Our Plans to Home School

On the 29th March it's the last day of school for many children up and down the country as they all break up for the Easter holidays. For L and A it's also the last day but with a bit of a difference: they won't be going back...

My Sunday Photo ~ Sports Day Star

Although not the official school sports day, Little A was chosen to participate in the sports event called The Trevictus Games. This sports event held at our school is mainly for children with minor to severe learning disabilities not just in our school but also from other local Cornish schools. It shows how inclusive sports can be no matter your physical or mental health. Little A had a wonderful day and I feel that this shot of him jumping into the sand pit was my favourite.

The Story Corner Story Cards and Colouring Pages - Review

We love books, we love stories and we love using our imagination. Midge is gradually moving onto bigger and more difficult books preferring to delve into the writers own world of fun characters and their adventures. Little A is improving every term with this reading and I try to encourage him wherever I can. 

As A is only 6 he's still really into imaginative play and he loves the visual aspect to stories. At school, stories are shown on projectors. He tries to tell stories by their illustrations before reading the words and we've just started using The Story Corner's story cards. We've got 2 sets of these cards, both wonderfully illustrated and packaged safely in attractive boxes for safe keeping. Midge used one set and found it all quite fun. I sent this set to year 1 which is the year Little A is in. His teacher thought they were great and would come in really useful.

A found it a little harder to get the idea but as I made up names and told my story he soon joined in. He used the space story cards to tell the story of a girl called Dora who went to space with her bunny friend to eat sandwiches and zap aliens who tried to steal her!

We also had some great fun colouring in one of two big nursery rhyme posters from The Story Corner. I actually had a huge amount of fun with this activity. We haven't finished our fairy tale poster yet but I will show you our nursery rhymes one below. We had great fun trying to figure out all the rhymes, then singing them over and over again. A really tried hard to stay in the lines. He's normally one to just scribble and walk off, but because his sister and I were involved and visibly enjoying ourselves he was up for the fun too! We were all really pleased with how these came out.

I had a look at The Story Corners website and have recommended them to my children's school. I volunteer in reception and the class teacher thinks the story cards are fabulous! We were sat one day with some children and I told her how we had been discussing space a lot when she said about making a space themed corner! I said I'd bring in some cards to show her and since then I've shown the children the cards who really like them! Initially they struggled to grasp the concept but with a little modelling they had fun making up similar space themed stories as A did at home.

I think both activities are really fun ideas for home especially for chill out time. I also thought home school parents would enjoy the cards. I really love the story stones which yet again look wonderful with delicate illustrations. The Story Corner kindly sent me some story cards and colouring sheets for this review and I've loved discovering both mine and the children's imagination and creativity all over again.

Cupcake Mumma

*Update 2026: I can no longer find the item for sale but if you search 'story cards', 'story dice' or 'story stones', you will find lots of great products similar to these*

Plymouth Aquarium

A week ago I went to Plymouth Aquarium with year 1 including my little man. We did the panto and Pizza Hut too but it's the Aquarium I want to blog about because I love them.

We were greeted by two members of staff and were soon being shown around by Stu who was lovely and energetic. We started the tour looking at starfish which I love but I have to say I distracted Stu somewhat by asking about the Spider Crabs which I was fascinated by. He didn't mind and all the children who were fascinated along with me got a quick education in rather cool looking creatures. We moved on to a starfish chat and a little story before heading over to the Jellyfish, another sea creature I love.

Lots of lovely Starfish!

Close up of the Starfish

Beautiful Spider crab 

The Jellyfish didn't disappoint anyone least of all me. I took to the upside-down Jellyfish because of their beautiful colours. There were slightly larger Jellyfish, some smaller and a tank which must have been full of baby Jellyfish but I forgot to ask. All their colours were amazing.

Upside down Jellyfish

Beautiful, brightly coloured Jellyfish

Next we moved on to the big boys, the sharks. There were some big ol' sharks swimming happily around the plane wreck in their tank with their fish and stingray friends. Enzo the shark was hard to miss given his bizarre shape. Turns out he's a sand shark, one I've never heard about before. It was quite surreal being this far down, trying to imagine how much water was above our heads! Stu gave us a brief chat on the different sharks in this giant tank and a talk about the anatomical structure of some fish.

We viewed another part of the tank, going even further down! Then moved on to the last section of the tour before lunch. The beautiful octopus who stayed still in his corner during a quick talk soon showed his beautiful long tentacles off to us adults the moment the children moved on. Something that looked so bunched up, small and vulnerable suddenly didn't look much that way once his tentacles splayed demonstrating he was easily the length of his tank.

Octopus giving us a show!

We learnt that octopus can stick their tentacles up their noses and can reach around up there fairly easily. There were some other gruesome facts but they made me feel a little sick to be honest! The final stop was to look about the reef where the children spotted their favourites (Nemo! Dory!) It was sad that the turtle had passed away but she lived a much better life with Plymouth Aquarium than she would've done in the wild; something to do with her shell I think but I forget. It was a great tour, I really enjoyed myself and really want to go again with my family so we can look around the whole aquarium and take our time (the one luxury you don't get on a school trip with 5 year olds!)

Little crab walking along his tank

Cupcake Mumma

*Apologies for the photo quality! Understandably you can't use a flash as this upsets the fish..and my isn't what it was *laughs*