7 Ways To Keep the Children Busy and Learing During Lockdown!

Hi there!

I hope you're all doing well!

I wanted to share some resources with you that have been popping into my email inbox over the past few weeks.

1.  The Happy News - A fantastic, quirky, smiley newspaper full of handpicked positive news from around the world! You can subscribe to the paper itself, but I was also sent an activity pack for kids, full of positive news, and a blank sheet for them to create their very own Happy News! You can access this pack, and read more about subscriptions here!
2. Caboodle - This is a loyalty scheme by National Book Tokens. Just register and you can start collecting points with them straight away by entering competitions and playing games. Once you start collecting points they'll send you all kinds of exclusive content, other competitions and lots more lovely bookish stuff. There's a children's section and lots of for grown ups too! Explore Caboodle here!
3. Family Zone - I think I've mentioned this in one of my last posts, but I thought I'd pop the link in again for those who might have missed it. Family Zone is an area on the National Literacy Trust's website especially for children from 0-11. It is full of fun activities that will have your children learning and improving their literacy and reading skills without even realising! Take a look here!
4. Puffin Books - Their latest newsletter has a brilliant activity pack for children, full of fun activites based on favourites such a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. There's also a brilliant new podcast which went down well with the smaller ones in my family, and lots of must read book recommendations. Download the activities, and learn more about the other bits here!
5. Harry Potter with Audible - Queen J.K Rowling has been amazing once again and relaxed the copyright laws on the first Harry Potter Audiobook read by Stephen Fry, and allowed Audible to let everyone listen to it for free! I can't think of a better way to get through lockdown! Go on, listen!
6. Harry Potter at Home - If the free audiobook has ignited your children's imaginations, why not go and check out the new resource from The Wizarding World - Harry Potter at Home. Especially put together for the lockdown this website has all kinds of extra reading, facts about the Harry Potter books, quizzes, puzzles, crafts, and lots more to help you explore the world of Harry Potter. How amazing is that! You can find the Harry Potter at Home Hub here!
7. The World of David Walliams - David Walliams's website is full of hoards of fun activities, games, and downloadable puzzles based on his much-loved books, that will keep your kids busy for hours! There are also free audio books and live story time videos too! Check it out here!

Right, so that's my rundown of the latest activities and resources I could find to keep your families busy, keep boredom at bay, and secretly teach them things too, during lockdown!

Thanks for reading, Lx

Ps. Flour Babies by Anne Fine is up next!

No. 64 - Centrally Heated Knickers

Hello again! It's Tuesday... I think!
I'm back with another book for you. This week it's Michael Rosen's poetry collection Centrally Heated Knickers (tehe!). It's a collection of poems all about science and technology, and is a fun, and slightly bonkers look at lots of different topics within these areas.

If I were a primary school teacher I would be really grateful for this book when it came to exploring all things science with my class! It's divided up into four sections, Environment, Design and Innovation, Chemistry, and Physics, and there are around twenty-five poems per section. Topics covered include sustainable energy, how we can help the planet, the properties of different materials, space, food, and lots more!

The poems themselves are typical of Michael Rosen's style. They are silly, irreverent at times, full of word play, and the joy of language. They are also touching, thought provoking musings on modern life. I think quite a few of these poems would act as springboard for discussion with children (hence why they would be great in the classroom), opening the door to hot topics such as sustainability, renewable energy and climate change. They are domestic, child friendly, and usually based around a child character. I remember doing simple experiments in primary school around weight, speed, melting points etc, and these poems took me back to those days. The time before science meant getting out the Bunsen Burners and chemicals in test tubes!

I also discovered, when researching for this post, that Michael Rosen used some of the poems in Centrally Heated Knickers to create a stage show! There's a couple of great videos of it on YouTube, this is the making of, and this one is the trailer of the show, giving you an idea of the way Rosen really brings his poems to life during performance. These poems definitely need to be enjoyed aloud. I tried reading them in my head, but as anyone who loves poetry knows, you can't get a real idea of the sound of the words, or the rhythm of the poem without vocalising it!

At the moment in the UK a lot of people are having to homeschool their children, and I think this would be the perfect book to use to help engage your children in a bit of science, and maybe it might even inspire you to do some fun DIY experiments! You can buy it on Amazon here (the kindle version is only £2.99!). 

Thanks for reading, L X

Next up - Flour Babies by Anne Fine (which I've started reading, and it's great!)

(Ps. not sure what's up with the formatting on this post...? Sorry!) 

No. 65 - The Way Back Home

Hi all, I'm a few days late i'm afraid. Not the best start to a new routine! Anyway, a quick note about this post. I started writing it way before this isolation malarkey started and funnily enough some of the points I make feel very valid for right now. So let's heed the wise words of Oliver Jeffers, and take heart from the Martian and the boy.

I love a picture book, and this one is no exception! It even had me feeling a bit teary at times! 

Oliver Jeffers is a master of the picture book genre, and The Way Back Home is a beautiful, enchanting tale of intergalactic friendship, teamwork and motor mechanics! For me this book is also a story about equality, anxiety, and hope in the darkest of times. Let me tell you all about it.  

The boy (who you may recognise from some of Jeffer's other books) finds an aeroplane in a cupboard and takes it for a spin. However, he makes a major error and ends up stuck on the moon with no fuel! Silly boy! Elsewhere in the galaxy, a Martian is having a bit of a 'mare too. The engine of his spaceship is failing, and he has to land on the moon asap! Both stranded at each end of the moon, they begin to get very worried. 

They both believe that they are all alone and something nasty is going to loom out of the darkness and get them! They are in one of  those horrid 'what if' situations that we all feel at various times in our lives. Stranded, alone, and in the dark, they fear the worst. But luckily they are not alone!

Very cleverly Jeffer's uses the situation to explain a fundamental point, that in life we are never truly alone. There will always be someone going through the same thing as you, or experiencing the same feelings. Whether this is in childhood or adulthood, the point is the same, you are not the first person to have been through this. The Martian and the boy are a literal example of this. They are both very anxious about the position they had found themselves in, but to know someone else is experiencing the same problem gives them reassurance. For children, this is a reassuring thing to know, and let me tell you, as an adult it helps too!

The boy and the Martian eschew their own worries to help each other, and work together as a team to try and plan their way back home. This unlikely friendship between boy and alien is a delight, and I particularly like the illustration below, where you can see their plans coming together through a variety of gestures and drawings. I like to think that they can't speak each other's languages and this is their best method of communication. There is no language barrier here! The boy and the Martian are not interested in that, they are united in their mission to get off the moon. There is a childhood innocence to this. Play and imagination are universal languages, they pay no attention to race or culture. If you put two children together who speak different languages they will ultimately find a way to communicate and play together, and that, I think, is what's happening here. It's hidden moral message, help others, no matter what their background may be.

As I've already explained, this book takes a clever and fresh look at the subconscious worries we all have on various levels as humans. The fear of the unknown, the fear of the dark, of being stranded all alone. Another example of this is the boy's connection with his home. It is very easy for the boy to fly to the moon, much easier than you might think (ignore all your physics knowledge), but once he is stuck up there home suddenly seems very far away, and getting back seems impossible. I think this eludes to the idea that a problem always seems so much bigger when you are in the middle of it. However, once the Martian arrives and he has company, the boy feels much less anxious, and the idea of popping home to get supplies is as simple as popping around the corner! He parachutes back down to earth, and home again. What was he so worried about!? He's even so relaxed that he has a rest in his favourite chair! However, this is short lived when he remembers his new friend stuck up on the moon! The boy could have stayed put, he was home, he was comfy, but he knew he still had to rescue the Martian. He is selfless, not selfish. Another cheeky, secret moral message! 

You'll  be pleased to know that it all ends well for the Martian and the boy. The Martian fills the plane's petrol tank, and the boy fixes the Martian's engine, and they both go home safely. Hooray! This book is a delight from start to finish. Jeffer's distinctive illustrations create wonderful characters, that you just can't help but fall in love with. Despite being just a child, and an alien they speak hugely about the human condition, in a really touching way. The unity and equality portrayed in this book makes me incredibly happy! Maybe I've read too much into it, but I feel like there is a lot to be learnt from this book, and not just for children.

Thanks for reading, L x

PS. Next up is Michael Rosen's science and technology poems collection, Centrally Heated Knickers!