Post Crossing

I've been trying to get postcards sent to Rocketboy from all over the world for us to study. It may sound funny, studying postcards, but there is a lot to learn from one piece of cardboard and its travel to your letter box.

Things to look at on a postcard can be the stamp, the postmark, where it came from, and of course what is on the postcard front and the writing on the back.

To get these postcards myself and daddy have been asking friends and family on Facebook and through work to send them to us. So far we've received 6 - 4 from Australia and 2 from Canada.

Today I found another way to get postcards.... Postcrossing

Basically this is a website which you sign up to, to send and receive postcards from all other the world. All it will cost you is the price of the postcard and the stamp each time you send a card.

I signed up this morning and requested two addresses to send postcards to. The kids choose a postcard each from the post shop this morning, where we also got stamps.

Writing was a lot harder as both kids can't write yet, well Rocketboy is learning but not enough to write a postcard plus he would use the whole space just to write his name, so I had them tell me what they wanted to say as well as add some extra about our city.

Tomorrow we'll go for a walk to post our postcards and hopefully we'll start receiving some soon.

Pushing to hard

Yesterday started great, Rocket boy was up and on the computer doing his reading eggs lesson before I had even gotten out of bed. 

After breakfast we got out the wooden Handwriting without Tears pieces and made Mat Man which both rocket boy and ladybug loved

then rocket boy made the letters we covered last year out of the wooden pieces

we made playdough then had a lot of fun with the handwriting without tears cards making all these letters again.

and bascially this was the pace we set for the day, the only real break was when I put Word World on for the kids to watch but it was also a eposide on the difference of b and d which is another lesson for Rocket boy.

In the afternoon I was using the magnetic board with Rocket boy, he got through the first ten letters before he started playing up.  At this point I should have realised we had done too much already, the amount of material we covered in one day could easily have been covered over a whole week.  I should have been pleased but instead I was angry.

Luckily it only took me a few minutes to realise my mistake but it wasn't until after I had a small outburst directed at Rocketboy which I regret now.

Do you every push your kids too hard? How do you react when your kids play up while you're teaching them?

Little Passports

How to teach young kids about geography? Needs to be fun and exciting and personalised, and of course involve as little effort/organisation by the parents as there is already plenty to do when you’re home schooling anyway.

So what’s the answer?  Well for me it was little passports.

I read a lot of home schooling blogs, and see all these great products and curriculum.  It makes things easier for me when I need to work out what curriculum I want to do with my kids, and I must admit it also helps me with the list of stuff I don’t want to do with my kids.

One of the products that kept coming up in these blogs with positive reviews was little passports.  This is a monthly subscription where your child is sent a parcel each month from two characters called Sam and Sofia. 
 

From the website

Every month, our globetrotting characters Sam and Sofia visit a new country and send your child an exciting package in the mail including a letter, fun and unique souvenirs, stickers, photos, access to online games/activities in our Boarding Zone and more! A total of 24 different adventures available

I contacted the company to see if there allowed international purchases and was very pleased to learn that while they can’t offer a subscription internationally they are happy to sell it as a package all I had to do was choose between the 12 or 24 month options.

This was a LOT of money especially as the postage worked out to be  just over $80NZ but after some saving I purchased the 24 month package which arrived in May last year.

In the huge box that arrived each months parcel was already sealed and addressed to both Rocket boy and Ladybug so all I had to do was look up which month came next and sneak the parcel out to the letter box when the kids weren’t looking.

Also as I control when the parcels are ‘sent’ I can work them around our busy life and if I feel we’re not ready for the next one I just wait a little longer before getting it out.

So far we’ve had the Explorer Kit which includes a cool little suitcase to store everything you receive, a map to put up on the wall so you can find all the different countries Sam and Sofia visit, a passport to put in the country flag stickers which you receive in each package and also stickers, a letter, photo and a code for their online games and activities.

So far we’ve covered Brazil, Japan and France.  Rocket boy is mainly only interested in the souvenirs that come in each parcel with an amethyst (pretty rock with purple crystals) from Brazil.  A sushi eraser and origami paper from Japan, of which the eraser was lost by the next day and the paper got used to make paper cranes until one of Rocket boys friends made a paper air plane so they got used up very fast.  The France package had a poster which either Rocket boy or Ladybug was interested in so it’s currently living in the suitcase.

We haven’t spent the time on the activity sheets or online games and activities as I would have liked but when we started this Rocket boy was online 4 and couldn’t read.  Now at 5 he can read although not a huge amount and is probably ready to do the online games with a little help. 

While Rocket boy is still on the young side for this program we still have over a years worth of packages to open and Rocket boy is only going to get older and more able to complete these activities with less and less parental help.

I believe this program was worth all the money and will be able to be used by all my kids to learn a bit about the world before stepping up to a more detailed geography curriculum.

Do you or your kids subscribe to little passports?  What do you think of it? 

Do you use another curriculum for geography?  If so I’ll love to know more.

 

 

Who am I

Hi,


I'm Mamma J, not a really original online name but I wanted something to stay anonymous.  Trying to be anonymous on the internet these days is rather impossible and I don’t expect to be really anonymous through this blog, I guess I just don’t want to have this blog linked  with my real life, hence a new Google account and I will not be linking this with my Facebook account.


I will be posting photos of myself and my kids so it won’t be long until those who know us know this blog but I really need somewhere where I can be honest. 


My old blog was known by family and friends; I’m not sure if they actually read it, but because they could I always held back a bit.  I also felt that I had to post so much more to prove that I actually did school work with my kids to justify home schooling.  The pressure got to me and I stopped blogging.


I want this blog to be fun, something I actually want to do.  I also love keeping an online record of what I do with my kids each week but without the pressure.  I want to be able to be honest and vent if I need to without holding back in case I offend anyone I love.


So welcome to my journey, hopefully at some stage there will be other people reading this other than myself and my husband.