Making It Up

as we go along

the book people

On buying home education curriculum resources.

by 4 Comments

I’ve been quite proud that despite the fact we’ve got piles of curriculum style resources around the house, Smallest and Tigerboy have largely been unschooled so far. However, right at the moment I’m a little concerned with how screen focused they are both getting, and I want to do something about that.

I also want to be sure that I’m aware of the sort of topics that are being covered in school – I’m conscious that Smallest goes through phases of being very interested in school, and if at some point she wants to go in, I want her to have the background knowledge of her peers. (Yes, I know that sounds a little odd, and certainly if your children don’t go in to school until much later it won’t be a factor – it didn’t hurt Big at all – but I think there’s a possibility that Smallest will want to try primary and I think it would make more of a difference then.)

So, rightly or wrongly, I found myself on the Book People this morning. It wasn’t my fault – they enticed me in with a sale leaflet that arrived this morning. And they had these rather fab DK Everything I need to know for school packs. 30 books in each pack, 29.99 per pack, free delivery. (This handy affiliate link will take you right there.

No, I couldn’t resist either. I went for the younger and the older sets after a quick chat with Tim, and my current plan, having discussed with Smallest is that we’ll spend around an hour a day after breakfast doing topic-y stuff, although obviously if there’s anything that really sparks their interest we can dive deeper. I haven’t quite worked out what form that hour will take, I’ll see what I think when I actually get the books. And of course, we already have lots of other resources, like songbird phonics and Walker story book collection

.

Past experience of myself, my children and home education tells me that as the weather improves and we can get out and about more our use of any resources will drop off, but if it gets us through to March I’m going to count this as money well spent. Of course we’ve still got Reading Eggs, Mathletics and Muzzy which are online, so they will be online sometimes as well.

If I bump up our arts and crafts too, ensure that we’ve got at least one home education group outing a week, as well as the usual swimming, library, music and so on we should be in pretty good shape for the rest of winter and the beginning of spring.

Tell me, does the turn of the year spark new plans for your home education or is it just me?

Walker stories in the Book People flash sale.

by Leave a Comment

It is no secret to anyone that I am a massive bookworm, and I am doing my very best to bring my children up the same way. We love picture books, sharing books, learning to read. And we do tend to feed our habit at The Book People. A while back we bought a bundle of Walker Stories – 30 of them in a case. Each book has three stories in it, and black and white illustrations, and they’re great read alouds, or less intimidating starter books for someone launching into more independent reading.

There are some really well known titles included, like Handa’s Surprising Day, which I absolutely adore.

Handas surprise and Walker stories I hope you can also see the size of the books – ideal for little hands.

I was also surprised to notice that there’s a book called Drawing Together written by one Mimi Thebo, and illustrated by Jessica Meserve – I met Mimi when I went to give a guest lecture to her creative writing class at Bath Spa university earlier this year.

Drawing together by Mimi Thebo and Jessica Meserve

I don’t know how I missed this, although with 30 books in the set, I do have to admit that I haven’t memorised all the titles 😉 Which leads me on to another point – if you happened to be having a children’s party, and wanted a nice addition to a party bag, this are absolutely ideal. Today at the Book People in the flash sale the whole set is only £15, so that’s 50p a book, I don’t think you’ll find many better bargains out there. You could even buy a set to keep and a set to gift! (No. I do not need to buy a set to gift.) Alternatively, as £25 gets you free delivery you could top up your order with something like the Mog picture book collection from Judith Kerr, at £10 for 10 books, and have a grand total of 40 wonderful books for £25 with no delivery charge. It doesn’t get a great deal better than that to be honest.

What are you waiting for? click on the image below to browse the sale further.

Disclosure: The Book People links are affiliate links.

Home ed days: learning to read with Songbird phonics

by 1 Comment

So, like I said the other day, The Book People had a sale on. Which was cruel of them. (Newsflash: Tuesday 10th until midnight, click here to use SHELL10 for 10% off your order! since released a new discount code of 5% off sales over £35, just use AFPEACH)

So I ordered Songbird Phonics, a reading scheme written by Julia Donaldson, and also a pack of Walker Stories, which I had some idea I could partly use as prizes.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to buy something else to use as prizes, these are such a fab collection there’s no way I’m giving any of them away!

Today Smallest has picked her way through Top Cat, the first of the songbird phonics books. I remember Small learning to read with these, right after Stile trays, and before his brief flirtation with ORT, before he gave up on all of that and headed for Harry Potter. I think it may take Smallest a little longer to crack it all – I don’t think she’s currently got the motivation he had, although it may well be coming. But she is getting the hang of most letters, beginning to blend, and does recognise words repeated from page to page. So, a good start.

Handa's surprising day jack's little partyAnd after she’d read that, I read Handa’s Surprising Day (Walker Stories) and Jack’s Little Party (Walker Stories). These are just great. They are small format, so the bag of 30 is quite portable, but each book has three stories in it. The illustrations are black and white, but they’re still beautifully detailed. I am a little confused, as we have Handa’s Surprise which is one of the stories in Handa’s surprising day, and I’m sure it’s not quite as detailed as in this book – I’ll have to dig it out and check.

(Rather than buying the books individually from Amazon via the affiliate links above, why not check out the entire 30 book collection of Walker stories for £15. (Yes this is also an affiliate link, but to the Book People. Books….)

Ahem. Enough of the subliminal advertising. 😉

Reading. Even though at the moment mostly what I’m doing is sleeping, and I’m very grateful that Big can cook (spaghetti bolognese for tea tonight, yum) we are still fitting in those little bits of home education that can be done quietly sitting down. So there’s our home ed days update. For more regular photographic input, check out the #100homeeddays tag on a variety of social networks – I’m tending to use instagram, but I’ve seen them on fb and twitter as well.

I will attempt to do a 300 Picture books update some time this week, if I can stay awake long enough (touch wood the headache is *finally* wearing off tonight) but blogging may be a little hit and miss for a while. Bear with me.

Linked up with #homeedlinkup – see the other posts here