Teaching And Home Schooling Ideas

Life Cycle Of A Plant. We watched the video clip on BBC bitesize on the life cycle of a plant. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zgssgk7/articles/zyv3jty Then on white card cut into circles, we drew the 6 stages of the life cycle of the plant. The seed starts to grow shoots and roots in the ground.  The seed germinates and the shoot grows and appears above ground.  The seedling produces leaves which absorb sunlight in a process called photosynthesis.  The flower head grows, makes pollen and attracts bees, this is called pollination.  The fertilisation of the flower takes place and tiny seeds are produced.  Seed dispersal takes place usually when the flower head dies off. Seeds can be dispersed by the wind, drop to the ground or moved by animals.  The process then starts again with the new seeds, the life cycle begins again. We drew the pictures on the front of our cards and wrote what happened on the back. We hole punched the card and threaded ribbon through th

Play snakes and ladders to practise spellings. We have a list of Year 3 / 4 Common Exception words. We are trying hard to learn these words by playing Snakes and Ladders.  I wrote all the spellings onto card. When it's your turn, roll the dice and opponent picks a card and you have to spell it correctly before you can move, or before you go up the ladder or to avoid going down the snake. I sometimes spell the words wrong to talk about how they are spelt. A friend and her daughter made their own snakes and ladders sheet before they started and it's now their favourite activity to do! Who knew spelling practise could be so fun! 😂🤣

We played hopscotch yesterday. Not sure we've ever played it before. Thomas was doing a reading comprehension about hopscotch so afterwards we went into the yard and drew the hopscotch and played the game. Drawing the hopscotch is good for numbers and drawing squares! Playing the games is great exercise - jumping, hopping and balancing to pick up the stone! We laughed and had lots of fun. If you want to add an extra learning element then you could practise maths or spellings by answering a question before you pick up the stone or before you have your turn. A golden oldie we had forgotten about.

Learn spellings with a spelling dice game. Divide an A4 sheet into six columns. Draw one dice face at top of each column and put a different number on each dice face. Write words in the columns from your child's spelling list (could be reading list if your child is younger). We made this game a few years ago. To play, roll the dice. If you roll a one the other player takes the sheet and picks a word for the player to spell from the one column. If they spell it correctly they get a point. Take it in turns. If they spell the word wrong then look and talk about how they spelt it wrong and how to spell correctly. (Adult could get some wrong on purpose to talk about how to spell correctly.) If reading then pick a word for the child to read, get a point for reading correctly. Could tick words as read them.

PE lesson with Miss Welch - Lesson 1.  This lesson has a warm up, 10 exercises (eg star jumps, windmill, burpees, plank etc) and a cool down. Takes about 17 minutes so you could start the morning with this or fit it into a break to re-energise.

Make a plant pot for sowing seeds from toilet roll holders and kitchen roll holders. Cut kitchen roll holder in half so end up with two the size of toilet roll. Cut vertical cuts at one end about 2 cms high, usually about 4/5 cuts, then fold the flaps in to make a base. I didn't tape the bottom. Hold bottom when fill with compost and plant seed. Place into a container (margarine/icecream tub to keep in place.) When seed germinates and seedling ready to transplant, put whole thing in the ground as holder will decompose in the ground.

We saw a bat sleeping on the door to one of our barns. We managed to get a photograph of it without disturbing it, I have cropped the photo and enlarged it.  I printed out the photo and we used wildlife books to find out some facts about bats. We wrote factual sentences on bat shaped card. This is a pipistrelle bat.  They eat moths and other flying insects.  This bat can fly to a height of 2-6m. There are approximately 1400 bat species in the world.  We may extend the sentences another time using conjunctions and connectives. Connectives can be conjunctions eg but, when, because or connecting adverbs eg however, then, therefore. There are approximately 1400 bat species in the world, however there are only 18 bat species in the UK.  You can write facts about any animal your child is interested in or might have seen in your garden. You can use the internet to research the animal if you don't have any books. We have a pond on our farm and have found pond skaters a

We created an animal from fraction shapes. We used 6 coloured paper circles. Leave one unfolded, fold one in half, one in quarters, one in 8ths, one in 16ths and one in 32 equal parts. The 32 folding is tricky. Ask your child what are the fractions of the equal parts. We labelled them 1 over 1, 1 over 2, 1 over 4, 1over 8, 1over 16, 1 over 32. You can talk about doubling numbers if that's appropriate to your child. We cut up the circles and created an animal from the fraction parts. I think this is a turtle but you can create anything. You can then discuss how many halves, quarters, eighths etc make up the picture. We also talked about the picture being symmetrical and having one line of symmetry. If we cut it down the middle horizontally it is the same on each side.

Minecraft story. If you have a minecraft fan in the house then they might be motivated to write a minecraft story. They could write about a minecraft character, minecraft world, minecraft house etc Thomas is a big fan of Prestonplayz who is a youtuber who plays minecraft. We drew Preston's minecraft character then started to write a story about the character. If they are not a minecraft fan they can write a story about something they are interested in, farming, football, animals, lego etc

Make a bird feeder from a recycled milk carton. We cut out 4 holes, one in each side of the milk carton. Adults may need to do this or help with this. Use permanent markers to colour in the container or stick on shiny paper or objects to attract the birds. Pierce a hole in either side of the top and thread ribbon or string to create a hanger for the bird feeder. We collected twigs and glued them to the four sides to act as a perch for the birds. You could glue twigs to the top of the carton to make it look like the roof of a bird house. Fill feeder with seed, nuts or fat balls. Hang on a tree in the garden. Record types and number of birds that use the bird feeder in a tally chart.

Create a wooden spoon character. Decorate a wooden spoon as a character from a book and act out your favourite story or read along with the character. We have created a number of wooden spoon characters in the past (for our village produce show!) We have made Batman, Rapunzel and Ronaldo. Who is your favourite?

Paper plate animal crafts have always been a favourite in our house. Create your favourite animal on a paper plate. In the past we have made a tortoise, hare/rabbit, frog (at school), butterfly and lion. Use paint, felt tips, crayons or pieces of paper and glue or stickers, feathers, sequins etc You could read a favourite animal story then make the animal character. Use the animal plate to act out the story. Eg Read The Hare and the Tortoise - make tortoise and hare, then you could act out the story. Tortoise - We made the tortoise sticking on coloured paper for the shell and coloured card for the head, feet and tail. Read The Selfish Tortoise - make the tortoise. Hare - We made the hare sticking on coloured paper for fur, teeth, nose, ears and whiskers. Frog - Fold plate in half and paint. Cut out hand print for feet. Add a party blower for the tongue. Butterfly - Cut plate into butterfly shape and stick on sparkly sequins and shapes, we felt tipped on the

Magic Picture. Get a piece of kitchen roll and fold in half. Using a permanent pen/sharpie then draw a picture on the top half of the sheet, go over the outline so it goes through to the folded sheet. On the underneath sheet colour in with water based felt tips. Place the folded sheet in a bowl or on a plate with the top outline picture showing Add some water and see the picture colour in as if by magic!

Grow some beans. We soaked some bean seeds we'd saved last year. A day later we put napkins in jam jars and soaked it in water. We added the bean seeds and put them in the airing cupboard to see what happens. After a few days some of the bean seeds have started to sprout roots and shoots. Once the seeds sprout, move the jars to a light place. Keep them wet. Talk about what plants need to grow. Water, air (carbon dioxide), light and nutrients. After a week or two plant them in pots of soil or compost. Ask why do you think the beans grow shoots shoots in the dark cupboard. Putting them in a dark cupboard (with warmth and water) encourages them to seek light and sprout.

Paint Along Art Our friend Ed and his daughter are doing live paint along art sessions on a Friday lunchtime on facebook. So you can either follow along live or paint another time. You can set up for the children, whole family or just yourself. On Friday I painted along live and painted the totally tropical sunset. Ed and Daisy take you though it step by step. It was very relaxing. I painted along listening to Wham's Club Tropicana. Perfect get away from it all tune and artwork! It took an hour and a half with a 15 minute break. You can watch and paint along here https://www.facebook.com/CheeseandWinePaintingClub/videos/519035288981196/ We have also followed the video for the Jackson Pollock painted and painted along with Daisy. Ed and Daisy have also done Van Gogh's Sunflowers and this Friday it's a David Hockney landscape. Look forward to seeing your paintings.

The match box nature hunt challenge is see how many items you can get in your match box. We didn't have a match box so we used a small container. We did this last Summer but will definitely be doing it again. To make it fun both Thomas and I had a container. We went into the garden and down our farm lane. Alternatively you could play it indoors. We collected as many things as we could fit into the container. We laid the contents onto a sheet of white paper and counted the number of items collected. We collected over 20 items each. How many can you fit into a match box? Let us know.

Make Easter cards for family. Instead of sending them take photo of your children holding the card and email or text photo to loved ones or scan the card and email. We used white paper, cut the paper into rectangles or egg shapes. We used paint dabbers as they are quick and easy to create patterns. But you could use paint, felt tips, crayons or pencil crayons. We'd love to see your designs.

We went for a walk in our garden and farm lane with clipboard, ruler and tape measure. We measured small objects in nature, but you could measure objects in the home. We measured in cm and converted to mm as well. 1cm = 10mm so good for practising 10x table. We are going to draw a barchart of the lengths.

A friend shared this idea and we thought it was good. Get a jar, pen, post it notes/squares of paper. Label the jar. We labelled ours 2020 Wish List Jar. I found a small felt tip pen that fits inside the jar. I hole punched the post it notes and tied them to the jar lid. Family members can write wishes for days out or things they want to do, people they want to see when things return to normal. Alternatively you could make a happy jar / memories jar and write your favourite thing about each day or what's made you happy. This is good for keeping spirits up and focusing on the positives. We did this back in 2017 and it's lovely to read the memories. A snapshot in time.

I've named this the 4 marker challenge!  Use 4 cones or 4 old cloths as a marker.  Set the 4 markers a metre apart from each other some distance from a start line and finish line.  You could use a marker for start and finish lines.  From the start line run to marker one and back, then run to marker two and back, run to 3 and back then 4 and back, then first to finish line is the winner.  If only one child doing it you could time them to get quicker each day.  You can adapt this activity. Eg a) Run to marker 1 and back repeat b) Hop to marker 1 and back repeat c) Use a football and dribble to marker one and back d) Football kick ball to marker 1 and back repeat e) Bounce ball to marker 1 and back f) throw tennis ball at marker 1 and back g) throw tennis ball in air repeatedly as running to marker 1 and back h) if you have a hockey stick dribble hockey ball  to marker 1 and back I) shoot hockey ball to marker 1 and back. This photo shows more than 4 mar

I asked how do plants take in water? Thomas said by it's stem and roots. (I wrote down what Thomas said.) We talked about what plants need to grow. Water, nutrients in soil, air (carbon dioxide co2) sunlight. I asked what will happen when we put the cut flower in coloured water? Discuss prediction thinking about why. Thomas' prediction was... I think the flower will go greeny blue because the water will go up the stem and make the flower go blue. After a few days we looked at the flower and dissected the flower so we could see what happened. We discussed what we found. We could see blue water in the hollow stem and in the veins in the petals. Conclusion - What I found out... The flower takes in nutrients and water through the veins in the petal by the stem, we know this because the petal veins are greeny blue.

Draw a grid onto paper, I drew an 8 x 8 grid making the squares quite big. Then colour in squares in the grid to make a robot. Then count the number of total squares. So 8x8 is 64. This is the denominator. Then count the coloured in squares. We had 37, which is the numerator. Can discuss what numerator and denominator are again. Numerator is number of parts working with, denominator is total number of equal parts. Then workout how many not coloured. Could do a subtraction. Eg 64 - 37 = 27. Extend by asking what fraction is coloured yellow, purple, green etc. Can also talk about symmetry as robot has a line of symmetry down the centre. (Except for the hands being a different colour!) We would love to see your fraction Robots so send us your photos.

We watched the paint along with Daisy on our friend Ed's Cheese and wine painting club page. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10158327202181263&id=528396262 We looked up Jackson Pollock art work to see his paintings. We needed paper / art paper or a canvas. Red, blue, white, yellow, back paint. Paint brush and palette. We painted the background with red and blue paint.  We then squirted on yellow, white, black, red and blue. Thanks for the inspiration Daisy. 🙌 Thomas has spotted a darker Jackson Pollock painting just using black, blue and white so he decided to create his own version of this too.