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The aim of this Home Education blog is to share books, games and resources that I have found useful and fun in home educating my children. If you have a resource to share, please leave a comment. I would love to hear from you.
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By the Great Horn Spoon - My Review Trollogy! - My Review Danny Champion of the World Indian in the Cupboard When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
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Free Online Educational Game – Questionaut

Posted on March 20, 2008
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Am sorry to just keep posting links, but I absolutely could not resist this one -

Questionaut is the most beautiful point and click adventure game. As you click through the story you’ll come across unique obstacles and quizzes that you’ll need to click about to get through.

Its on the BBC website under KS2 so I think its for ages 7-11 (but I think the younger ones may need some help with some of the questions).

Free Hidden Picture Puzzles

Posted on March 17, 2008
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Found a great site for free hidden picture puzzles – you know – the sort you have to hunt around the picture to find the hidden items! They have printable hidden pictures, or you can play online.

The site is HighlightsKids. The rest of the site is worth a look too – I liked their science in action section!

Make your own comic

Posted on March 11, 2008
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make your own comic

Have you ever wanted to make your own comic? Thats what we have been looking at this week (its a great way to encourage children to read and write!).

I found several ways to make online comics. The first is from Makebeliefscomix. This one is aimed specifically at children, and you can print or email your finished version. It was also interesting trying to create a ‘storyboard’ in only three steps!

Two other sites I found were Comiqs and Pixton but these are not aimed at children so some of the humour was a bit adult – watch out if you are letting your children look at other peoples examples.

Book Review- How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

Posted on March 7, 2008
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During a recent conversation, the children lifted this book down from the bookshelf to re-examine it. And so I remembered to tell you about ‘How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World’ by Marjorie Priceman.

This is a short picture book about travelling around the world to buy ingredients to make an apple pie (the market was closed!). The illustrations are lovely. But the wonderful thing about this book is how much discussion it can spark.

There is a map at the back of the book to help with the geography. And there is so much science! After reading this book we began to try to make an apple pie like the character. Not by going around the world(!) but by evaporating salt from sea-water, grinding flour (we went to a mill) and churning milk to make butter. There is even an apple pie recipe in the book!

With imagination, this little book can be a starting point for a lot fun learning – and I thoroughly recommend it.

Engineering for kids

Posted on March 3, 2008
Filed Under Activity, Free, Games | 1 Comment

This week we have gone from geography, to paper car building, to engineering for kids (via building a cardboard Elizabethan theatre!) – what a fun week!

Engineering was kicked off by a link posted on Early Years HE Yahoo Group for this free bridge building game. We downloaded the 2006 version and much discussion ensued!!! In the end, we had to go and look at some examples (under records on the website) to get a good feel for design concepts. I think we ALL learned a lot about engineering and bridge building . For kids to enjoy it at the same time is brilliant!

When I later suggested we build a Geodesic Dome model from newspaper, the children jumped at the chance. This is a really fun project to do, although you definitely need team work. If you are think you would like to have a go at this, then here are my tips!

Newspaper – We used the Daily Mail (ahem! I get it from my MIL for the guinea pig cage!). It really wasn’t big enough to make the required length posts and we had to overlap two sheets.
Equipment – my stapler really wasn’t up to it towards the end – a heavy duty one would be better. We ended up having to tape some sections.
Stability – ours is pretty good but it would have been stronger if we had used several layers of newspaper per post instead of a single layer. You really would have to tape it together though!
Its HUGE!! We had planned to build it in the kitchen and move it into the playroom. When we built the base it was obvious it wasn’t going anywhere. Make sure you have a bit of space for this one.

We finished off engineering by building some models from Lego Contraptions. The projects in this are quite tricky to follow, but work cleverly. We also plan to see if we can make a swing-bridge from lego – but thats for another day!

Book Review – Belair books

Posted on February 29, 2008
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As a home educator, I am always on the lookout for ideas I can use – and I think the Belair books are a great source of art projects.
The huge range of Belair books are mostly aimed at teachers wishing to create classroom displays. Some of the ideas therefore are a bit school oriented, but they are still very applicable to home educators with children aged 5-11 – especially if your children like a hands-on art approach.

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The back cover states “The Belair series adopts a cross-curricular approach to the primary curriculum through art, design and display. Our books are a perfect starting point for the primary teacher wishing to combine several subjects in an effective and original way. The approach is generally thematic, whilst also covering the recommended requirements of the primary curriculum within the different subject areas”

Sounds a bit dry! But there is plenty of scope and imagination in the books – I have found lots of useful ideas in the (three!) books I own. One of my favorites is Art for All Seasons This contains 33 art themes including Harvest, Fireworks, Summer Sun and Clocks (for the new year!). Look Inside for an idea of how sumptious the displays are.

You can find the full range (covering science, maths and history and more) at Folens.com

Looking for more art ideas? See my book review of Discovering Great Artists.

Free Printable

Posted on February 26, 2008
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My kids said I should post this link, as they have had so much fun with it.

PaperCars.net provides printouts of several types of cars (click on the cars button) that you can cut out and glue (we used tape!). Some of them are trickier than others – the VW Bus is a good one to start with. And the end results are pretty good!

Have fun!