Planning Our Week at Home

Finding activities to keep your child entertained can be hard sometimes, it can be tempting to stick the tv on or pop in a dvd can’t it? Not that there is anything wrong with tv, but maybe not all day every day!

I have found myself relying on the tv more and more recently but enough is enough. I realised I wasn’t appreciating my girls as much as I should or making the best of each day. I was in a slump!

Another blogger suggested I take a look on the Twinkl website for some inspiration and I am so glad she did! It is a great resource!! I have used it before with my teaching hat on but never even considered it from a parent perspective!

So what is Twinkl?

Twinkl is a website dedicated to providing resources for primary age children (age 4-11). At first glance it does look as though it is mainly for teaching staff but look a little deeper and you will see that there are so many lovely resources that parents can utilise! They also have a great forum where parents and teachers alike can ask for ideas and support for activities they want to try.

There is a lot for older children which is so useful if you want to support them at home to enhance their learning. There is also so much for younger children and this is what I will be making use of every week.

They offer three subscription levels, one is a free membership that allows access to the majority of the resources; the second is the Gold membership, a high quality, low cost option at £29.95 a year; and thirdly the Platinum membership which allows access to all resources and is priced at £44.95 per year.

They also have a great new tool as part of their premium service which allows you to create your own resources. I would have loved this as a teacher! I can see myself using it to make some playdough mats in the near future!!

Planning our weeks at home

I am an early years teacher by trade and so I am used to having themed weeks. I feel so awful as I have never used these skills at home with my girls. I do naturally teach them as that is a part of who I am but I have never been very good at thinking of activities to do together. I am hoping Twinkl will help me focus and get organised!

I love their craft section, it has so many lovely ideas and this will be what I use the most I think. I am going to choose a book each week and base our activities around that theme. I am actually really excited to get going with it!

Little G’s favourite book at the moment is Julia Donaldson’s ‘The Singing Mermaid’ so I am going to use that as the basis of the theme and take the girls on an underwater adventure!

Activity Ideas

♦ Lollipop stick fish

♦ Hand print mermaids

♦ Sand and water tray

♦ Rockpool pies

♦ Reading seaside related books

I am really looking forward to having a bit more structure to the week, knowing exactly what we are going to do together. Come back and see how we get on, I will add the links to each activity as we do them.

Where do you get your inspiration for activities?