This day I love.......: Twinkl

Do you remember when you returned to school after the school holidays and you used to turn to your friend and say 'I've forgotten how to write' or something similar. Earlier this month I read the following article on the BBC, it looked at the possibility of shortening school holidays and also spoke about the summer forgetting period. This got me thinking, how can I help my daughter as she starts her first year of school. I want her to get into good habits so that she doesn't see the summer as a break just a different learning opportunity. In addition to this I don't want her to feel over whelmed and want her to see learning as fun.

I have started to do two things with her recently, the first is the Parragon books #summerwithgoldstars challenge. This takes one of Parragon books excellent learning resource and you do a page a day, tweet a picture with the #summerwithgoldstars and after 30 days of doing a page a day the child receives a certificate. The idea is to keep it simple but to keep learning alive. By doing just a page my daughter doesn't feel overwhelmed and she keeps up her learning. I have already noticed a great improvement in her phonics and she is so happy with her gold stars.

The other thing I have started doing is creating our own learning resource. I have written before about our love for twinkl and of some of the ways we have used twinkl but as I have twinkl premium I also have access to twinkl create. Twinkl create means I can make my own resources to help my daughters. This great resource means that everything is personalised to their individual stage of learning. For example my youngest likes animals so I am currently creating flash cards of animals to help her learn different animals and also to explore different colours of the animals.

There is such a huge amount of resource available on twinkl that we can turn learning into fun ensuring that my daughter has the best possible start to school.

To help with learning over the summer I have one premium subscription to give away. Competition closes on the 15th August GMT at midnight.

Terms and conditions

1.This competition is open to residents of the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Republic of Ireland aged 18 years or over, except for those associated with the production company, their families or anyone else associated with this competition.

2.All information detailing how to enter this competition forms part of these terms and conditions.

3. All entries must be received by the advertised closing time date.

4.1 winner will win a Premium twinkl subscription

5. The winner[s] may be required to take part in publicity.

6. All prizes are non-transferable and there are no cash alternatives.

7.The prize is subject to availability.

8.Events may occur that render the competition itself or the awarding of the prizes impossible due to reasons beyond the control of the Promoter, and accordingly the Promoter may at its absolute discretion vary or amend the promotion and the entrant agrees that no liability shall attach to the Promoter as a result thereof.

9.This Day I love is responsible for the first part of the promotion, which is the publication and adjudication of the competition. All other facilities connected with the provision of the prize are the responsibility of the Promoter.

10. English law applies and the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts shall prevail.

11, Winner will be drawn at Random from all valid entries

12. By entering via Gleam you agree to the terms and conditions set out on Gleam.

13. Winner has 48hrs to respond else an alternate winner will be drawn

Win competitions at ThePrizeFinder.com - See more at: http://www.theprizefinder.com/content/twinkl-premium-subscription#sthash.3whKiRLG.dpuf

16 comments

My eldest is really interested in Sea life. She has a few favourite bed time reads all of which either involve Pirates or Sea life. It was a rather wet and windy evening today and so we settled for some indoor messy play with a Sea life theme.

I downloaded some images from Twinkl and printed them off for our play. I cleaned and crushed 4 egg shells and put out paint that both contained glitter [shiny] and did not contain glitter. My daughter and I first looked at the paint and picked some pictures. We talked about the glitter paint and how it was shiny. How when the light shone on it it sparkled, and looked at the paint without glitter and talked about how it did not sparkle, how it was dull. We also had light paint and dark paint and we spoke about the difference in light colours and dark. I was kindly told that the glitter paint was the best and her favourite was the gold.

I then asked my daughter which picture she would like to stick the egg shell onto. Which she thought might have be hard and which might be rough. She picked the crab and started sticking the shells onto the picture. We talked about how crabs have a shell and what its for. She then told me that turtles also have a shell, so we stuck egg shell onto the turtle too.

I gave her other items to stick on the pictures, including sand, cotton wool, rice, porridge oats and pasta. We spoke about the different textures and shapes. My daughter asked lots of questions about shapes, textures and colours. It was really lovely talking to her and watching her learn whilst having fun. We painted lots of pictures and had lots of fun. Painting and sticking I have found is a great way to introduce new concepts such as textures and shades. It really encouraged my daughter to ask questions and it kept her occupied for a good few hours.

We continued colouring with my youngest but this time looked at different farm animals. Her favourite animal is sheep, as she makes 'baa' sounds when she sees them

This day I love textures, twinkl and shades

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When I first logged onto Twinkl I was impressed with the colourful easy to use layout. Not familiar with Twinkl, it took me a matter of seconds to work out how to navigate the site but more importantly understand Twinkl and what it is all about.

Twinkl is an on line educational resource, which focuses on EY, KS1 and KS2. There are over 60,000 beautiful hand drawn resources that are used in educational settings not only in the UK but around the world. There are an additional 10,000 resources available with the Premium service which costs £29.99 a year. This really is a fantastic price for such beautiful educational resources.

There are a great selection on resources including Classroom signs, Classroom Management, Numeracy and Literacy but the one I was particularly interested in was Parents.

My eldest daughter can currently recognise around 15 letters of the alphabet but a couple she mixes up, b,p,d,q in particular as they all look similar. I was really impressed with the letter formation poster, which is part of the premium service, as it clearly and colourfully shows how each letter is formed. This will help my daughter to clearly visualise the formation on each letter to help her recognise more letters.

There is even an entire section, in the parental resource, dedicated to Confusing letters. I have downloaded the confusing letters desktop cards as I love the way they use images to explain the letters and the letter order. Each image is beautifully illustrated that it makes educating a little one a real pleasure.

With the current snowy weather, I wondered if Twinkl had any resources available to teach my daughter about the snow. I was surprised to find that not only did they have a whole section focused on Winter but also other special themes including the Chinese New Year.

Within the Winter resource section I found some Arctic Animal Posters, which the animals are really cute and my daughter will love. I also found a role play section. There are some amazing creations in here but my two personal favourites which I shall be doing with my children are design your own winter clothes and the Arctic role play masks.

I am so impressed with the amount of tools available on Twinkl, each one is beautifully created and it is more than worth signing up to the premium service, to access the additional resources. I love that there are tools available for parents and not just those in a classroom environment. Twinkl really is a beautiful and amazing tool that aids any child's development, I wish it had been available when I was little.

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