ELHQ: Best Teaching Resources of 2012

First of all, as this is my first post of 2013 I’d like to wish all of our visitors a happy New Year. I spent a bit of time over Christmas watching various programmes that count down the 50 greatest things of a thing. In particular I caught a bit of the following…The 50 greatest Christmas moments, Olympics 2012: 50 greatest moments and The 50 funniest moments of 2012.

Watching these programmes gave me an appreciation for lists and it made me think that I should make a list of some of my favourite teaching resources that we’ve added to ELHQ over the last 12 months.

Unfortunately we don’t have the budget to hire Stuart Maconie or some other minor celeb to provide some sort of reflection on each resource. Also, I’m frantically trying to catch up with all the work that was put on hold over the Christmas period so picking out the top 50 is a bit too much to ask. Instead I thought I’d do the ELHQ top 20 of 2012. Narrowing it down to 20 was quite a difficult task because I’m really delighted with the standard of all the resources that we put on the site. There are so many quality resources that haven’t made it on the list and I’d like to thank all of our talented contributors (both in-house and freelance) who have helped to make the site so special.

So here it is, in no particular order…

1)      Animal Display Letters

This resource was designed by Sarah Chidwick whose work I’m a big fan of. We had an email from the London Evening Standard who wanted to feature this image in the paper.

2) Under the Sea alphabet

This is a really unusual and beautifully illustrated resource. It was designed by Roma Auškalnytė.

3)      Editable Friendship Poster

This is a really nice poster with amazing illustrations by Gintare Radzeviciute.

4)      Jungle Small World Play Backdrop

The quality and detail of this picture by the very talented Emma pee is terrific.

5)      Pirate Small World Play Scenery

This poster (designed by fine artist Jeremy Jones) was done in a completely different style to most of the other wrk on the site but I think it works really well. In fact I always love it when our illustrators take a fresh approach….I think the variety of the resources is one of the things that makes ELHQ really unique.

6)      Musical Instrument Flash cards

It really is quite difficult to draw musical instruments so I have a lot of respect for the design skill s of Sophie Egler who illustrated these musical instrument flash cards.

7)       Jack and the Beanstalk Stick Puppets

Wonderful story cut-outs puppets designed by Emma Pelling.

8)      Goldilocks and the 3 Bears Stick Puppets

Some more stick puppets – this time by Peter simon.

9)      Gruffalo Role-Play Masks

These are really great Gruffalo role-play masks by Paul Cullis.

10)   Dog illustrations

This is a very versatile resource which could be used to create bespoke teaching resources. All of the pictures have been hand drawn by one of our illustrators Laura kiteley.

11)   Handa’s Hen Song

This resource is based around a song that my Mum uses in her early years setting when using the wonderful Handa’s Hen story. It has been really popular on the site!

12)   Confusing Letter Desktop Cards

Part of our dyslexia resources designed by one of our brilliant in-house designers Kristina Heinesen.

13)   Halloween Bee-Bot Matt

Another resource wonderfully designed by Kristina. We will be designing lots more Bee-Bot / programmable robot Matts in 2013 (in fact we already have several waiting to on to the site).

14)   Bonfire Night Bingo Cards

A collection of bingo cards to be used in the lead up to bonfire / Guy Fawkes night. Some of Kristina’s illustrations are fantastically detailed – the pictures of Guy Fawkes and the Houses of Parliament are particularly great.

15)   Zoo Board game

This is a great resource deigned by another of our in-house designers Danielle Parker. I really like the concept behind the game with the children having to tell what time the animals are being fed – it provides great scope for extended learning.

16)   Under the Sea poster

I really love this small world play poster beautifully illustrated by Daniele.

17)   Space themed Poster

Danielle has been working on a lot of small world play backdrops and this is another of my personal favourites. I particularly like the little man being beamed up to the spaceship (you might not be able to make this out from the preview picture).

18)   Human Skeleton Cut-out

I like this resource so much that I made a special effort to upload it before going out on New Year’s Eve so that I could include it in this list! It was designed by our in-house designer Ffion Evans. I think the detail is amazing and it could make for a really graet display at home or in the classroom.

19)   School Morning Routine Flashcards

This is a really useful resource, particularly for children with SEN. I think Ffion did a great job illustrating the various routines as some of them are quite tricky to draw.

20)   Phonology Flash cards

Another versatile resource with fantastic illustrations by Ffion.

I was also going to include the various PSED resources produced by one of our freelancers Amardip Bopari such as this emotions dice, however these resources were uploaded right at the end of 2011. I thought I’d mention them any way as I really like them!

So that concluded the list. I’m already looking forward to putting together the 2013 list. We have a backlog of over 200 high quality teaching resources waiting to go on to the site so 2013 is shaping up to be a great year! Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or sign up for our newsletter to keep up to date with all the latest goings on here at ELHQ throughout the year.