Helping your child learn to read with Reading Eggs

Learning to read is one of the most important skills your child will learn. Naturally as a parent you want to know how you can help them learn to read at home. The first thing I always recommend is reading aloud to your children every night, but as they begin to show an interest in letters, words, and 'having a go' at reading themselves - I'd suggest you grab your device and give Reading Eggs a try (Right now, they are offering a limited time 4 week free trial when you sign up at www.readingeggs.com.au/teachertypes before 20 Feb!) 

This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own :)

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How I Got Started with TRIBE

Have you heard of TRIBE? If you're a blogger, influencer or a brand and haven't heard of it, or you'd like to know more about it and how to get started, please keep reading!

TRIBE is an app which connects brands with social media influencers. It's a way for people like me (sometimes referred to as a micro-influencer) with a reasonable size social media following to be paid to recommend brands they use and love. The example below was a post for Chux Superwipes which was right up my ally! They were looking for messy play activities with the Chux Superwipe being used to clean up afterwards - like it never happened!

Chux Superwipes Messy Play Campaign

Rewind to this time last year, and I first heard about TRIBE on The Project, and signed up immediately. Then was the painstaking climb to get to 3000 followers on Instagram to be able to get started. But I got there. And today I'm at 10.4k and growing by about 100 followers per week.

Instagram is my jam and I've been able to make it work for me.

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Minecraft as an Educational Tool {Guest Post}

Minecraft.
What actually is it?
I'll be honest, I have no idea.
But I'm teaching Year 2s next year and apparently Minecraft is super popular with this age group - so I've asked another teacher/mummy blogger Fi from Mumma Morrison to help me understand it with a guest post explaining some Minecraft activities she did with her class in 2015 before she had her little boy and commenced maternity leave.

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Fat Mum Slim's ADORABLE New App!

Something exciting is happening today!

It's the release day of Fat Mum Slim's new app...

...and it's ADORABLE!

Chantelle has this way of making my day (which she's done more than once!). Like when I got a fun kit in the mail, or when I guest posted for her...or when she asked me to be one of the 50 lucky ones to test out Adorable for her!

Of course I squealed with joy!

You may already have her Little Moments app, and might be wondering what makes Adorable different? Little Moments is ideal for Photo-a-dayers to keep track of the daily prompts. There's a broad range of text and artwork for everyday things designed by a group of contributors. Adorable is specifically for pregnancy, announcements, bellies, babies, birthdays and milestones through the first five years. You can find something beautiful for almost every occasion. Of course there are pretty filters and frames. Even the logo is damn adorable.

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You Have to See it to Believe it! {Crayola Color Alive Review}

This post is brought to you by Nuffnang and Crayola. 

Today I get to review a super cool new product from Crayola. Miss M is so into colouring and drawing at the moment that I jumped at the chance to give Crayola Color Alive a try for ourselves. It's not just your average colouring book + crayons believe me!!

This is what we got...

These were our faves...

And this is what happens...

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Terrific Teaching Resources from Twinkl

I have two go to websites when I'm looking for new teaching resources, or something for a particular topic, lesson or activity.

Teachers Pay Teachers and Twinkl (actually three if you count Pinterest. Teachers - what did we DO before Pinterest?? LOL!).

At Twinkl you will find so many amazing resources (much more than just worksheets, but I'll elaborate on that in a minute). The website is easy to use and navigate with ages, learning areas and various headings. My favourite feature is the 'save' disc icon. At first glance you may think this means to save the resource to your computer, but it's like a 'like' button, where you can save something to your profile to download later allowing you to continue to browse.

During my browsing, I found play dough recipes with all sorts of creative combinations of colours, scents, flavours and textures like strawberry sparkle, coconut cloud and ocean marshmallow! Plus, great play dough activity mats to go with these recipes as well. Just print, laminate and play! We practised making letters and numbers on ours (obviously these come in colour - but we don't have a colour printer!!)

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10+ Ocean Themed Activities for Your Finding Dory Fan

It feels like the whole of Australia has gone underwater crazy for the release of Finding Dory! I haven't seen it yet - but really wanted to get this post out there ASAP for all those little people who can't get enough of the fishy fun!

Beach/Ocean Play dough

So simple but will keep them entertained for ages. Play dough + pebbles + fish and maybe even some shells if you've got them. Violia! Squishy sensory fun.

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10 Awesome Educational Apps for Preschoolers

So I finally got with the times and got myself an iPad for my birthday. It's just amazing and I'm loving it (my blog looks so beauitful on the larger screen!). But of course it's bound to be used by little members of the family, and me being a teacher, I'd rather Miss M be using it for educational purposes wherever possible. So I've put together an awesome list of educational apps we have loved trying out since we got the iPad last week!

KidloLand

Kidloland is jam packed full of nursery rhymes, songs, games and activities to entertain the little ones. There's a huge variety of content and lots to explore. All key early learning concepts are covered from fruit to animals, from numbers to days of the week. Well known nursery rhymes such as Incy Wincy invite children to interact with the scenery and characters, and they'll be sure to learn lots of new songs too. 

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