If you’ve been inspired by National Storytelling Week or you’re simply hoping to encourage your little storyteller to grow in the craft, there are a number of books on the market that offer just that. We recently bought My First Story Writing Book from Usborne books to work through during the week and we loved it so much, I wanted to share it with you.
Category: Home Learning
Specifically Home Education and not Home Schooling, because we’re not being academic about it
DIY Story Cubes {And Free Story Elements Download}
We’re in the middle of National Storytelling week, so we’ve spent a fair bit of time this week doing just that. There are loads of different ways of bringing stories to life, and while something like painted pebbles might be beautiful, we’re not all quite so talented! There’s a list here of different ways to create story prompts, but one we’ve been doing this week – and you can download it or template for your own below – is story cubes.
Story cubes require a template, a printer and an on-the go imagination.
Read more: DIY Story Cubes {And Free Story Elements Download}
10 Storytelling Tools For Kids
It’s National Storytelling week soon, and I’ve been looking at ways to engage the children interactively in the art of storytelling. We did story sticks last year, which was a big hit, but I want to try something else this year. Here are some exciting ideas to look at and try for National Story Telling Week:
Lessons Winnie The Pooh Teaches Us About Friendship
Winnie the Pooh may be seen as nursery decor more than anything else these days, but actually the lessons in the stories are suited to a much older audience. In fact, they’re perfectly suited to children heading out into the world forming relationships and developing friendships.
The stories in Winnie the Pooh can teach us so many things about friendship, if we can just take the time to read them with our children, and naturally discuss the issues as they come up.
Here are ten of the biggest lessons I learnt about friendship in Winnie the Pooh:Read more: Lessons Winnie The Pooh Teaches Us About Friendship
Winnie The Pooh’s Real 100 Acre Woods
Did you know Winnie the Pooh is based on a real boy and his bear?
The 100 Akre Woods – which are actually 500 acre woods – are located in Ashdown Forest, in Kent, South England. There’s a little town called Hartfield where you’ll find a teashop and giftshop – The House at Pooh Corner.
Ideas For Celebrating Winnie The Pooh Day (January 18th)
Winnie the Pooh Day in on the 18th of January. It’s actually A.A. Milne’s birthday, which is why the date was chosen.
In it’s Disney era, Winnie the Pooh has been cast as a character for baby-nurseries and babified for toddlers, but in truth, I think this has done them something of an injustice, with the stories being much more suited to early readers. They are clever, and funny and well worth dusting off for a quick evening read.
As such, we’re learning around the theme of Winnie the Pooh, which means we’re using the topic, however loosely to underpin our learning. Below are our ideas for celebrating Winnie the Pooh Day. The list will grow and link to other pages as the day gets closer, but I’m populating it as I go along.
To give you something to get stuck into in the meantime, however, here’s a FREE PRINTABLE BOOKLET for you to download and print. It has all sorts of puzzles, games and suggestions for your Winnie the Pooh celebrations.
Read more: Ideas For Celebrating Winnie The Pooh Day (January 18th)
January Literary Days To Celebrate And Observe
January is a fairly quiet month anyway, and for those looking to celebrate the literary highs and lows of the month, there are few, but big days to celebrate. 
Road Safety Awareness Game & Resources
Next week is Road Safety Awareness week and like all responsible parents (Ahem!) it’s a topic of learning that I take very seriously. I realised recently that while my children know to look right and left and right again before crossing the road, or to wait for the green man before crossing, we’ve never really done any serious ‘learning’ around traffic signs. I think there’s a value to learning through doing with mama, of course, but I don’t suppose it’s ever too early to learn about road safety.
But where do you start?
5 Websites To Keep Older Kids Busy While You Home Ed Younger Siblings
One of the first questions people ask me about home education or homeschooling my children is how I manage to ‘teach’ children of different ages and at different levels at the same time. I’m going to share with you 5 websites that I use to keep my 7 year old busy while I’m doing structured learning d Before my youngest was of school age, it was easy – she’ll happily potter about on her own, colour, play with her small world toys and so on, so being able to spend 40 minutes ‘teaching’ her sister was easy.
Now that she’s also ‘of school age’ and there’s a ‘requirement’ to ‘educate’ her, I focus more on doing some structured activities. At the moment we’re learning the alphabet, which involves a lot of colouring, sticking, gluing, so not really high intensity, but still good for her to have some undivided attention.
To facilitate this, we use one of five websites that Ameli can self-manage her time while I focus on her sister. These are the websites and programs we use most:Read more: 5 Websites To Keep Older Kids Busy While You Home Ed Younger Siblings
Girls Who Climb Trees
I watched you the other day, sitting high up in a tree, watching the world go by. Actually, high up in a tree isn’t an unusual place to find my daughters when there is a tree around. I watched you scamper down again, skirts billowing, underwear flashing to the world, newly ripped tights revealing a red patch of scratched skin you didn’t even notice.
I need to tell you something about girls who climb trees:
Actually, there isn’t a quote I know of about girls who climb trees. There’s something about girls who sit on tables – apparently they don’t find husbands, or so we were told, growing up.
But there’s nothing about girls who climb trees, because girls aren’t supposed to be interested in that.
So let me tell you a few things about girls who climb trees:
(Yes, girls can possibly be substituted for boys too, and no, probably doesn’t apply to every girl, but I’m really thinking about my girls as I write this, so the generalisation of ‘girls’ will do!)Read more: Girls Who Climb Trees