Teaching And Home Schooling Ideas

We read Stickman by Julia Donaldson and have already made Stickman and his Sticklady love out of sticks. Scholastic have a free downloadable comic strip sheet which I printed off but you could just draw some boxes onto a4 paper with room for the writing underneath the picture. We thought about where the comic strip story should begin and what would happen to stickman. Then Thomas drew and wrote the comic strip all on his own. We coloured in the comic strip together the next day. We are going to act out the story with our homemade stickman. We are also going to make the comic strip out of some coloured clay I have and we might try to do an animated film so watch this space.

Butterfly Multiplication. I cut out a butterfly shape from some spare cardboard I had. I wrote out some multiplication and division calculations on the cardboard butterfly. I wrote the answers on stickers. Place the sticker answer over the calculation. I saw this idea on the imagination tree instagram account.

Whilst the weather was hot and we had the paddling pool out we decided to predict and test which items float and sink. Draw a table and write a list of some items to test. We picked a pebble, plastic bottle, flat foil, scrunched foil, leaf, twig, conker, glass bottle, football, old pen and wet swimming trunks! Firstly we predicted if they would float or sink, then we tested each item. As we were testing we talked abit about why some float and others sink. But it was a hot day so we will come back another time to draw up our conclusions as to why some items float and others sink.

We looked at photosynthesis and what plants need. We talked about how leaves take in sunlight and need water and take in carbon dioxide (which humans breathe out). We discussed that the leaves produce glucose for the plant to grow and produce oxygen for humans to breathe in. Thomas wrote the descriptions of what is happening in the comic strip pictures that I drew. Here is the science. What Do Plants And Crops Need To Grow? Sunlight Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Water (H2O) Nutrients Correct Temperature Plants and crops absorb water (H2O) through their roots. This water (H2O) absorption is the means by which plants and crops gather nutrients from the soil. Temperature can affect the levels of water (H2O) absorption and nutrient intake. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants and crops make their food using sunlight, water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Photosynthesis takes place in the leaf cells (chloroplasts). The leaf cells (chloroplasts...

After making our own marvellous medicine potion the other week, we have been reading George's Marvellous Medicine together. I wanted to get some writing out of this so I used a section of the story as a frame for Thomas to come up with some ideas of his own. He came up with some good descriptions and onomatopoeia words which we have also been looking at. (Onomatopoeia are words that sound like a noise or sound eg bang, clang, wham, ooze, pop, crackle etc) He even remembered an onomatopoeia alphabet song we had watched the week before on youtube. I also love how minecraft had to feature in it!

Fill in a weather chart. Good practise writing days of week. We drew pictures and wrote words to describe the weather. You could extend the activity by researching how different weather occurs eg rain in the water cycle or thunder and lightning.

Colour in the buckets with up to 3 colours in as many different ways as possible. Helps to develop a logical and methodical way of working.

What Is An Adverb? An Adverb is a word that describes a verb. We have a horse loving boy here and we are lucky enough to be able to walk everyday to see our friend's horses in the field near our farm. So I printed off a picture of Harvest with the question How does Harvest gallop? Plus a picture of Willow with the question How does Willow trot? Thomas acted out galloping and trotting around the garden as Harvest and Willow and wrote down adverbs to describe how he was moving. He then chose his favourite adverb and wrote it into a sentence. You could pick anything that your child is interested in and get them to write adverbs about how the object moves. Cars/vehicles, dinosaurs, animals, space creatures, people, teddies etc We look forward to reading your adverbs.

It's Father's Day this Sunday in the UK. School usually make great cards but since we are not at school at the moment we have made a card at home. This is an easy card to make. Draw round your child's hand with the thumb sticking up and palm facing up. Cut out the handprint and stick to the front of the card. Curl the four fingers into the palm and stick down so it looks like a thumbs up. Inside we wrote Dad, What I love about Dad! Then the numbers 1 to 5 and a word and picture next to each number. We did this for the inside of the card but it could easily be for the outside of the card. Happy Father's Day!

Discuss what an adjective is. An adjective is a describing word. It describes a noun - describes the object, person or place. I wrote out the alphabet and then the sentence - The Minister's Cat is a _______ cat. For each letter of the alphabet we thought of a word to describe the cat. Eg N - The Minister's Cat is a noble cat. We took it in turns to think of the adjectives. We watched a video of a reading of Lynley Dodd's The Minister's Cat ABC which you can find on youtube. We took it in turns to read out our sentences when we had finished. Thomas picked out his favourite sentences and wrote it out and drew the cat, illustrating the adjective. Thomas chose The Minister's Cat is a gassy cat! I stuck the sentence and illustration onto a paw print.

We recently rescued a hedgehog from inside our farm grainstore. The hedgehog was all curled up and we put the hedgehog in the hedgerow and he or she crawled away. A few days later we came up with 8 questions about hedgehogs we wanted to find out answers to. Another day we used kiddle (children's search engine) and found the answers to our questions on various websites. Today we designed a poster to protect the hedgehog as we found there were quite a few dangers to hedgehogs. We used a photograph of the hedgehog we saved and I had cut out coloured card in the shape of hedgehogs to write our sentences on about how to protect the hedgehog. We had room to draw pictures to go with the sentences. You could write questions and find facts about any animal or place that interests your child then present the information in a poster.

We love Roald Dahl's story George's Marvellous Medicine. Today we made our own version of the marvellous medicine. We started with the ingredients we'd used for our rain in a jar and then raided the pantry and bathroom cabinet for out of date items. (I was supervising all the time and I made  sure Thomas knew not to taste the mixture.) Thomas mixed the items in a bowl and I wrote the ingredients in a list as they were added to the concoction with amounts noted down. Whilst we mixed and squirted, added and stirred, we listened to the CD of George's Marvellous Medicine. We poured the mixture into a bottle and labelled with a homemade medicine label. This was a fun activity and lasted a long time and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. We intend to do some creative writing from this activity, so we will share when it's written.

We have been making rain in a jar. Fill a jar three quarters full of cold water. Squirt shaving foam on the top of the water. Squirt droplets of food colouring onto the shaving foam. The shaving foam represents the clouds and the food colouring the rain. You can discuss the water cycle. The water on the ground evaporates to form water vapour, it condenses to create clouds the precipitation (rain, hail, snow) occurs when the vapour cools to form water droplets. The whole process repeats.

I don't know about you but we have lots of teddies in our house. We have sorted and grouped them into animal teddies. Draw a chart and list all the groups of teddy animals. We physically sorted and grouped them and laid the teddies in lines like a graph so they were easier to count. We counted each group and wrote down the amount in tally marks and numbers. Next time we will answer some questions about the groups of teddies. eg How many teddies altogether? How many more bears than dogs? How many fewer rabbits than dogs? How many groups only have one or two animals? How many bears are there?

Yesterday was World Ocean Day and we wanted to create a water effect picture. Use cartridge paper and paint water onto the paper so the whole paper is wet. Choose tubes of water colour paints in different blues and greens and mix each one with water then add the colours to the wet paper. Paint the whole sheet. Once happy withe the painting cover the paper with clingfilm making sure the plastic is wrinkled up in places and not flat. Leave to dry and then peel off. The cling film gives a rippled effect. I am loving this effect.

Paint drip a plant pot as a present or to cheer up your patio. Paint a terracotta plant pot white and leave to dry. From the base drip different coloured paints down the sides. Leave to dry. Seal with varnish or modge podge. Plant up the pot. We are planting a sunflower so we can give to grandparents so they can think of their grandson when they look at the sunflower. We'll share a picture when we've planted it.

Sewing Geometric Multiplication Circles. We've been finding new ways to practise x tables. Write down the answers to a times table. We started with the 2 x table. 0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24. We talked about the numbers being even and the pattern repeating. On small circles that are labelled around the circle at equal points 0 to 9 we drew the geometric pattern. So look at the answers and the pattern for the unit digit goes 0,2,4,6,8,0 etc. On a small circle rule lines from 0 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 6, 6 to 8 and 8 to 0. Then using embroidery thread or wool sew the geometric pattern onto a larger circle labelled with the numbers 0 to 9 at equal intervals. Repeat for the other times tables, we are doing one a day! It's making practising tables more fun!

Make a stickman or stickman family. We went for a walk and collected some sticks with legs!! We read the Stickman story. We used ribbon, stick on eyes, twigs, foam shapes, pom poms, feathers to make stickman and sticklady. Share your stickman and stickman family, we'd love to see them. 

Use a 100 Square and up to 4 dice and some coloured pencils. Each player takes it in turn to roll the dice, start with 2 dice. What maths statement can you make with the numbers? eg if you throw a 6 and 5, you could add 6+5 =11, multiply 6x5=30, or subtract 6-5=1. Write down the chosen calculation and colour in the answer. Aim of the game is to get 4 in a row vertically, horizontally or diagonally. When you've exhausted numbers with 2 dice, you can add 3 or 4 dice to make your maths calculations more tricky and make larger numbers. Score 1 point each time a player gets 4 numbers in a row.

Read Tabby McTat and look at the illustrations of Tabby in the book and how the cat is described. Pick out descriptions in the story. Draw picture of Tabby McTat in the box and colour in. Write a paragraph explaining that Tabby McTat is missing and a description of the cat. What does the cat look like? Any distinguishing features? Who is the cats owner and how do you contact if there is a sighting? Try to vary the starts of sentences as it's easy to start with he, his or Tabby. Use descriptive language and adjectives eg sparkling white eyes. Can you use any quotes from the story. Eg a miaow that is loud and strong. Hook the reader in with your first sentences. Use a question directed at the reader eg Have you seen this cat? Tell reader how to contact owner. Eg Find Fred at the lion statue. I got this sheet from the scholastic website but you can use A4 paper to create the poster with a box for the picture and lines for the description. You could even desig...