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Here is our latest kids educational activity ebook and it's my favourite yet!

Up! will take your child's love of blocks and building and take them far and wide across the curriculum.

With 30+ projects across math, literacy, science, art, and play, Up! shows you how to support passion-led, project-based, hands-on learning. It will help your child make connections, go deeper in their understanding, and encourage their questions and creativity.

Including inspiring ideas for block play, mobiles, rockets, airplanes, parachutes, building challenges and more. It also comes with 100 printables for use at home or in the classroom. 

One of the great things about the activities presented in this eBook is that every activity has been tried, tested and approved by real children. The activities have been carefully chosen to offer a wide range of explorations, working across the curriculum to incorporate play, imagination, math, literacy, science, sensory and art and are written by an experienced collection of teacher and parenting bloggers.

The sky’s the limit when you’re learning with Up!

Age guide: 4 to 10 years.

BUY NOW: $11.25 USD
Regular Price: $14.99.
(25% off for the first 2 weeks of launch)

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More than socks, jocks and golf tees, dads just love their kids! 

I've asked a number of dads what it is that they'd like for Father's Day and it turns out that anything that has to do with spending time together or something personalised from the heart, is generally going to be best received by Dad this Father's Day.


A sweet, frugal and often amusing gift is a personalised survey, interview or writing prompt about Dad, completed by the kids. 

Fill-in-the-blanks can be a lovely way to record children's thoughts, knowledge and feelings about Dad each year and can be laminated or photographed to preserve for years to come. 

I, of course, also love the added literacy practice for kids and that they can be a great thought starter for children who need some inspiration to help them think of what to write.


Below are a couple of different designs that I have made that you are welcome to download and use. I have also compiled 8 other great versions from around the web.

The pictures below show the 2016 Father's Day Survey version that I originally made, however the ones I have available for you to download have no year printed on them (there is a blank space so that you can fill in the year) so you can use them for any year.


Download your free copies of the printable Father's Day Surveys below by clicking on the links below the picture:

Download - My Dad - The Low-Down any year


Download - My Rad Dad any year

Here are 8 other fun free printable Father's Day surveys I've found around the net: 

I searched the web quite a bit (as you probably have too) for some good free printable Father's Day Interview Sheets and after clicking through many, I've compiled the best 8 that I could find. 

Click the links below the pictures to go to the downloads.

1) Dear Dad Letter from Be a Fun Mum

2) Father's Day Interview Sheets from Makeovers and Motherhood (a few different designs available plus one for Grandfathers)

3) Me and My Dad Father's Day Printable from Love and Marriage Blog

4) Father's Day Printable (for Grandpa too) from Sunny Day Family

5) All about my Daddy Father's Day Questionnaire from Mamma Miss

6) I love my Dad Printable Interview from Your Modern Family

7) Dad Printable Questionnaire from Sunshine and Hurricanes

8) My Daddy and I Father's Day Survey Printable from Simple Fun for Kids




I hope that you enjoy using these printable interview sheets / questionnaires with your children or students.

I'm sure the dads will love them!


For more DIY Father's Day ideas, see here:

• 6 Kid-made Father's Day Gift Ideas
  
  
• Father's Day Crafts for Kids
  
  
• 21 DIY Father's Day Card Ideas
  
  
• Printable Father's Day posters

Happy playing,

Debs :)

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I am delighted to bring you our latest kids educational activity ebook.

This fun book, full of hands-on literacy and numeracy activities has been collaborated on by a fabulous group of bloggers and is jam packed full of engaging activities with easy to follow instructions and explanations. With multiple authentic learning opportunities in literacy and maths that incorporate art, sensory learning, motor skills and discovery, for a whole-brain approach.

Whether you are a teacher in the classroom or a parent at home, you will love the clear text, bright pictures and ideas for further learning, brought to you by a group of mums and teachers that have tried and tested all of these activities with real kids. I am sure you will enjoy your copy of ABCs and 123s. 40+ hands-on play activities to build letter, number and shape skills.

Regular Price: $14.99.

BUY NOW: $11.25 USD
(25% off for the first 2 weeks of launch. Hurry!)

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The change in seasons can be a dramatic one, depending on where you live. Here in Australia, Autumn (Fall) is during the months of March, April and May and we actually have very few deciduous trees (trees that loose their leaves) that are native to our country. We do have some, but they are far outnumbered by the evergreen trees, so when we see the change in colour and pops of red, orange and yellow appearing on trees, they really stand out against the all the green.

To further investigate the changes happening around us and to inspire learning and creativity, I set up this Autumn Leaf Investigation Table for my kids. At ages 4 and 7, I knew that their experiences were going to be different to one another and that materials and even expectations had to be open-ended and able to be used in a way that interested them and was appropriate to their levels.

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With Mother's Day coming up for another year, we took advantage of the opportunity to delve into some language learning and make a special keepsake for Mum at the same time.

(I did find doing this activity a little amusing as I was doing it with my own children. We used the word Mum in the example but talked about how we could substitute in "Nana" or "Grandma" and make a gift for them).

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Handwriting is something that takes children a while to master. 

It is a skill to coordinate a pen/pencil in a controlled manner to produce an exact result and one that develops over time and experience. 

To develop good handwriting, you require good fine-motor skills, hand/finger muscle strength and a good pen-grip/hold.

Being a trained teacher, since my children started holding and drawing with writing tools (pens, pencils, markers, crayons, paintbrushes), I have been encouraging them to adjust their grip to hold their writing implements with the three correct fingers that allow for good handwriting down the track.

Many children don't practice holding a pen using the correct 3 fingers until they get to school and then it's often a matter of trying to correct the natural hold that they have developed. 

Whilst children (and adults) are able to write using other various holds, the time-tested method below, once mastered, is the most comfortable way to write, allows for ease of movement and is the least likely to cause muscle strain or discomfort, especially when writing for lengthy periods of time.

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My 3 (almost 4) year-old is really into letters at the moment. 

He's asking questions about them, pointing them out, recognising/naming them, making them and just generally showing that now is the time to follow his interest and provide him with opportunities to practice and learn more about letters and his name.

I don't have time for fancy set-ups or anything that takes a long time to prepare these days (3 year-olds really keep you busy!) and it's almost always the simple activities that are most enjoyed and get the most use. 

This wax-resist activity is a classic that doesn't go out of style. You only need a candle, paper and some watercolour paint to have fun practicing name recognition, letter learning, number learning and just having fun.

Ages: 2+

See the bottom for handy tips to simplify or extend to suit your child's age & level of development.

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Letters are a hot topic at our house these days. Noah (3.5) has taken a real interest in letters, pointing them out, asking about their names and sounds and making connections between letters and other people or things in his life. Now is the perfect time for me to build upon this interest and offer opportunities for him to practice reading, writing, tracing, sounding-out, recognising, playing with and experiencing letters. 

At this age especially, I believe learning should be enjoyable and not forced. You can read more about my thoughts on learning letters with younger children here and how best to go about it here.

Today's activity works specifically on letter recognition, letter formation, fine motor skills and name recognition.

Ages: 2+

See the bottom of the post for handy tips for getting the most out of this activity for your child/ren

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My baby is now 3 years old and this year is attending a 3 year-old preschool group, twice a week for 2.5 hour sessions (total of 5 hours per week). He is just loving the socialisation, play-based curriculum and the fact that it's practically like being at home, but instead of one activity at a time, he can race around from activity to activity doing whatever tickles his fancy at the time. 

It's no surprise that in a 2.5 hour session he finds the time to do rice play, painting, playdough, water-play, building, sand play, reading, pretend-play, cutting & pasting and a whole lot more!

One of the things that is important for him now that he is playing and learning independently outside of the house, is being able to recognise his own name. Each child at preschool has their own locker to put their bag and each has their name on it. As most children this age are pre-literate, they also include a photo of each child next to their name so that they can make the connection between their own face and the combination of letters that makes up their name. He also has things like drink bottles and hats that are now labeled with his name, so there is a lot of chance for exposure and it's something that he needs to be able to recognise.

Learning to recognise, read and write your own name is predominantly a matter of being exposed to it and having experiences with it, a number of times. Children are all different when it comes to how quickly they are able to learn something. Some children are able to have very few experiences with their name before they are able to recognise it for the word that it is, and some children will need to be exposed to it hundreds of times before they are able to have consolidated the learning. Most children sit somewhere in the middle of a bell curve graph of learning abilities and will pick up some things quicker or slower than others. We're all individuals.

So, in order to learn our name, we need to be exposed to it and have experiences with it. There are tons and tons of different ways that you can get children writing, reading and playing with their name. Here is one simple activity.

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The best way to help a child's speech and language development is through play. 

Here are 10 simple activities that you can do at home, including the key vocabulary to focus on, to help develop your child's speech and oral language.

The key to these activities is about engaging with the child and using simple, useful language that matches the actions of play. 

This puts the language into context with what they are experiencing and gives them opportunities to hear, use and practice the language in a way that makes sense to them. 

Often the simple phrases are repeated over and over again in the same activity which is what you want. 

The words that you can focus on are listed for each activity under "Language" but you can still use them in correct sentence structure whilst focusing on the key words. 

For example, "Ball. You have a ball" and "Give ball. Give me the ball please." 

For more specific information about how to develop your child's speech through play and to hear our personal journey with oral language concerns, see here.

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If you have been following along then you will know that I have had the privilege to be part of a blogger media trip to Dubai. 

As a way to show and teach my children about Dubai and the experiences I had, I brought along our favourite Green Sheep toy, from the book Where is The Green Sheep, to lead them through it. 

You can see our first post, including details on how you could use this concept as a great learning tool with your children, here.

Now, on to Part 2 of The Green Sheep's adventures.

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Whilst in Dubai, I was fortunate to experience a really incredible Heritage Desert Safari and Dinner with Platinum Heritage. It was definitely one of the highlights of my trip and an absolute must-do if you visit Dubai.

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Having trouble during nappy change time with a wriggly baby? Try BabyLove Nappy Pants - with no tabs to contend with, the 360-degree stretchy waist allows you to pull them up quickly and easily, so your active toddler can get back to action in no time! Request a sample.

Reading with your children begins from birth and carries on over a lifetime. In the early days, baby really isn't going to know what you're reading to them. They are busy listening to your voice and tone and learning about the rhythm and sounds of language. Most importantly they are spending precious time bonding with you. Reading daily with and to children increases their early literacy skills and is more likely to grow a lifetime lover of books.

As they grow, babies begin to understand more and more. The majority of books that we loved at this early age tended to:

• have short, simple text (often repetitive and/or rhyming)
• allow children to attempt to mimic sounds 
• have bright, clear or contrasting picture
• allow children to touch or interact with the book in some way (lift flaps, touch different textures, press buttons for sound etc.)
• feature animals or familiar people (like family)
• be available in board books (babies and toddlers need to be able to touch and handle the books too so you'll save lots of tears and sticky-tape by getting board books they can actually use without destroying. Cloth books are especially good for infants)

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One of the things that children in Victoria, Australia are taught in their first year of Primary School, is writing between the lines in order to develop their handwriting. 

Once children have developed their fine motor skills, worked on learning letters and practiced writing on blank paper and with other mediums to develop their letter formation, they are usually introduced to handwriting paper with dotted-thirds to assist them in writing letters of consistent size and format.

A little trick I used in my classroom to help children learning to write in dotted-thirds was, "Clever Cat." 

Clever Cat's bottom sits on the solid base line and his body takes up the first gap. His head sits on top, occupying the second gap up between the dotted lines and his tail dangles below the solid line, extending to the first dotted line below.

Clever Cat for handwriting works as a fun visual aid to assist children in remembering where letters should sit between the lines and their sizing. 

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Welcome to TUESDAY TOTS. Brought to you weekly by Learn with Play at home (that's us), Rainy Day Mum and One Perfect Day.

This week we are showcasing

"6 Games to practice Reading"

Learning to read is one of those very important developmental milestones for kids. The completely awesome thing about learning to read is that really, all you need to do to learn to read, is to read (and read, and read, and read).
Ok, so generally there is a starting point to learning to read formally, which is by learning letters. But learning to read should start long before individual letter learning and it comes from being read to as a child. For children to learn how to read they need to be read to continuously and they need to have opportunities to read text in all forms.
To help with the comprehension of text, children often practice sight words so that their reading flows more easily and understanding is not lost. Just reading over letters and lists of sight words isn't the most interesting activity for kids though, so here are 6 games from last week's Tuesday Tots link-up, that make practicing reading fun.

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Activities for teaching children to write

Before children can write, they need to build up the necessary fine-motor skills. Involving them in a range of fine motor activities will allow them to develop the muscle strength and coordination necessary for writing.

Like many things that children must learn, writing is something that comes with time and practice. It also often goes hand in hand with learning letters and learning your name.

Enticing children to write and make marks in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes will help them develop the skill over time. In the title picture above, we were practicing writing our name. I wrote the name in highlighter and children can write over that with pen or pencil. Little dots with arrows showed where the letter needed to be started and the direction they needed to go.

Below are a good range of activities and ideas to help with teaching children how to write.

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Even before Maddie (5) started school, we had begun working on some sight words as many commonly used words are unable to be "sounded-out" and knowing them instantly, helps aid in the flow of reading text and therefore, improves comprehension. Now that Maddie is at school, learning sight words is an actual expectation and something that we have to work on.

Reading and practicing words from a list is fine, but there is no way of knowing if your child has actually learnt to read that word automatically or not, unless you test them off the list. Children are fantastic at memorising certain things and whilst you may think that pointing to words out of order on a list, shows they are able to read the words, you may be surprised when they come across the same word in a book later and are unable to read it. This is because they have memorised the exact format of the text on the list as well as it's location. Remembering them like this is good, it's an important step, but there is still a bit more work to be done on them to ensure they are properly learnt.

In order to ensure that your child has actually learnt the word and is able to read it automatically (without hesitation), they need multiple exposures to the words in different contexts. Like with everything else, some children may pick them up very quickly with limited exposure, while some may need to have more exposure and practice.

Here is a fun game that has kids reading their sight words whilst burning off a bit of energy at the same time.

Age: 3+

(See bottom for tips to simplify or extend to meet your child's needs)

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Welcome back to TUESDAY TOTS. (Apologies for the late posting this week). Brought to you weekly by Learn with Play at home (that's us), Rainy Day Mum and One Perfect Day.

Announcement: In order to keep up with the demands of our own households and also those of our readers, Cerys (from Rainy Day Mum), Ness (from One Perfect Day) and myself, have decided to open the Tuesday Tots link up to play ideas, activities and child related posts suitable from birth to teens. 

Where once we only shared ideas for those under the age of 5, we will now be sharing activities, ideas and posts for a larger range of ages/abilities. We look forward to seeing all the new material that is linked up from talented bloggers worldwide and featuring our top picks for the week.

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For Maddie's 5th birthday I made her a special "Writing Box." Being a teacher of the Early Years I knew that she was at the perfect age for really developing her writing skills and love of writing. She is already interested in writing, thanks to activities we've done over the years such as writing in salt, writing with water on the chalkboard and sensory name writing. You don't have to wait until your child is 5 years old though to make something like this. It should interest and engage them in writing/mark-making/drawing/creativity regardless of the age.

As my daughter is just starting her first year at Primary School, I know that this means that over the year she will be expected to write and to practice things like hand-writing, letter formation, sight words, story telling, etc. My vision is that having a special way to inspire her to want to write and get excited about writing, should hopefully help in this area.

I have always tried to encourage a love of literacy in her and this was just another way that I thought would help entice her to really want to write and be creative with her own special box and materials.

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Each year around Christmas time, my children and I love to bake cookies and deliver them to an assisted living centre to bring some Christmas cheer to others. We're looking forward to doing this again this year slightly closer to Christmas.

Whilst it is important to encourage children to be kind and thoughtful towards others all year round, Christmas is certainly a fabulous time of year to put a real emphasis on kindness, giving and thinking about others and a little less emphasis on what we want and what we're going to get.

When Chelsea from Moments a Day organised a group of bloggers to participate in Random Acts of Kindness for Toddlers and Preschoolers I was grateful for the opportunity to think about this more and to reinforce these important messages in my children. Using Chelsea's ebook, 52 Acts of Kindness, for inspiration, I read through some of the different and simple ideas that we could do to bring a little bit of sunshine to someone's life. Together, we decided that we would write a letter and leave a little gift for our postman.

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