Christmas Crafts: Arctic Adventure Scene

This Christmas, we want to make sure your children have some easy, fun, and creative Christmas craft ideas to make at home or in the nursery. We’ve put together a number of how-to guides with different crafts for the festive season, with some resource recommendations to help.

This Christmas craft how-to blog will bring you all the steps you need to create your very own Arctic Adventure play scene!

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Easy Christmas Crafts: Reindeer card

This Christmas, we want to bring your children some fun, creative, and easy Christmas craft ideas to make at home or in the nursery. We’ve put together a number of how-to guides with different crafts for the festive season, with some resource recommendations to help.

This Christmas craft how-to blog will bring you all the steps you need to create a Reindeer Christmas card for a friend or loved one!

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Classroom craft: Recycled Christmas Crafting

Recycled Christmas Crafting

We all love Christmas crafting, but have you ever thought about recycling items you already have, or using nature to help form the base of your decorations?

From toilet roll tubes, to egg boxes, parcel packaging and pine cones. You’ll be surprised at what can easily be repurposed into beautiful take home gifts for parents, all whilst minimizing plastic use.

Our friends over at @my_three_little_strawberries have been busy coming up with some ideas, perfect for all ages. Take a look….

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What can teachers do to help children with anxiety post-Covid?

The past 12 months or so has brought a type of collective stress and anxiety that we hadn’t experienced in the western world for over a generation. With vaccine rollouts continuing apace across the world, it seems (fingers and toes crossed, touching wood and counting chickens, etc.) that we have finally reached a point in our battle against Covid-19 where we can breathe a sigh of relief and begin to resume something resembling a ‘normal’ life again. Phew!

However, as often happens with stressful life events (such as bereavements, house moves, accidents or injuries etc.) it is only when the immediate threat, panic or stress is over and we begin to relax, that the impact of what has happened hits us. And so now, as we look around and breathe a sigh of relief again, we realise that we may be facing another even greater challenge – dealing with the impact on our children’s mental health.

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The Power of Play: how free and unstructured play builds resilience in children to cope with adversity

The benefits of play to children’s physical, emotional and sensory development have long since been recognised and emphasised as part of the primary school curriculum.

Ines Lawlor presents the evidence* supporting the relationship between the deterioration in children’s mental health and the decline in unstructured play. She also highlights what teachers can do to create opportunities for play within the school environment or in collaboration with parents at home.

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E.a.R.L. the Coding Robot by Playroom Classroom

Despite having completed some CPD in the area, I’ve had minimal hands-on experience with Coding Robots. It’s one of those things that was on my to-do list for a long time! I had bought some books and resources, which were lying idle, waiting to be used.   I had even bought Botley, the Coding Robot, which my own kids at home had some fun with, but never made it into the classroom.

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What are Multilink® cubes and how can they be used in the classroom?

For over 50 years, Multilink® cubes have been a stalwart of the classroom and are likely to be found in most teaching establishments around the world. A long-established piece of the mathematics classroom furniture, they have huge manipulative potential due to their simple and effective design.

But what is the history of Multilink®, how has it grown to become such a key mathematics manipulative and how can it be used in the classroom. Read on to find out more.

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ABC’s November Book of the Month

Where Snow Angels Go by Maggie O’Farrell and Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini (illus.)

Have you ever woken up suddenly, in the middle of the night, without knowing why?

Where Snow Angels Go has been chosen as the Independent Bookshops’ Children’s Book of the Month for November. Read more here.

 “Daniela Jaglenka’s shimmering watercolours bring an extra layer of magic to O’Farrell’s comforting fable, as Sylvie’s snow angel wraps his soft wings around her like a blanket when she is ill, or appears as feathery sea foam when the sea overcomes her. This is O’Farrell’s first book for children but it is an assured classic.” – ‘Childrens Books’, The Irish Times (Weekend)

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