Friday, March 30, 2012

Bambino Academy Easter Themed Trays





I thought I'd share a few of our Bambino Academy Easter Themed Trays that are available at the moment.


Simple six piece puzzle.


Colouring Easter Eggs.
He needs to choose the correct colour.


Cutting strips. 


Pre-writing Practice Page.


Easter decorating/arranging.


Colouring sheet.


Dot marker page.


Easter Egg sequin craft. 
Simple activity picked up from a 'cheapie' store. Great for fine motor work though.

The printables are all from my Easter Printable Pack.

I have a few others waiting in the wings. I'll do my best to get them photographed over the next couple of days.


Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Easter Mulitplication Printable

I found a super cute Easter Egg addition printable which is perfect for independent work over at Mrs Lirette's Learning blog.

So I set about putting something similar together for multiplication.



This bilby is so adorable I need to find as many ways to use him as possible between now and Easter, don't you think ;-) !!

Simply print, grab a couple of die, roll and multiply them. Then write the number sentence in the space provided. I think we will laminate ours and use it with a dry erase that way it can be used several times before Easter.

Download by clicking here.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Sail Away, The Ballad of Skip & Nell - Activities, Printables, Crafts




We've been spending time with two delightful little dingoes of late. Sail Away, The Ballad of Skip & Nell is a story about a journey. A rather long journey, which takes these two adventurers around Australia, in search of a boat race.

This story is a great introduction to Australian Geography and Australian Animals.



Freezing objects in ice is nothing new to the blog world, but it was a new experience for us. I grabbed a couple of different packs of Australian Animal figurines and froze them into three separate containers of ice.

This was our introduction activity to the book. Initially, I left it up to them as to how they were going to excavate the animals from the ice.


Initially they all ran for the cutlery draw, grabbing knives and forks and began pounding away at their ice block. Little Surfer Dude thought his wooden hammer might do the trick.

The chipping away was working but they quickly realised that the ice would probably melt faster than they could work.

That's when I opened up the discussion about melting ice and ways in which that could be done.  We live in a warm climate and the children have had no experience with snow or ice as part of our local weather.

Fairy Princess asked me to heat her hot pack to give that a try and whilst initially it appeared to be working the water was quickly saturating the material of the pack.

We tried salt on the ice with minimal success.

We boiled the kettle and used small jugs to pour over the ice, now this was working, but it was still slow going.


The sure fire quickest way to remove those animals from the ice was under the running warm water tap. Everyone marveled at the holes in the ice that were formed from the water and how each piece disinegrated differently.


We spent some time simply playing with and talking about the animals. Then we ventured into the read aloud.

Lego Lover made lists of the destinations and the animals along the way.


Little Surfer Dude, matched up the animal replicas to the cards I made.

Fairy Princess extended the cards and used all 3 parts for some vocabulary work. Little Surfer Dude also enjoyed this activity and completed it successfully several times on his own.


I placed the 3 part cards and animals onto our "Australia" work area so the children could play with them at their leisure.


I had planned a couple of art and craft activities to go along with this story, but this particular one was completely instigated by Lego Lover. The double page spread illustration of the Frilled next Lizard caught his eye and even though he isn't actually a part of the storyline itself, Lego Lover was keen to replicate it.



Of course everyone had to try their hand at this.


Lego Lover's Frilled Neck Lizard.


Fairy Princess used a combination of pencil and oil pastel.


As did Little Surfer Dude.

It was the journey around our great land that inspired Lego Lover to create his map from Lego.


Now there is no mention of it in the story but it's pretty clear to me that this journey was to take the animals to a race, a very special boat race, during a very special year - the year Australia WON The America's Cup!!

This story build up and this illustration tells it all. I thought we could have some fun recreating it but in more of a 3D kind of way.


We began with a lesson on Horizon lines. We looked through the story and noticed several of the illustrations have very clear horizon lines.



We took a stroll outside and saw first hand, the real life horizon lines that surround our home.


I googled horizon line art lessons and showed the kids this one and this one which helped them to get more visuals.


I hand drew some sails and cut them out in varying sizes and the kids decorated them in anyway they pleased. They then set about placing them on their paintings where they felt looked best.


You'll notice all the streamers in the air in the illustration. We decided to use real streamers, twisted them a little and glued them to the page.


Fairy Princess simply attached hers so they could move about freely.

Lego Lover chose not to add any at all.

We've enjoyed delving more into this story and I have more activities to share with you, but this post is getting quite long so stay tuned for Part 2, which will include some printables to go along with the book, Sail Away The Ballad Of Skip & Nell.



Friday, March 23, 2012

Easter Bilby Printable Bambino Pack



It's time for some Easter fun and there's no better way to do that here in Australia than with our adorable little Bilby!

Unfortunately the poor old Easter Bunny doesn't get a good wrap here in Australia. To put it simply they are an introduced pest that causes widespread havoc on our native lands and farming crops.

For several years there has been a push for our native Bilby to take the Easter Bunny's place here in Australia.

We will spend the next couple of weeks prior to Easter learning a little more about our Bilby friends.

For the little one among us I have put together a few simple Bambino Academy activities for him.


Inside the Easter Bilby pack you will find:

Easter Bilby puzzles.

Easter Egg Basket Playdough Mat

Handwriting Practice

Patterning Strips

Pre-writing Tracing

Colours with Easter Eggs

Scissor Work with cutting strips

Dot Marker—B is for Bilby

Handwriting Practice—B is for Bilby

Colouring Pages



Simply click here to download the pack.

My cute graphics are from Melonheadz :-)

Monday, March 19, 2012

Kids Learning Is Fun



I'm excited to introduce our new blog sponsor, Kids Learning Is Fun!

An Australian based website, chock full of educational goodness.

Articles covering a wide base of topics, The Learning Blog which offers hints and tips on all things education, the shop that offers a huge array of printable educational materials and the Member Resource Centre, where you can gain access to the entire range for one low yearly fee.

I've been busy looking around and trying to decide what I should print off first, there's so much to choose from!

I'm really looking forward to using these resources with the children and sharing some of the details with you.

Be watching for future Kids Learning Is Fun posts and we are working on a giveaway too.



Disclosure: We have been given a 12 month family subscription to Skwirk for the purposes of sharing our journey with this online interactive learning program.

Friday, March 16, 2012

A Mudjimba Getaway - The Beaches


Mudjimba beaches are beautiful, wide expansive sand to spread out on and the beach goes for miles. Finding flags to swim between is a breeze here also :-)


Mudjimba Island, rests just off the shore. A small uninhabited island, although the kids wondered aloud about visiting it one day.


The weather was glorious, the waves near perfect and after a play in the water Little Surfer Dude was happy drawing people in the sand, whilst the other two continued to swim.


We had a little fun with shadows and faces.


Lego Lover simply will not go to the beach if there is not a Life Guard on duty. This was something he was quite adamant about. We took the opportunity to revisit the flags and their meanings. I was pleased to see that he had remembered everything from an excursion last year.


This will be remembered as the summer that Lego Lover and Fairy Princess fell in love with the surf. Boogie Boards definitely had a lot to do with this. However I feel age, confidence and swimming ability were also major factors.


They have gone from kids that would choose a pool any day over the beach and when they were at the beach they wanted to leave after about an hour or so; to kids that never come out of the water.


Wave after wave after wave and not only on the boards, but body surfing also. Yes they've experienced their fair share of dunkings, of coming up coughing and spluttering, but they are learning so much about the power of the mighty ocean and about themselves.

It's been an awesome summer for me also! As I have been able to rekindle my love affair with the surf.  In my 10 years of having children that is one thing that I have missed and almost forgot about. Swimming in the surf is a wonderfully invigorating experience and I'm so thankful that I am no longer just a bystander sitting on the beach, getting burnt to a crisp.


Even the youngest delights in catching his fair share of the waves. Granted his stamina is nowhere near that of his big brother, but I can easily see in summers to come that there will be no stopping him.

We love this beach side spot, with the option of calm water or the excitement of the surf, it is a place we will be heading back to again and again.

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