Activity Village News

5th June 2009

A Message From Lindsay

We've got some super new craft ideas this week, both for Father's Day and on a "summer" theme. You will also find new printables and some new outdoor group game ideas below. Don't forget we have a huge (and growing) database of kids games and activities for you to dip into over the summer holidays - always useful when you are stuck for inspiration!

Don't forget to check out my web picks (in the right hand column) - there's plenty more in there this week to help you keep the kids busy! And I also wanted to draw your attention to one of the latest addition's to our Parenting Library, the article Aren't They All Our Children?, which moved me to tears when I read it.

Finally, I'd like to tell you about an appeal/competition we are running this week to find 3 testers for a new product, "Vocabulary Busters", which we will be launching over the summer. Vocabulary Busters will be one of the few paid products at Activity Village, and is a subscription-based weekly vocabulary development kit - I can't tell you how excited I am about it!. Each week subscribers will receive a complete set of printables, worksheets and extension activities which will introduce themed words in a fun and hands-on way, with the aim of broadening and extending your child's vocabulary. There will be extra surprises every month to reinforce learning (we don't want to give away too much yet, but these will include online interactive quizzes to help kids review what they've learned) and we are aiming to keep the children interested and enjoying every minute! There will be Home and Teacher versions of Vocabulary Busters. The Home version, which will run for 52 weeks on a monthly subscription basis, will be launched first. Soon afterwards we will launch the Teacher version, a 36 week course available with a one-off payment. Both will be very good value! We will be adding different levels to Vocabulary Busters, too, so that you can work with children of different ages and abilities at the same time.

If you have children aged 6-8, would like to receive the course for free, and would be willing to give us feedback on Vocabulary Busters as well as test the delivery system for us, please email me (editor-at-activityvillage.co.uk, replacing -at- with @) telling me your name, the age of your child/children, and which country you come from. Please email by Thursday 11th June. I will select three names out of a hat and inform the winners by next Friday, 12th June.

Coming up soon:

21st June - Father's Day
1st July - Canada Day
4th July - Fourth of July
July - end of school year (say thank you to your child's teacher!)
Summer

If your child has made use of our craft ideas or printables, we'd love to share the results here! Drop me a line by emailing editor-at-activityvillage.co.uk (replace -at- with @)

What's New At Activity Village?

We've added 8 new summer craft ideas to the website this week, including this absolutely gorgeous handprint sun...
New summer crafts!

We have ice-cream and sun writing frames (ruled and blank) for your summer writing projects...
Summer writing frames

Summer collage
Get your paints and crafty bits and pieces out for a summer collage session - fun for kids of all ages and great for mixed age-groups, too.

Vacation Ted
Don't forget to get your favourite soft toy ready to take on vacation with you!

Father's Day is just over 3 weeks away, and we have plenty of new craft ideas to get the kids making something special...
Father's Day crafts

We have some very cute new printables for Father's Day too, including two types of bookmarks to print and colour and this tie keyring activity too.
Father's Day printables

We've continued to add to our Dinosaurs theme page:

If you are studying dinosaurs at home or at school, you might want to pay a visit to our dinosaur notebooking pages for supplies! You'll find writing frames, mini notebooks to print and fold, information sheets to fill in like the one above, and more...
Dinosaur notebooking pages

We've added lots of new outdoor group games for those long summer afternoons...
Outdoor games and activities

We've also been continuing to update our popular Coloring Page Database, and the following pages have been checked, added to and otherwise refreshed:

101 Dalmatians coloring pages
A Bug's Life coloring pages
A Little Princess coloring pages
Action Man / GI Joe coloring pages
Airplane coloring pages
Aladdin coloring pages
Alice in Wonderland coloring pages
Alphabet coloring pages / ABC coloring pages
Canada Day coloring pages
Fourth of July coloring pages
Summer coloring pages

A Giggle!

"A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold."
Ogden Nash

Have You Seen?

It's nearly the Wimbledon season, so it is a good time to encourage children who are already interested in tennis to get involved, and perhaps introduce the sport to others...
Tennis for Kids

A Video To Enjoy With The Kids..

NB Please do not allow children to browse video sharing sites unsupervised.

Something To Think About..

"You can't use up creativity. Creative thinking builds on itself and increases the creativity of the thinker... You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
Maya Angelou

This week's subscriber special is a poster featuring a quote from Pablo Picasso:
Every child is an artist

Back to Newsletter Archives

	Don't miss...
	Thanksgiving
	St Andrew's Day
	Advent
	Hanukkah
	Christmas
	Kwanzaa
	Winter
	Shidonni

Christmas is coming!
Need help? Free inspiration, crafts, decorating ideas, planning sheets, recipes, printables and more!
Click here!

A Small Publishing Website    Contact Us    Sudoku for Kids   Privacy Policy

These pages are property of Activity Village and are for personal, classroom and library use only