A Matter of Choice

As Leo is learning the Greek alphabet at school I'm always up for a chance to try and keep him up to date with his English too so when Junior Scholars contacted me with regards to reviewing one of their products I jumped at the chance. We were sent the 'Show-me Handwriting Whiteboard'  The board is a dry wipe A4 size, with lines arranged in groups of three, the idea being to help the children to form the letters in the right proportions. Leo has some dry wipe books already and can quite happily draw over the dotted letters but usually needs to copy when writing them alone so I though this would be a great way to help him, especially as he struggles to keep his letters the same size! Considering that they only teach the Greek alphabet at school I was very pleased with how he got on, although when he got to the letter 'L' he refused to copy the English and reverted to doing it in Greek! I loved the board as it gives a bit more freedom than ...

Ever since Leo started using the Reading Eggs website  (an online world where children learn to read) back in September of last year it has remained one of his favourite activities, he even abandoned the Thomas and Friends website for it, and last week he has completed lesson 120! Too busy looking at his certificate to look at the camera! We usually did the lessons together as he found it a lot more fun that way, I doubt he would have finished them in that time on his own especially as they got harder towards the end, but he has amazed me with how well he has done considering he is only 3 still! I would now say that thanks to Reading Eggs, Leo can actually read - for a while I thought he was maybe just remembering the words of stories we have read many times but he's reading things everywhere, on signs, packets, from the television and is quite happy to try and work out what a word says by sounding it out if he doesn't recognise it. The main ...

As you probably know Leo recently started attending a local Cypriot school, despite my worries about how he would get on, he is doing really well and picking up the Greek language at an amazing pace. His teacher seems to be pleased with how he is understanding even though he's not speaking it yet (although he is speaking it a lot at home)  and I was very proud of him on the first couple of weeks when he was asked to copy over some dotted lines and he did it perfectly - she looked quite surprised and said 'He understands what to do??'   I explained we've done similar things at home. I believe here in Cyprus that they don't start to teach the children English at school until the age of 8 (I could be wrong) and I would also expect to give Leo extra help if he is to be at the same standard as if he had been in England as it is obviously a second language in school.  It's brilliant that his Greek is coming along but sooner or later I guess his English will start t...

Our family have always had a big love of reading and a house full of books, my Mum taught me to read before I stared school and Leo has also caught the reading bug.  He has had his own books and been read to from a very early age - in fact I often read out loud to him from whatever I was reading at the time when he was only few weeks old (it was the only time I got to read and he used to sit happily on my lap and listen) I'd heard many English parents here in Cyprus worry about their child's English and end up getting private tuition for them as they progress through school to keep them up to speed in case they have to go back to England to study at any point.  It concerned  me that there was going to be an extra thing to worry about, but I thought with the wealth of information and resources available surely we'd be able to do it ourselves? I know that it's often said parents should leave teaching to the teachers, in case we teach them 'wrong'. (In fact my...

Leo loves to learn and seems to have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge!  We conquered numbers a long time ago, closely followed by the alphabet and one of his favourite things at the moment is spelling! I think this came about by playing  'I-Spy' in the car to keep him entertained, it took a while but he's finally got the idea that you have to be able to see the thing you are 'spying' - (no Leo we cannot see a snake....  well we'd better not be able to see one!)   From the back of this he now asks how everything is spelt  - and I mean EVERYTHING, I feel like I'm living in some kind of spelling competition, I'm not complaining obviously, its a good thing he is so interested but it can be tiring! He always asks what things spell or what the letters are when he sees a sign or writing on anything, my usual response is 'I don't know, you tell me what letters you can see'   When he tells me the letters I then tell he what it spells.   This wor...

One of the presents Leo got for his birthday was a great little number puzzle, there are two parts to it, the first is very simple and Leo did it with no problems - numbers on one side and pictures on the other. The second is simple maths, for example    3 + 2 = 5  and   9 - 3 = 6  The addition was not too bad but   he was a bit confused by the subtraction as he wanted to count up the pictures and then match the total number and he got quite annoyed when I tried to explain,  so in a fit of inspiration  (as he didn't want to put it away either)   I opened a pack of dolly mixtures and showed him with the sweets..... If you Mummy has 7 sweets and she eats 2, then how many are left? He thought it was hilarious that I ate them and counted what was left, came up with the right answer and matched the puzzle piece.  I got him to do the next one and he ate the sweets this time,  laughing his head off all the while - and getting them...

Although I'm not naturally 'crafty' or imaginative I do like to try and come up with new ideas for fun activities to do with Leo, and ones that are in some way educational at the same time are even better!  I was confused recently when a friend of mine said how impressed she was at all the ideas I had, then I confessed that they are rarely my own and mostly 'borrowed' from other people's blog posts or Pinterest! So I surprised myself the other week when I decided that Leo and I should make an 'Alphabet book'  Unless I saw this online and can't remember I think I might have actually came up with this idea myself! Leo loves to read and knows his letters very well and I'd realised lately that he is starting to recognise words and read them even without a picture next to it. He will also happily spell out words when prompted. So I gathered together a load of cute clip art, one picture for each letter of the alphabet and cut them all up.  Usi...