About

Welcome to thehappylearner.com! I hope you will be able to find some useful ideas to support  your children and their learning at home.

It will be mainly focused around phonics (although not necessarily exclusively). I will post some quick, fun, five minute activities that you can do with your children at home using resources that are at hand or easily sourced.

About Me!

I have been a Reception teacher for 14 years and a Deputy Head for almost 7 years. I am currently on maternity leave with my third child and I have decided to take a couple of extra years out of teaching in order to spend some time at home with my children aged 4, 21 months and 9 months.

I decided to start this blog for a couple of reasons. When my friends children started school, as soon as phonics was introduced I would have a number of messages and calls asking how they can support their child at home. They would also ask me to explain what phonics is and how it works. After having a quick look on the internet I realised there was very little information and support for parents out there, so I  would give them a few ideas. I had always thought about doing some kind of blog but with work being very busy and then starting a family there just didn’t seem to be enough time in the day.

So why now? My daughter Isabel has just started school in September and is loving it. We are doing lots of activities at home together and I thought now is the perfect time to start recording the things we are doing together. The activities I do with her have to work around the other children, so a lot of the time the activities will be ones that all the children can join in with, or can be done when the other children are having a nap etc. We have an added complication in that Isabel was diagnosed with Leukaemia in May 2017 and so she spends a lot of time in hospital receiving treatment. Her time is split between hospital school and ‘normal’ school and so the activities I do with her are ones that are fun and don’t make her feel like she is ‘learning’ just playing.

The activities I post are not designed to replace the teaching of phonics, they will support the phonics your child has learnt at school and will hopefully be a fun way of supporting your child on their journey in learning to read and write. It doesn’t matter which phonics programme your child is being taught through, my games will give your child the opportunity to rehearse what they have been learning at school with you at home.

I will also post some other fun activities we do together as and when they happen.

I hope you enjoy the blog and your child is a happy learner 🙂