Terrific Tigers

A few weeks ago I posted about a giveaway for the Download 'n' Go Terrific Tigers Unit. Well. I won it :) Thankyou Melissa X

It's the first time I've used one of these units and was keen to get going with it because I've heard good things about these packs and mainly because I won it :D

There's a lot of pages in this unit and lots to print out. There are links not only to information pages, stories, poems, recipes and crafts but also links to videos and audio files. The videos were particularly popular with my two who ooh-ed and aah-ed over all the cub ones. Bless!
The unit covers Geography, Maths, Art, English and of course Science (Tigers=Biology doesn't it?) There are some lapbooking pieces and some notebooking-type pages. There is even a certificate to give to your child when they have completed the unit.

The unit is divided into 5 sections as the idea is to do it over 5 days. Each section focuses on a specific Tiger subspecies and, at the end, has extra links to colouring pages, crafts and ideas for fun stuff. I have to admit it took us a bit longer than 5 days, mainly due to chicken pox, Youth hostel camps and other HE groups :) The first 3 days went brilliantly and both kids were engaged and interested. However, by day 4 they were losing motivation so it took over 2 weeks to finish the last two days worth :/

I think if I were to do one of these units again, I'd do a lot more of it orally and just concentrate on the lapbook pieces for written work. A pdf that you could type directly into would be useful but, saying that, they did get a lot of writing practice. Because we wanted to stick the work into a notebook, I found I had to cut up the sheets I'd printed out to take out the bits that gave the links to various sites or came between the questions and the answer spaces. I'm sure there are other ways to do this and I'm just being a bit dim. Any suggestions would be most welcome :)

One of the things I liked most about this was that I could divide the activities between both children as the material required different levels of ability. I had to adapt the booklist because it's an American product but tiger books are easily available in libraries and charity shops so it wasn't too much of a problem. Would I use more of these products? Yes, I suppose I would but I might try doing them one day a week over five weeks rather than doing them so intensively over five days. I also have to get over my habit of wanting to do every single last activity just cos it's there :)



I made a slideshow of our photos because there are a few :) The tiger buns didn't quite work (note to self- mixing food colouring is not quite like mixing paint. use a pipette and 1 drop of red so that you don't need to use a WHOLE bottle of yellow to try and get orange!). The plasticene tigers were interesting, unfortunately the Girl wouldn't let me take a photo ofhers and kept giggling every time I looked at it and commented on how well she's done. She eventually revealed that she'd 'cheated' and covered one of her toy tigers in plasticene. Little monkey :D

Useful Links:
Pipecleaner
finger puppets
Bun
inspiration - be warned - our buns look nowhere near as good
as this :)
loads
of crafts


Books we used:
Fiction



Fact & Fiction (Faction?)


NonFiction


And a really nice book called Tigers by Meredith Hooper which I think
came originally in a pack of four books published as Oxford Literacy Web: Animals


Films we watched:

Home Ed christmas camp

Obviously not in tents in December :)
Last week we went on a pre-xmas xmas camp in a Youth Hostel in Devon. I have to admit to being a bit nervous about spending 4 days with 70 people of which I only knew 5. But guess what! It was lovely. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming and we had a great time :) It was nice to get to know the people we already knew a bit better and nice to make new friends :)
The youth hostel was one of those where everyone has their own family room and ours was even ensuite. How posh is that?
We joined in with the history group form Cambridge and learnt about Phoenicians making fimo lucky charms, glass bead bracelets and paper-plate frogs. It's always interesting to see how other groups of HEers do things.
The next day we went to Pennywell Farm and joined in the nativity play there.
The Girl was an angel ... ...Boykin was a shepherd.
Such good timing as he said only last week that he wanted to be in a christmas play :) It's a shame it's so far away from where we live because I'd like to take them there again when it is not so very freezing. Brrrrr!

On the way back to the hostel, we visited the House of Marbles and were fascinated by the complex marble runs they have there. We even got to see them making glass but unfortunately no blowing was involved. Best of all, it's free :)

Then on Thursday we had Christmas Day complete with turkey dinner, crackers, secret santa and carols. I really enjoyed myself joining in the music and was really impressed with all the kids' musical skills.

The Girl was really chuffed that she was part of the bell ensemble. A group of children, including my two, created and performed a play for us. My Kiddywinkles were in their element. It was the perfect holiday for them :)
And as for me, it was great to spend time chatting, cooking, getting to know people and generally just relaxing :)
I hope we get to go again next year. Thanks so much to everyone who was there for a fab holiday :)