

As little person reads the eye on their stick matches the place where they find their eye in the text.

You can also have word races with these - call out a word from their word list, or familiar words page and get them to see if they can get their googly eye there before you.

Keeping it simple, keeping it fun!

Specific skills:

•  help ease the frustration of a constantly lost place in the book 
• on full page texts with faster readers it can be used as an under-liner
• you can also use it to teach scanning skills by using it with full page text to scan for a sentence, phrase or individual words - being able to scan a text is a helpful skill as children progress further up school and need to find information to support arguements/thoughts/projects
• fine motor skills - making it, manipulating it to point to each word

Learning Together a series for primary aged children and their parents - activities that break up homework monotony, promote skills and create positive experiences together.

Week 31

Experiments with Dad!

For so long someone keeps asking me to get him the ingredients for different experiments from his science book and I finally got the things for one.

Of course potential explosions are a family affair here - we couldn't leave dad out.

Love the joy.

love you more than a patient request, finally answered xxx

Learning Together - Hangman

If you don't have a good small whiteboard in your family supplies I can tell you ours is used more than any other 'toy' we have.

Hangman - a game of words. Even wee Bounce can play this. For the first few rounds he just watched and contributed the odd letter but then he decided he could do it too. Of course his words are simpler and he has less chance of guessing our words.

Why hangman?

• vowels knowledge -  when you play hangman you learn that every word contains at least one vowel (yes sometimes that is a only a y), so you learn which vowels there are and subsequently what a vowel is
• you also learn that vowels don't give as much meaning (chance of guessing) as consonants
• you learn that some consonants appear much more frequently than other ones
• you learn about blends - eg if a word ends in an 'h' it will probably have a 'c' before it, if the 2nd letter of a word is l you are going to guess letters like s and b instead of n and d
• you learn to look at parts of a word and access your own knowledge of other words you know to make considered guesses
• you laugh and you have fun with other family members
• you practise writing letters (not just the ones in the word because we write down each letter as people guess it)
• you make sure your spelling is correct
• your mother chooses words from your spelling list for her words to reinforce letter patterns within the word and to make you laugh when you guess them

You may choose to have conversations about these things while you play or you can trust that many of these pieces of knowledge will just drop into a way of thinking as you play more and more. You are the best gauge of that one - just don't ruin a fun game by making it all about 'teaching'.

If, like me, you don't love the idea of drawing a hanging person we change it up and start drawing a picture of our word, line at a time. Or you could call it something else like sink the boat and do something like that instead.

Learning Together a series for primary aged children and their parents - activities that break up homework monotony, promote skills and create positive experiences together.