Living Arrows 2019 07/52

Welcome to Living Arrows post 2019! If you haven't heard of the linky before, This was set up by Donna at What the Redhead Said and the name comes from the poem by Kahlil Gibran "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth" Each week I post one photo of James and one photo of Freddie and share what they have been up to that week!

This week the boys are on half term and we have lots of exciting plans! However last week was a pretty busy week for the boys!

James had all his usual school commitments and then on Thursday he had Beavers. Mummy took advantage of having a child free Tuesday and went out and bought James a whole load of new long sleeved tops as he had outgrown most of what was in his wardrobe! Sunday nights James gets to stay up later and watch Dancing on Ice with mummy which he loves!

Freddie had a great week at playgroup, we are not having as many tears at drop off and he is even carrying in his own lunch bag now! He is definitely very different to James at the same age! He is so much more opinionated lol!

Siblings Project 2019 - February

Welcome to  the 2019 Siblings Project! How is it already February! This year is going to go by so fast I think!

This month James has been loving:

* His Lego

* Going to Beavers

*  YouTube Kids

Freddie has been loving:

*  Playgroup

*  Blaze and the Monster Machines

* His wooden train set

This months photograph was taken one night after school while the boys were relaxing and watching Cbeebies! It is hard trying to get a picture of them both looking! 

Three Books My Three Year Old Loves

Having two boys three years apart means they are often into different things, but also they quite like the same things! In this new series of posts I'm going to be writing about either three or six things my boys are loving!

This first post is Three Books my Three Year Old Loves!

The first book that Freddie is currently loving is "Where going on a bear hunt!" 

He got this book for Christmas and it has been a firm favourite. He will quite often go and get it and start pointing things out on the pages to us and he can tell you what is happening on the pages as well! 

You will quite often find him sat on the floor going "splish, splash, splosh!" and pointing at the characters going through the water! and giggling his head off!

The second book that Freddie loves is "Everyone Loves The Pinky Ponk!"

Freddie is a massive fan of In The Night Garden and he absolutely adores the Pinky Ponk or as he calls it the MM ponk!!

This is also a sounds book with eight different buttons to press when prompted in the story! Freddie loves this as it has the actual sounds that the Pinky Ponk makes during the actual episodes of In The Night Garden!!

And finally the last book that Freddie is currently loving is "The Very Hungry Caterpillar!"

Now we actually already had a copy of this book from when James was a toddler, but James would not give it up to Freddie as he loves the story so we had to buy a second copy!

Again Freddie can be often found sat turning the pages and trying to tell us the story! He can recognise some of the fruits that the caterpillar eats and says yummy if it is something he likes to eat as well!!

I hope you have enjoyed reading about books that Freddie is loving! Come back next Thursday for Six books my six year old loves and see what books James has chosen!

The Tesalate Towel

**Ad - We were gifted our Tesalate Towel for this review!**

With summer fast approaching and many people booking their summer holidays beach towels are in the shops! 

I know when we were away last October we had to deal with towels not drying during the day after we had been in the pool and even the next morning they were still slightly damp. And don't get me started on going to the beach and how much sand would be lugged back to the hotel in our towels!

This is where the Tesalate towel comes in! It's compact and lightweight, plus it comes in its own little carry pouch! The absorbLite’s engineering allows for sand to slip off easily. So you really will leave the beach at the beach.

And its ultra absorbent. This towel will retain up to a litre of water. So the wetter you get by the pool the better really as this towel will get you dry!

Tesalate are an Australian company and the towels are shipped from Australia when you order via the website. We did our order on a Sunday night in the UK which was Monday morning in Australia and our towel arrived at our house via parcel force on the Friday morning UK time. 

I have been using my Tesalate towel after I have been in the bath or shower to see if it really did work and dry quicker than my traditional bath towel and it sure did! I was using it at around 6am and putting it onto my towel rail on the radiator and when I got back from the school run at 9am it was bone dry and ready to be used again!

The Tesalate towels retail for £49 and can be purchased from www.uk.tesalate.com

The lovely people at Tesalate have given us a 15% discount code, all you need to do is enter CHEEKYMONKEY15 at the checkout! This is an affiliated code so we would receive payment of $10 Aus for each towel sold. 

Living Arrows 2019 6/52

Welcome to Living Arrows post 2019! If you haven't heard of the linky before, This was set up by Donna at What the Redhead Said and the name comes from the poem by Kahlil Gibran "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth" Each week I post one photo of James and one photo of Freddie and share what they have been up to that week!

This week James had an author visit his class for the day to help them with their project question this term. He also had a first aid session at Beavers to go towards two of their badges. He had a brilliant time doing that and he came home with both his arms bandaged up! It took a lot of persuading for him to actually take them off before he went to bed! If James had got his way then he would have worn them to bed and to school!

Freddie has had a great week at playgroup with painting lucky red envelopes for Chinese New Year and trying to use chop sticks which one of the staff said he was very good at! It's hard to believe it's the last week of the half term and his first term of preschool is half over. He only has a term and a half left at the playgroup before he moves to the school nursery in September along with the little brothers of two of James friends. 

Help James practice his writing with Mrs Mactivity

With James being the youngest in his class, he does struggle quite a lot with his writing and also his reading. He likes being read to but if you try and get him to read to you he out rightly refuses, so it is often a battle to get him to do his school reading on a night and even more so on a school holiday.

So when Mrs Mactivity asked us to review their activity site, we jumped at the chance, especially as we are now in a SATs year at school.

One of the main things James struggles with his his writing so the first thing I downloaded for him was the year 2 common exception words handwriting practice sheets.

James tends to do his homework on a Sunday morning so when he finishes we get the sheets out and he does some handwriting practice.

 There are five sheets in the pack 2 full pages of words for the child to read, trace and then copy. There is also a half page and a blank sheet where you can set your own words. 

James will tend to do one sheet each week and we have definitely seen an improvement in his handwriting. He can write so neatly when he puts his mind to it and concentrates. He also has a reward box and when he has finished his homework and his sheet we will award him a set number of stars.

This is the sheet he did after his last lot of homework and I was seriously impressed with how neat his writing has become since he started using these sheets! 

With 2019 being his Key Stage Two SATs we will definitely be using the Mrs Mactivity resources to help prepare him for the up coming tests. 

Access to Mrs Mactivity costs £9.97 per year and can be purchased here

**We were gifted a one year subscription to https://www.mrsmactivity.co.uk/ in exchange of this review**

Living Arrows 2019 05/52

Welcome to Living Arrows post 2019! If you haven't heard of the linky before, This was set up by Donna at What the Redhead Said and the name comes from the poem by Kahlil Gibran "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth" Each week I post one photo of James and one photo of Freddie and share what they have been up to that week!

This week has been a good one for James and Freddie. 

James has been having so much fun at school, They have been doing work on Roald Dahl and he has been loving it as The BFG is actually one of his favourite books! James had another fun night at Beavers where they were learning to tie knots and instead of using string they used strawberry laces which James loves!

Freddie has been making Chinese lanterns at playgroup as chinese new year is coming up so hes been coming home messy and covered in glitter! Freddie is also in need of a hair cut which you can see in the photo of him for this week! 

The school week ended with a day of heavy snow! School wasnt closed thank goodness but it was pretty difficult to push the buggy to and from school as Freddie literally refused to walk in it!!