More gifts the girls made

The girls have almost finished.
Felt hop scotch,

felt shooting stars,

notebooks,

a clay nativity (that still needs painting), seed pearl bracelets

and matching hair clips.

We finished off by decorating our gingerbread house

and tomorrow the baking starts.

Homemade Christmas Gifts

The girls have been working really hard over the last two weeks making all their Christmas pressies.
So far they have completed the following:
Felt flower hair grips for their friends

sweet gift box

star anise salt scrub

homemade mince pie filling

felt pencil case

bookmark

tie on wheat bag

angry bird pom pom game

fimo holly berries to decorate our evergreen garland

and hanging lanterns for decoration

They are still working on a few more and I'll upload them when they are finished.

check out Our worldwide classroom for some other great gift ideas and Christmas activities.

Fractazmic Fraction Fun - TOS Review

When this game from I See Cards landed on my doorstep with the promise of 'The most fun you'll ever have learning fractions!' I was intrigued.

The game consists of 60 colourful cards divided into three suits (tenths in green, twelfths in blue and sixteenths in red) and the idea is to collect a whole from the fractions. The game is intended for age 7 and above and works with 2-4 players.

The game comes with instructions that I must admit that I found confusing to start with but quickly realised the rules were similar to gin rummy.

It worked very well with both Lilly and Sunflower (9 & 7) - both have a basic understanding of fractions and Lilly has covered fraction addition. The game provided a great review for Lilly and a real learning tool for Sunflower (although I did catch her cheating occasionally and counting up the graphics rather than adding the fractions)

Tulip wasn't ready for the full version of this game (5yo) but as she was desperate to play we used them in a version of snap - she would hold the cards in her hand and match the fraction I played.(so if I put down a half she would 'snap' with two quarters)

I loved this game and the girls loved this game - it's become one of their favourites to play and I love the versatility of it. I do think the instruction were more confusing than they needed to be but don't be put off by that as the game is really good fun and you can watch them being played here - Fractazmic Trap and Fractazmic Rummy. You can also play an on line game.

Fractazmic can be purchased on line for $6.95. See what the rest of the crew thought over at TOS Crew Blog

Disclaimer
I was given a free copy of the game in return for an honest review.

winter tot trays

Here is a sneak peak at Rose's trays.
making a snowman puppet,

scissor practise,

snowflake spooning,

star numbers (the little wooden numbers are stuck to the tray with blue tac),

cookie cutter tracing (my festive take on insets),

wooden pegging with winter dolls,

star sorting (with an open/close exercise thrown in),

jingle bell transfer,

and a snowflake hole punch

We also made fake snow this morning

and paper chains.

We've also been making Christmas cards for the girls friends

linking up to Montessori Monday

For more Tot Tray ideas check out whats-on-tray-wednesday

Rivers, Dimmer Switches and crackers

The girls have been doing a lot of work this week on Rivers with the help of a great little workbook from School Express. I think their favourite activity was labelling the parts of a river on our homemade fabric river

they also created a river collage and labelled it

and looked at rivers of the world.

For our electricity work we've focused on dimmer switches and buzzers.

Rose has worked with her Arctic box

Tulip has done some more pink reading

and all the girls have made some Christmas crackers.