Mamma Musings

Resources for home school parents and teachers

As a lecturer and parent there are some questions I get asked quite a lot and most relate to the same topics, for example I do extra work at home with my kids aside from school, did I myself do a lot of additional work outside school to get to where I am today and also are we a screen free house?!

While watching the snow outside, the fire is on and temps are in the minus figures, I decided to write this post to answer some of those questions are serve as a useful guide for parents who may wish to have some rainy day activities or even some screen free activities. In addition for teachers, there will be some great tips here for resources to aid you in the classroom also.

First up the easy question – screen time. Yes we do allow screen time but it is limited and closely monitored. I does have lots of educational apps and shows so there are certainly some benefits. As the old adage says “everything in moderation”

Turning to the issue of additional work…. for me personally yes my parents did actively teach us outside of school using resources they either purchased or passed between families doing similar in our locality. In the 80’s it wasn’t quite as easy to log on and download resources, themed or topical worksheets. I guess the answer to the next question wont be a surprise, yes we do additional targeted work with our kids, but critically we make it fun. For example, when we went to Tromso, Norway – we spent time teaching the kids all about the culture of the area, the language and of course the Northern Lights.

Resources we love

Reading is big in our house and the kids love a trip to the library to select books, we aim for some fiction and some topical factual books, for example at the moment we are reading about countries in the World Cup and about the host country.

In order to keep the kids engaged and it being fun we also utilise a online an online subscription- Teacher Club Card known as Creative Fabrica. This is really wonderful and you will never get bored of the vast range of fonts, AI art and downloads. In summary for as little as $2.99 a year (yes you actually read that correctly) you can access more than 10 thousand digital teaching resources. You can also cancel at anytime with that particular subscription you can download 5 digital downloads a week, that’s a huge 260 digital downloads a year.

A huge positive for me as an educator is that Creative Fabrica truly supports teachers – 100% of teaching subscriptions fees are paid to teachers. It really is worth a look and a trial whether you are a teacher, a home-school parent or even a parent looking for some additional activities to keep your kids entertained on a rainy day or screen free day.