International Book Giving Day Freebies

International book giving day is coming soon, over on the official site there are some great book plates and book marks, pop over and download until your hearts content, just click the image...

Book plate Angus Mackinnon

Book Plate Gus Gordon

Bookmark by Anna Walker

Stay tuned, there is more coming up! 

How To Run A Successful Party....

click me to grab the party planning pack

July is birthday month for Secret Agent 008 so I am already in full planning mode - I love planning parties! But, I know many people hate it and get stressed out about it all. So, yesterday I was writing my weekly MOC blog post about party planning and well, it ended up more like an ebook!

If you want to read the full post, pop over to MOC, if you just want to get your hands on the ebook, which is chock full of planners, check lists and a countdown guide, just click HERE.

I am giving it away, for free until the end of the birthday month, after that I will pop it in the shop (so even if you don't have a birthday this month, grab it now for when you do!)

Those peeps that get my fanzine, you have been sent a copy! Check you inbox.

Final wee request, if you use pinterest, would you mind pinning this....

5 quick ways to keep the kids entertained

Just a quick note to say, over on MOC I have a free PDF today with 5 printable scavenger hunts, lots of fun! Pop over and grab your copy...

Mission Explore Food - free download

Ebi-kun got a great book for Christmas called Mission Explore Food. He doesn't really need much encouragement to experiment with food, he loves trying new things and will often pick things on a menu because he doesn't know what it is! I can see this book furthering his interest and helping him learn about where all the different types of food come from.

The book is split into 6 main chapters; Grow, Harvest, Cook, Eat, Waste and Soil. Each chapter has a selection of experiments and missions for your child to complete. Some of them sound great and some are well, pretty revolting but I suppose that makes it more fun.

I think anyone who wants to do more with their children to learn about food or for teachers this book is an excellent resource. Not all the missions are laid out for you step-by-step which encourages the child to think for themselves and come up with a solution.

I also like how everything has been covered, there are missions challenging you to try different specialist diets for a day such as raw food and some of the missions can be drawn or written about in the book. I also feel it is well designed to grab boys attentions by calling each experiment a mission, the illustrations are fun and not too gross.

So, would you like to get your mitts on a copy? We have a paper copy, which to be honest, I prefer - (forever the book lover). If you would like to have a look or if you are happy to use an electronic edition you can download for FREE the kindle version here or the iBook version here, the links are valid until January 21st. If you prefer a paper version, you can get it on Amazon or The Book Depository.

 If you do get a copy, let me know if you try any of the missions, I would love to see how it goes with other people! If you know anyone else that you think would enjoy it, or their kids, then please share using the buttons below.

boredom busters for the 2012 Olympics

I usually share what we have been doing after the fact but since the Olympics kick off tomorrow I thought you might want to join in the fun. I made up a PDF so that you can make up your own family Olympics. This afternoon we will decide which 'events' will take place in ours. Hoopla is definitely on the list but I'm not sure what else yet. 

So, print out the sheet, you might want to print out a few copies, write in the events, they can be as serious or as silly as you like, we will probably be leaning towards the silly side, then pop them on the fridge or up on the wall. When you have one of those 'I'm bored' moments, pick an event and go for it. 

When you plan your events make sure you include ones that even the littlest kids can win.

As you know the actual Olympics will be running over the course of a few weeks, you can do the same with your family Olympics. Record who has won what and either award medals as you do the events or have an award and closing ceremony at the end of the holidays.

Need some event ideas?... hoopla, thumb sumo, tidily-winks, skipping, hula-hoop, ping-pong, egg and spoon, ball toss, long jump, sprints, balancing a pencil on your nose, juggling, standing on one foot....

Family Olympics by Jojoebi

What fun events will you be doing? Share in the comments section below and if you have friends that you think would like to join the fun please share this post!

If you don't want to miss out on all the other fun ideas I share, hop in the mailing list, it's FREE!

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A visit to the galapagos Islands...

This is a post where we go back in time... I saw in the news this week that Lonesome George had passed away, he was the last known tortoise of his sub species, he was housed with a stunner of a tortoise from a neighboring island but sadly George didn't find her attractive and so he passed away without producing an heir.

My husband and I (we weren't married back then) lived in Ecuador for 6 months and then spent 5 months traveling around Peru and Bolivia. One of the places we managed to visit was the Galapagos Islands and yes, it is as amazing as you imagine it to be.

That said, the trip was a disaster of sorts, we booked the tour with friends of our landlords who had started a travel agency, one of them had been a Galapagos tour guide for years and gave us loads of great information. But... when we landed out there, there was no one to meet us at the airport so we ended up taking a lift into town. When we found the place where our tour was supposed to go from, the guy had no idea who were were! We had already paid up front for a week long cruise. After calling Juan it transpired that the agent they had used had done a runner with ours (and their) money! Luckily, Juan talked to the chap at the office were at and he let us join his mini cruise.

So, we ended up spending longer on the main island and despite all the problems we had a great time. You can get really close to the animals, they don't get spooked at all but you are not allowed to touch them, although how tempting is it to pick up this sea lion cub and give him a cuddle?

We swam with the sea lion bachelors, they are great fun and swim right up to your face, blow bubbles at you and swim off and we had a pelican that seemed to live on the ship.On the cruise we would travel at night and wake up at a new island each morning then go ashore and explore.

The post office below is where you leave your postcard, no stamps and then the visitors look through the pile, if they live near one of the addresses they are supposed to take it back with them and deliver it - I'm not sure how well the system works!

When we decided to go to the Galapagos, Juan advised us on the best time to go so it was mating season for many of the birds and animals, we were lucky enough to see blue footed and masked boobies and albatross and their enormous fluffy babies.

That is our ship below, looks lovely. It wasn't. Had terrible wood worm and did as promised, it did have a bar but it wasn't stocked! The food was pretty dismal too even the meals in the jungle in Bolivia were better.

I suppose it all adds to the story, we had a fantastic time and I would LOVE to take Ebi-kun some day, for now he will have to do with the photos and my stories!

PS. I have a free Galapagos download here.

adorable little printable....

First off I want to say a great big THANK YOU to everyone who filled in my questionnaire, it has really helped me see what I was missing and raised some great topics to tackle plus reassured me that I was on the right track with most of it.

I'm taking a business course at the moment, I'm the second week in, there is a tonne of homework which I'm really enjoying but it doesn't leave much time for anything else! Today I will be working on the new website and working through the next step in this weeks module and I will also be doing some tinkering over here again (I hope not too many people noticed that I crashed the whole blog last week!)

Anyway, I thought it would be nice to give you a little thank you for your help, so I rustled up a printable for you. It can be used in two ways - I love multi-functional things, don't you? So, you can fold it to make a mini colouring book - handy to keep in your bag with a pack of mini crayons for those 'I'm bored moments'

OR

You can colour them in then cut them out to make little play characters. There are instructions for both in the PDF below. (If need to click through to the blog to print it)

Little Animal Friends

If you like it, please share it with your friends, especially those on social media, your twitter followers and Facebook pals and if you come up with a different way to use the file, let me know!

Make Them Fall In Love...

I would like to thank everyone for their input and comments about the mini blog series. I decided to bundle all the posts together to make it into an ebook. I have used a new service which means you can read the book on your iPad, kindle, computer - anything really. You get 3 formats so that it is compatible with whatever you want to read it on.

For now, I have set the minimum price for $0, yep, you can get it for free so all you need to do is set the sliders on 0.

BUT, if you want to pay for the book, maybe you think that over the years I have given you so many great ideas that you would like to reward all my hard work, *wink* then you can move the sliders. The top slider shows how much you actually pay and the bottom one is how much I get from the sale.

Now, maybe you have suddenly come into a lot of money, then you can take the slider right to the end, neat hey? The other thing I should mention, is that with it being an ebook if and when I update it you automatically get sent the updated version, clever stuff.

It is the first time I have used this software, so I haven't got my head around all the formatting yet. If you do download the book, I would love to know what it looks like on your reader, so I know how to improve it. So, what are you still here for? go and click on the green button and grab yourself a copy!

Jubilee bunting.... free printable

This weekend marks the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. I remember the silver jubilee year, well, I remember my mom dressing me up as Britannia and sticking stuff to my riding hat (sorry I don't have a picture). I am sure if I was back in the UK I would be gung-ho about organising a street party but I am not, so we will hang some bunting up instead and I will maybe do something special at the weekend, we will see how the rest of the week goes... considering I spent almost 8 hours trying to fix my blog yesterday I am hoping the rest of the week runs more smoothly!

So, yesterday we made some bunting, the file is at the bottom of the post. There are two union jacks (yeah, I know they are actually called union flags but who calls them that?) per page and I put small dots of blue or red in the sections that have to be coloured to make it easier for the kids to colour them in.

We decided that every flag had to be different, so we got out the ink, pencils, crayons, tissue paper, wash tape, wax pastels, pens... and used a different medium or technique on each flag. Doing this worked for two reasons, first it would soon have got boring colouring in each flag the same and secondly it we could compare the flags when they were done and talk about which we liked the most/least and why.

All you need to do is colour in the flag, cut it out, leave the top attached. Fold over the top and attach to some string, hang it up and.....taa-daa!

I found a load of jubilee printables at the Activity Village and the official jubilee website has lots of info if you are planning on studying it with your kids. If you are celebrating the jubilee in some way, let me know what you are doing!
Union Jack Bunting Jojoebi Designs

What do I need?

Since Ebi-kun started school, we have had to be super organized so that he takes the right things on the right day. To help him (and me if we are going to be honest) I made up some printable check sheets. There are 5 different version in the pack, so you can simply print out the one(s) that suit your families needs. So far, these have been working well for us, when he gets in from school he packs his bag read for the next day and on Sunday evening he can get his Monday set ready by himself.

If you would like a set, you can download them here.

Giveaway Day - CLOSED

Today is the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day, twice a year, blogs from all over the blogosphere join together and give stuff away. And so I will be giving the winner a choice of 3 of my PDF sewing patterns of their choice. There will be lots of other bloggers joining in so remember to pop over to the Sew Mama Sew blog and check out the links.

AND

Everyone is a winner because I have made this free ninjabread men felt ornament pattern PDF download, which was inspired by the ninjabread cookie cutters we received last Christmas.

jojoebi ninjabreadmen

So, to enter the giveaway you need to answer the question and you must include your email address, no email address, no win.

One entry per person.

Open to everyone worldwide.

You don't have to follow my blog/subscribe but it would be lovely if you do, put it in a comment for an extra entry.

Winner will be drawn by random generator at 6pm December 18th (my birthday!) JST.

The question is...

What is the strangest/most unusual/funniest birthday present you have ever received (and the reason why if it isn't obvious).

There are also more giveaways over at Where Women Create.

Halloween Poetry Basket...

One of the ideas talked about in Playful learning was a poetry basket so last night I made up a poetry basket for Ebi-kun using poems from the big poetry book that we read before bed some nights. Scrolls are the 'thing' of the moment so rather than give him the sheets I rolled them up with a bit of string! So, in the basket is...

The white scroll has a poem with words missing, the words are at the bottom of the page for him to fill in.

The orange scroll is a sheet for him to write his own poem.

The purple scroll is a spell where he has to fill in the blanks with his own ideas.

The orange strips are a poem puzzle

Some stickers for decorating.

The white paper has the completed poems so he can check his answers.

This is something I used to do in class all the time when I was teaching, I printed out the poem then cut it into strips, shuffled them then had him put them into order. This is one of his favourite poems so I didn't read it to him first, I just sat back to see how much he could figure out. After I made this I had a look in Playful Learning to see if there were other poetry ideas and this is the one she suggested.

I was never a fan of poetry at school but I think it was the stale way that it was presented, yet poetry is an important part of language learning. Of course nonsense poems are very popular round here but we do slip in some sensible once too.
If you want to make your own Halloween poetry basket you can download the file HERE. For those who teach ESL you will be able to use it in class too.

Looking for some Fun & Fast Ghoulish Halloween Treats?
Grab the ebook and bonus labels pack too!

The Blue Constructive Triangles-not as easy as you think

I think by now you know that I love the Montessori method, from when I first started reading about it, I thought to myself - it just makes sense! Now, I know that it isn't for everyone and not every child will flourish in a Montessori environment but on a whole I think Maria Montessori had her head screwed on the right way and we could all learn a lot from her.

One of the things that is hard about going down the Montessori path is that if you plan to do it all at home then it can be a very costly do indeed. Most Montessori equipment is expensive and it is really hard to decide which key pieces of equipment you are going to spend your well earned money on and which pieces you are going to try and make.

If you have a fully equipped workshop and know how to use all the equipment it probably isn't such a big deal to make a good chunk of the equipment but we don't all have that and budgets are tight so it often comes down to using alternative materials and depending on the piece of equipment you are making I think that is fine but often there is a good reason why a certain piece of material is made in a particular way.

Right, the constructive triangles - I thought these would be an easy thing to make, just a bunch of 12 right-angled scalene triangles right? wrong!

Attempt number one...I tried using 1cm thick foam but it was difficult to cut so the triangles were not very accurate and so they didn't fit together well. Plus they had a lot of static when working with them so they would move around a lot. Fail.

Attempt number two...Next I made a set out of thick card, these were cut better but not heavy enough so Ebi-kun got frustrated quickly because they would move about as he tried to place the pieces together and if there was a draft from somewhere the whole lot of work would shift. Fail.

Attempt three....and I found a winner! This time I used thin craft foam 2mm thick. It was much easier to cut and then (and this is the genius moment) I put them in the bathroom. You could work on a damp table but they work really well on the bath wall. The water keeps them stuck in place plus it has the added bonus of working different muscles, any work which involves a vertical surface is good for the child's muscle development - think of an easel or magnets on a fridge.

Now you are probably wondering what the green bits at the top are....

well, they are Yoda's feet, I am not sure what Maria Montessori would have made of Yoda.

I have made up a template for the blue triangles that you can print out below, you will need to make 12 triangles. I need to get some more foam so that I can make the rest of the constructive triangles now.

Blue Contructive Triangles by Jojoebi

Button Hunt - perfect activity for crafty mamas

Growing up, the button box was always one of my favourite 'toys' and I would spend hours playing with it. Ebi-kun also does the same, he will sort them into colours or shapes, polish them, find ones with magical powers, making patterns in playdoh, flicking them around the floor in his own version of tiddly winks and other such things. Recently he has got a thing for treasure hunts, so I made up this button hunt to keep him out of mischief, I have made it into a PDF so you can download it and do the same. You could easily make a simpler version for non readers or one specific for buttons in your own tin.

button hunting

all done!

Button Hunt

If you need any more button ideas why not try....

Button cleaning (bottom of the post)

Button math

First sewing activity

Button flowers and One More Moore

Threading felt with Montessori Mama

Button napkin rings at Copycat crafts

and if that isn't enough, there are a tonne of ideas here.

Giveaway - pass case pattern

One of the things I love about Japan is the crazy technology, I have been using a Suica pass card for years, it is a credit card sized pass that you can either add money to it as you need it or you can buy a say 3 month pass which saves you some money if you use it everyday. At the train station as you go through the ticket gates there is a pad, you just touch your card on the pad, it deducts the correct fare and off you go, you don't even need to take the card out of the case - brilliant.

A couple of years ago vending machine companies and convienice stores started to add the Suica pad so that you could pay using your card, great when you are in a rush to catch the train and you don't want to fumble with a pocket full of change.

I think many other countries are introducing something similar now, in Japan you can buy all kinds of cute cases for your cards and I managed to mislay mine last week, last time I lost it was when we went to Summer Sonic, it was handed in and returned to me by the police, I fear no such luck this time! So, I made my own and I am giving you the pattern to use too, here you are.... (if you have any problems downloading let me know, I am not 100% sure I am doing this PDF embedding thing correctly!)

Still time to win.... bento goods, crafty bits and Culture items....
Jojoebi Designs Passcase

English Flapjacks... free download

I am always amazed at the little differences in the English language and have got used to switching in American English terms such as movie or garbage when I am talking to either North Americans or Japanese that have studied American English. It is just easier for the flow of the conversation rather than stopping to translate every 'English' expression. At home we use British English and I will never use the term fanny pack *blushing at the mere mention*. It is funny how some words I never had any idea about them having a different meaning, which brings me round to flapjacks. I was chatting to a Canadian friend the other day and apparently Canadian flapjacks are more like pancakes and the expression 'Ole Canadian Flapjack' has a whole different meaning which has little to do with cooking (at least I can say I have never tried that).

So, after talking about them I started to crave one, I haven't had a flapjack for years but used to make them often as a kid, yummmm

It is an easy recipe for the kids to join in with too, just take car with the hot ingredients in the pan.
Lots of measuring, stirring, mixing and spooning practice.
So, if you want to make some, I have made up a printable recipe card like The 5 Cup Cake card. You can download the flapjacks here and the 5 cup cake here. A quick tip, if you use a silicon pan you don't need to grease it but a regular tin you will and pop it in the fridge once it has cooled a little, once it is properly cold it is easier to cut.

Montessori Knobless Cylinder Extension Pack

Ebi-kun has been working with the knobless cylinders this week, mainly using the extension cards, it is a bit more of a challenge doing it with his left hand.

  I decided to try a new extension card where he would have to build the pattern upwards it was definitely more of a challenge, I might make a couple more. If you would like a copy of the file, pop over to Etsy to get the file. 

Montessori knobless cylinders extension lessons.

This is a set of 40 patterns to be used with the Montessori knobless cylinders.
The patterns are ready to be printed onto international standard A4 paper, it is recommended that you laminate the sheets after printing.

The patterns vary in difficulty starting with one colour patterns that follow the grading of the cylinders to the final patterns which use 3 colours or have cylinders placed on top of one another to produce a 3D effect.

Initially, the child can build the pattern directly on top of the pattern sheet but as they progress they can use the pattern sheet as a reference and build the structure next to the pattern sheet.

The second PDF had more difficult patterns for when the child had completed the first level.

This file is only suitable for A4 paper.

Simply print and cut and away you go. You may want to laminate your cards so that they last a bit longer.

You may print out as many copies as you like for personal use, handy for homeschoolers or teachers in the classroom. You do not have permission to share the digital file or resell the contents digitally or otherwise.

GET IT HERE.