As a teacher, private tutor and parent, I often find myself reinventing the wheel. The Mrs Mactivity website is a timesaver for anyone involved in the education of children.
Educational printables are something that all teachers, home educators and parents could make use of, so I’m always on a mission to hunt down the best around. Mrs Mactivity has become a recent addition to my list.
Disclaimer: I was gifted a membership for this site in exchange for a review. All views are my own. I would never advocate a resource that I wouldn’t use myself.
What is Mrs Mactivity?
Mrs Mactivity is a website jam-packed with downloadable resources, ideas and support for teachers and parents alike. All activities are linked to the national curriculum. There are also lots of display resources, supporting schools to create powerful learning environments.
The main sections of the website are:
- Age 3 – 5
- Age 5 – 7
- Age 7 – 11
- Phonics
- Maths
- English
- Topics
- Display
The website also contains a fantastic blog offering hints, tips and news for educators.
Membership costs £24 per year for individuals. Schools can also sign up for £150.
Who are these educational printables suitable for?
Heather, the founder of Mrs Mactivity, wasted hours and hours searching the web for educational printables and resources that never quite fulfilled her brief. In the end, she decided she could do better and, with the help of a team, she provides a wealth of learning resources aimed at Early Years and Primary.
What do I think?
I have used some of the resources recently with the children I tutor. They like the colourful nature of the resources and the topics grabbed their attention. Not so great for my printer, though! Ha! But I could always print in greyscale.
All of the resources are child-friendly, using a great font that is easy to read. I’m sure it must be dyslexia-friendly, too.
Today, I used a Space comprehension aimed at 6 to 9-year-olds with one of my tutees, and he really enjoyed it. However, I must say that, though the focus was on reading, the science was questionable when the earth was described as being the planet third furthest from the sun. Luckily, I used this as a learning point, discussing how we could change the wording of the sentence to ensure its accuracy. Even with textbooks, there are mistakes! (Mrs Mactivity has now updated the resource!)
For teachers, I would also say that categorising the reading comprehension within a key stage might be a little easier. Having said that, the description below the resource does explain that it would be suitable for some children in Year 2 as well as lower key stage 2, hence the 6-9 age range. For me, a little more differentiation would have been great. Perhaps, a lower and higher ability version of the same comprehension would have been appropriate. While many people would say to simply look at the key stage 1 resources, the topics are usually more age-appropriate within key stage 2.
Overall, it’s a fairly comprehensive website with an array of resources. So many schools rely on Twinkl, but it gets so dull seeing the same old things on every classroom wall, so I love that Mrs Mactivity offers a breath of fresh air. I think it’s great value for money, too.
Response from Mrs Mactivity:
Heather from Mrs Mactivity said, “It’s always really useful getting feedback on our resources and we love hearing how we can help people even more. Occasionally mistakes do happen, unfortunately, especially in this case as that particular resource was created during lockdown when we were home-schooling our children and trying to get lots and lots of resources out quickly! In terms of the ink friendliness, we try where relevant to create all of our resources in black/white, though again, during the lockdown rush we sometimes only produced the colour version – this is not usual for us.
“Re: differentiation – we’re working on this and talking to a KS1 specialist about how best to do it so that children can still reach their potential – as there is some discussion right now about whether differentiation is actually effective or not. Thanks again for the review and it has definitely given us food for thought. We take such a huge pride in our work and want to be the best resource site out there!”
