Daisy Upton - Five Minute Mum: Time For School: Easy, fun five-minute games to support Reception and Key Stage 1 children through their first years at school

Daisy Uptons first book Five Minute Mum: Give Me Five is a bestseller. She is a Londoner who now lives in Cheshire with her husband and two children. After years of working in sports broadcasting she quit her job to become a teaching assistant, which her colleagues at the time found baffling! When her two children turned 3 and 1 she found her love of coming up with silly games to make learning more fun in the classroom finally came into its own at home, and she began blogging about what she was up to. It turned out quite a few other people wanted to play these games too. Daisy now has a large social media and blog following who share with her on a daily basis how they too are playing her games. Daisy likes to celebrate this fact by eating large quantities of chocolate oranges and creme eggs (season dependant), and dancing in the kitchen.

Enormous gratitude firstly to all the teachers and teaching assistants out there. For taking on our wee nippers and dedicating your life to sharing knowledge in an interesting and impactful way never ever underestimate the importance of what you do. There are a few special teachers I would like to single out:

MISS COONEY when I first started writing this book, Ewan was in Samanthas Year One class. He adored her and so, when I wanted some guidance on what to include in this book, I asked her, and she kindly devoted time to pulling together a document that I referred to constantly throughout writing. Thank you.

MRS SOUDERS a great friend and a constant source of information for all things teaching, especially maths-related. Gemma, without our kitchen-brew chats and you replying to my confused WhatsApp messages this book wouldve made a lot less sense!

MISS BOWEN its always lovely when your sister-in-law-to-be is someone you really like and get on with. It is even better if they are a fantastic Early Years teacher, with tons of knowledge who can help you out with all kinds of random queries! Meghan, I will pay you back in babysitting any time.

MRS MOORE your phonics knowledge powered me through the longest chapter of this book. Your support and guidance are always hugely appreciated by me and everyone else who follows you online (@miniwritersclub). Anna, thanks so much for devoting precious time to help me out even when it was in short supply.

Also, I would like to thank some teachers who had an impact on my life. I highly doubt they will ever see this but if you taught at Halsford Park Primary School in the 90s I owe you a huge debt of gratitude. Thanks to Mr Nye, Mrs Mac, Ms Morgan, Mr Lovelady and countless others at Imberhorne School. As the years have gone on, Ive appreciated what you taught me more and more.

To Mr Merrell and the staff at Oldfield Brow Primary School in Altrincham. The start you have given my children to their school years couldnt have been bettered. The smiles on their faces after a day at school is all I need to see to know what a superb job youre all doing. Thank you.

Thanks also go to those at Penguin Random House for their incredible support during the wildly exciting book ride Ive been on this year. Special thanks to Wendy Shakespeare whose organizational and editing skills have provided calm and support throughout the entire process of pulling this book together. Thanks also to Ruth Knowles for your guidance and editorial notes, which make me laugh out loud.

A big WE DID IT and thank you to the design and photography team who made this book look so beautiful despite lockdowns, restrictions and everything in between. On the photo shoot were Nikki Dupin, Lol Johnson, Ben Hughes, Pippa Shaw and Charlie Goodge who worked incredibly hard, in masks and within tight limits across all three days and beyond to make this book happen. It would be incredibly dull without their efforts, so cheers to you all!

Gratitude as always to Lauren Gardner for being the best literary agent ever. Your phone calls always cheer me up! My thanks and love also go to the team who are constantly behind me no matter what my mum and dad, Willie and Jeanette, and my friends and family who constantly offer words of support and encouragement.

And finally to my little gang. My husband, Kenny, who puts up with everything behind the scenes that goes into Five Minute Mum me stressing about writing or manically chopping up cardboard and rifling through baskets to find something specific for a game, thereby creating chaos in my wake. I know I must drive you bonkers at times, but thanks for always being there and letting me do it anyway.

To Florence and Ewan. You are at the heart of everything in this book. Your willingness to always try out Mummys silly games is what keeps me going. You are my sunshine, always, and I cannot thank you enough for allowing me to keep doing what I do. Its been fun, hasnt it?

Lastly, thank YOU . Yes, YOU . The person reading this book. There are occasionally times where I think I will just go back to being Mummy, playing games at home and telling no one, because it was so much easier. But every time I do, I get a message from a reader, often accompanied by a picture, and I cannot express enough just how much joy it brings me. I am so grateful to every single one of you who plays the games in my books with the children in your lives. I wish you all happy playing!

There are a lot of things for our little ones to learn in the first few years of being on Planet Earth, arent there? And the things only get more varied as they skip up the year groups at school, where they cover all manner of topics. One of the things I have enjoyed most about having children who attend school is them teaching me something new. Their little sponge-like brains absorb information at a miraculous rate and they will occasionally surprise me with a wonderful regurgitated fact. Its sheer joy! But theres also a lot more to their learning than reading, writing and maths as we well know. So how do we pass on some of these additional life skills to our kiddos?

Well, Ive saved this last chapter for short and sweet ideas to play around with the kind of things they will cover at school but that will also be helpful for their everyday lives. These ideas are good for those rainy days during school holidays or when you feel like your brains are all melting after a day in front of the TV. They teach life skills that we all need under our belts at some point or another, and that are often covered by teachers in classrooms rather briefly as they try to cram as much as they can into their coverage of an already overstuffed curriculum!

In order to gather the kind of topics that would be useful, I spoke to some wonderful primary school teachers. I asked them, What do you wish your pupils had knowledge of that could easily be done at home? And their answers included things like telling the time and tying shoelaces which kiddos can certainly learn through play, as Ill show you over the next few pages.

So I hope these five-minute ideas for building skills can provide a bit of fun alongside something useful. On days where everything seems to drag, I turn to these activities to help pass the hours and erase my guilt if Ive ignored the kids for a bit when Ive had to crack on with something else that required my attention. They came in especially useful during the lockdown periods of the 2020 pandemic when noses were turned up at worksheets sent from school!