Competition Winner

We are pleased to announce that the winner of Littlesheep Learning's Christmas Competition is 6 year old Daniel from Saddleworth.

Here is his winning tree:

Happy Christmas for the Birds

I provided some Christmas / winter themed activities for Sally at Treehugger Mums as part of her Christmas countdown series which she is posting on her blog each day in the run up to Christmas.

One of them is bird feeders and as it's started getting frosty we're going to make some this afternoon (plus wrap a few up for grandparent presents!).

You will need:
Yoghurt pots and string
Good quality birdseed, raisins, peanuts, grated cheese
Suet or lard,

How to:
Carefully make a small hole in the bottom of a yoghurt pot (if you are making them as gifts decorate the pot first).
Thread string through the hole and tie a knot on the inside.
Leave enough string so that you can tie the pot to a tree or your bird table.
Cut up the lard into small pieces and put it in the mixing bowl.
Add the other ingredients to the bowl and mix them together with your fingertips.
Keep adding the seed / raisin / cheese mixture and squashing it until the fat holds it all together.
Fill the yoghurt pots with bird cake mixture and put them in the fridge to set for an hour or so.
Hang your bird feeders from trees or your bird table and watch for birds.

Children can have fun identifying birds by matching what they look like to a picture book. Will a Christmas robin visit your garden?

Decorating the Christmas Tree

We've just been decorating our tree and I've realised that even something as simple as this can offer endless possibilities for learning and generalising knowledge.

First, there is the waiting - that is the bit where the adults are putting on the lights! Our pre-schooler found this very difficult as he was very excited to be involved in decorating the tree.

Then the decorations, these hold several different learning opportunities, you can label the items - tinsel, baubles, beads and the ornaments - snowmen, angels, Father Christmas, reindeer. You can practice colours and shapes (depending on your decorations!). You can practice prepositions / adjectives / opposites - on the tree 'v' off the tree, high 'v' low, top 'v' bottom, put it next to the star / above the snowman / below the bauble / under the tree.

Lastly there is the big lesson of not touching the finished tree! Our toddler is still learning this one so I keep being presented with the baubles with him saying 'ball'.

Paperchain Learning

We've been making paperchains and whilst threading, looping and sticking (and stapling!) I started to think of all the learning opportunities that this activity can create.

Firstly, if you aren't using a pack of precut strips (like we did) then there are lots of skills needed to prepare your paperchain strips and then the paper needs to be measured and lines drawn on using a ruler or folded to divide up the page, then the strips need to be cut practicing scissor skills.

Whilst making the paperchain, the repetitive threading is an excellent fine motor task. Incidental learning can also occur if you label the colours / pictures on your paper strips or make patterns with different colours to practice sequencing skills. Precut strips are often gummed so licking and sticking the ends is good for children who have oral-motor difficulties and need to practice sticking their tongue out. Fixing your chains with a dab of glue or sticky tape will help children co-ordination and using a small stapler is also great fine motor skill practice.

Have fun making your paperchains this Christmas.

Christmas Colouring Sheets

Did you know that at Littlesheep Learning we have a whole host of Christmas colouring sheets that are FREE to download? These simple picture outlines are great for young children who are just starting to colour in. There are currently five to choose from Christmas tree, Elf, Father Christmas, Robin and Snowman. There are also a range of activity sheets targetting matching skills, finding the 'odd one out' and wordsearches of varying difficulties. Look out for more worksheets being added soon.

Also don't forget that your children can enter our Christmas Colouring Competition by decorating a Christmas tree outline and sending it to us. Look out for the best trees being featured here later this month.

Christmas Cooking - Christmas biscuits

If your children are anything like mine getting into a mess in the kitchen is a great way to keep them busy. Cooking is a great tool for incidental learning; you are making use of maths skills with the measuring, using literacy skills - reading and following the instructions and the mixing, rolling, cutting and icing are great to help develop motor skills.

Today I've promised the children that we'll make Christmas biscuits this afternoon. If you want to join us making Christmas Biscuits, you will need:

Equipment:

• scales
• mixing bowl
• fork
• plate
• teaspoon
• biscuit cutters (you can get some lovely ones from PinkFairyCake)
• rolling pin
• baking tray
• oven gloves,
• wire tray

Ingredients

• 175g/6oz plain flour
• 50g/2oz caster sugar
• 100g/4oz butter
• 5ml/1tsp vanilla essence
• Icing / sprinkles to decorate

Method

1. Heat the oven to 170˚C/325˚F/Gas Mark 3.
2. Grease the baking sheet with butter or margarine.
3. Weigh the flour and sugar and put them into a bowl.
4. Weigh the butter and cut into small pieces.
5. Add the butter to the flour and sugar.
   Mix together with a fork and rub everything together with your fingers.
   Rub the mixture together until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.
6. Measure the vanilla essence and add it to the mixture.
7. Gather all the mixture together and squeezing it gently to make a ball
8. Sprinkle flour on to a clean work surface and put your mixture on to it.
9. Knead it with your fingers until you have a smooth, firm ball.
10. Put some flour on the rolling pin and gently roll out the mixture until it is about half a centimetre thick.
11. Then cut out your shapes using your cutters (f you want to make tree decorations from your bicuits use a skewer to make a hole for your ribbon).
12. Gather up any spare bits of mixture and roll it out again to make more biscuits.
13. Carefully pick up the biscuits and put them on to greased baking sheets.
14. Put the baking trays into the oven and bake for about 20 minutes until the biscuits are a light golden colour.
15. Leave the biscuits to cool for 5 minutes before lifting them on to the wire cooling tray. (If you are making decorations poke the skewer into the holes to make sure they don’t close up as the biscuits cool).
16. Use icing / sprinkles to decorate if you want to.
17. Eat! (or give away as presents)

Other Festivals - Hannukah

As Christians, we are busy looking at the Nativity story, in the Littlesheep Learning household, as well as following the secular Christmas traditions for example the magic of Father Christmas from our childhoods. It is important though that children learn about other cultures / religions and their festivals. One thing that seems to be a common theme throughout the winter festivals is the use of lights - we have an Advent candle being lit each evening as a preparation for the Christmas season. The children celebrated the Hindu / Sikh festival Divali at nursery at the end of October / beginning of November by making lamps and sunset tonight marks the start of the Jewish festival of of Hannukah.

Hannukah celebrates the miracle of the oil for the menorah (the 6-branched candelabrum) that should have only lasted for one night but lasted for eight days. For more information about Hannukah some activities for you to share with your children see this article at Treehugger Mums.

Letters to Father Christmas

Most children will be wanting to tell Father Christmas what they would like for Christmas and historically children will be writing letters to him and putting them up the chimney / posting them to the North Pole. The prospect of writing this important letter is a challenge for toddlers and children with fine motor difficulties so here are some ideas to make it easier for them and you.

1. Write the letter for your child and get them to decorate it by sprinkling glitter, sticking on Christmassy stickers and doodling borders, they could also add their own name.


2. Write the letter for your child to copy / trace


3. Let your child type their letter (I believe you can even email Santa these days!)


4. Get your child to 'cut and stick' their letter, help them select the things from Christmas catalogues and stick them to create a picture list.

Christmas

December is now here so over the next month I'll be posting some suggestions of art and craft activities and other learning opportunities with a wintery and Christmas theme. From writing letters to Father Christmas to making Christmas cards and wrapping paper there will be ideas for everyone. I'll also share some of our favourite books from our Christmas story box which made their appearance by magic on 1st December.

Christmas Competitions and Offers

Today at Littlesheep Learning we are launching our Christmas Colouring Competition and Christmas Offers. More savings and weekly / daily specials will be added throughout December so keep checking back.

To enter our Christmas Colouring Competition - simply print the Christmas tree outline, colour and decorate your tree and post it to us before 17th December 2007 to be in with a chance of winning a copy of the Big Book of Things to Make and Do. Good luck and get decorating! The competition is open to all children under the age of 12.

Also a special Christmas present enter the code Christmas at checkout and you can save 10% but hurry this offer ends on our last Christmas posting date of 20th December.

Five Little Ducks

Everyone knows the rhyme 5 Little Ducks went swimming one day and this is an excellent rhyme to use to start teaching children about counting and about ducks. Here are some ideas!

Activity ideas:
Different activities will be suitable for children of different ages so you may be able to revisit this list over a number of years!

• Go and feed the ducks
• Play with bath ducks in water
• Share rhymes about ducks (see suggestions below)
• Share books about ducks (see suggestions below)
• Play with the 5 Little Ducks Teaching Song Mitt
• Draw and colour pictures of ducks
• Talk about the noise ducks make - you could play listening games and listen for the duck
• Talk about where ducks live
• Talk about the lifecycle of ducks from eggs, to ducklings to grown up ducks

Songs and Rhymes
The most popular duck rhyme has to be 5 Little Ducks went swimming one day (start with 3 for younger children!), this is a rhyme that varies everywhere it is sung but here is our version!

Five little ducks went swimming one day,
Over the pond and far away,
Mummy Duck said "quack, quack, quack, quack",
But only four little ducks came back.

Repeat with four little ducks, then three, then two, then one until 'no little ducks came swimming back'. Then we sing:

Daddy duck went swimming one day ,
Over the pond and far away,
Mummy Duck said "quack, quack, quack, quack",
And all the ducks came swimming back.

Another rhyme is:

Five little ducks that I once knew,
Three were fat and skinny were two,
But the one little duck,
With the feather on his back,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack.

Down to the river they would go,
Wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble, to and fro,
But the one little duck,
With the feather on his back,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack.

Back from the river they would come,
Wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble, ho, hum, hum,
But the one little duck,
With the feather on his back,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack.

Lastly,

Isn't it a bit of luck
That I was born a baby duck
With yellow socks and yellow shoes
I can go wherever I choose?
Quack, quack, quack quack

Books

There are many books based on the 5 Little Ducks song, my favourite is

• Five Little Ducks by Penny Ives

Other 'duck' books include:

• One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root and Jane Chapman
• Nine Ducks Nine by Sarah Hayes
• Duck (Read & Learn: Life Cycles) by Richard Spilsbury
• From Egg to Duck (How Things Grow) by Sally Morgan
• I am a Duck by Linda Bygrave

New Series of Posts

I've been tidying up and I've come across the piles of handouts from the Stay and Play sessions we go to, so I thought I'd write a series of posts based on these. This term the theme has been animals and each week there is a song, a story and activities based on the theme. I'll try and post every few days for the next week or so and then continue to post them each week. Look out for suggestions surrounding ducks, frogs, farm animals, jungle animals and more! These play ideas are great for incidental learning and increasing a child's general knowledge.

Road Safety Week

This week (5th-11th November 2007) is Road Safety Week. The theme of Road Safety Week 2007 is child pedestrian and cyclist safety. Brake will be urging drivers to slow down around schools and homes and calling for measures to help protect children on foot and bikes.

Some things to remember to keep children safe when out walking...

• Hold your child's hand / keep them close by you - young children are often unpredictable and could easily run into the road
• Always talk to your child about finding a safe place to cross and use pedestrian crossings when they are available
• Make sure you STOP, LOOK and LISTEN before crossing the road - wait until there are no cars coming
• If going out after dark - wear light or reflective clothing

For more resources - check out the resources for parents here and the resources for 3-10 year olds here. Resources for other groups are also available.

Competition Winner

The winner of our 'Write a Review' Competition is Jane from Stoke on Trent. Jane wins a The Complete book of First Experiences - this padded hardback book is a lovely collection of nine titles from Usborne's First Experiences series.

Jane wrote a review of the Today's Chart a colourful chart showing the day, date, month, year, season and weather. In the review Jane praised the chart for being a "great way to incorporate lots of different skills in a fun and easy way".

To celebrate this review winning the competition Today's Chart will be November's Monthly Special.

MPs urge rethink on special needs

I was reading an article today about the Education and Skills Committee's repeated call for the government to rethink its refusal to separate the assessment and funding of special educational needs, to increase parents' confidence in the operation of the system in England.

Local councils are responsible for assessing what extra help children may need in schools, as well as funding it. In 2006 around 1.5 million children, or 19% of all pupils in England's schools, were recorded as having some sort of special educational need (SEN) and around 3% have an SEN statement, which sets out the extra help to which they are entitled and follows the formal assessment in question. It is the process of getting this extra help that proves troublesome for many parents, with some taking their cases to special tribunals.

The report said it did not matter how diligent a local authority was in assessing how much help a child might need, dissatisfied families would "conclude the assessment was tainted by the need to restrict costs".

The committee first called on the government to take the responsibility for assessing the needs out of the hands of the local authorities that fund them in a report published in July 2006. But the government refused, saying this would inevitably result in a new agency to carry out assessments having to be created. However, in its latest report, the committee suggests a range of options, including assessments being commissioned by local authorities or delegating the responsibility to schools.

Committee chairman Barry Sheerman said: "We were very disappointed in the government's response to our original report on SEN, which seemed to demonstrate an unwillingness to consider alternative ways of addressing vital issues on assessment of need and service provision." He added that children with special educational needs and their families deserved better. Evidence to this follow-up inquiry showed that assessment of need could be made more independent without introducing a whole new bureaucratic structure. The report also calls for much greater transparency in how money for children with special needs is spent and it asks the government for an explicit commitment to provide a national framework for special educational needs.

Schools Minister Andrew Adonis said improving the chances for children with special educational needs was one of its priorities, which was why funding had been boosted. He said "We agree with the report that ensuring parents have confidence in the SEN system is important." He outlined a commitment to undertake research to look at the experience of parents through the process (with the tribunals service) and identify how schools, local authorities and the SEN and disability tribunal can increase parental confidence - this research should be published next summer. In the shorter term, he said that careful consideration of the ideas that the committee has put forward for increasing parents' trust in the system.

The general secretary of the NASUWT teachers' union, Chris Keates, said changes to the assessment process would be unwise stating that the MPs' recommendations were based on anecdote and perceptions about alleged conflict of interest rather than hard evidence.

I think it's interesting that the NASUWT seem to agree that the current system is adequate when nearly all parents I know have had to fight to get their child the services that they believe they need - there definitely needs to be more research to assess whether it is anecdotal or whether it is factual.

What do you think? Did you have to fight for services / the education your child deserved? Let me know!

The Bercow Review

John Bercow MP has been asked by the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families to carry out an independent review of services for children and young people with speech, language and communications needs.

The review's call for evidence was launched on 16 October and will run until 18th January 2008. School staff, students and parents are invited to contribute. The evidence will contribute to an interim report to both Secretaries of State in March 2008 and a final report making recommendations in July.

Visit the Bercow Review page for more information and add your evidence to help make a difference.

Carnival of Family Life

We are pleased to announce that our post: Fun Fine Motor / Sensory Activity has been included in this week's Carnival of Family Life. Blog carnivals are a great way of finding out other blogs on subjects that interest you - take a look there is lots of reading there!

To check out the Carnival of Family Life's Index for past and future Carnival Hosts or to submit your blog posts.

Free Handhugger Pen

Spend over £5 (not including any discounts / P&P) between 23rd and 30th October 2007 and get a FREE Handhugger Pen.

These triangular writing pens have a special chunky, hard-wearing nib and washable ink. The nib is designed to give slight resistance to the paper so that it gives greater control when first learning to write. These pens are popular and comfortable for all age groups including those with fine motor difficulties as well as children learning to write.

Fun Fine Motor / Sensory Activity

I just came across this activity posted on a forum in a Facebook group I'm a member of - Babies Toddlers Kids Early Learning Group Help your kids take giant leaps. It looks a fantastic way to engage children in sensory play helping them develop their fine motor skills and encourage the use of descriptive language.

All you need for this game is a pillow case and househild objects. Fill the pillowcase with anything interesting you can find around the house. The objects should be preferably small and should vary in shape and texture (and of course be safe to touch under supervision). Here are some of the objects that you can put in the pillowcase:

• cotton reel
• cotton wool ball
• small sponge
• building block
• marble
• toy car
• key
• small teddy
• tennis ball
• teaspoon
• and anything else you might find around the house!

The more objects are in the pillowcase, the more interesting the game will become.

The first and the easiest stage of the game is to sit with your baby on the floor, get them to reach inside the bag and take out one of the objects. Let the baby hold and play with the object for a while. While you are examining the object you can say things like "How does it feel?", "Is it smooth?", "Does it feel soft?", etc.

The next stage of the game can be played with children who are a little older and are beginning to talk. Again, get the child to reach for the object in the bag but before they take it out they have to guess what the object is. After they take it out ask some questions about the properties of the object (for example; What shape is it? What color is it? What do we use it for? How do we use it?).

This activity could also be used as part of a circle time activity with children taking it in turns.

Is your five year old meeting the targets?

I've just been reading a report that says 'Five-year-olds short on skills'. Assessments of children observed in reception classes show only 45% of five-year-olds in England meet government goals for their learning and development. The statistics are drawn from assessments made by teachers in a child's first year of formal education - reception class looking at how far children go in reaching what are known as "early learning goals" in areas such as: personal social and emotional development; communication, language and literacy; mathematical development; physical development; creative development; and knowledge and understanding of the world. Only 35% of five-year-olds in deprived areas were reaching the early goals compared to 45% of the population as a whole.

The government has put a lot of resources into schemes designed to help lift children out of the poverty trap and improve their life chances, believing that early intervention is crucial.
Sure Start children's centres have been set up in 1,500 of the most disadvantaged areas, offering nursery or play group sessions as well as health advice and parenting classes, however this has yet to significantly improve the outcomes for these children.

So what can you do to help ensure your child meets the standards?

• work in partnership with your child's school, attend parents evenings / curriculum advice sessions, join in with school activities and help your child with their homework,
• don't assume that your child will learn everything they need to know in school, spend time sharing books, playing games and teaching them informally through outings and household activities