Teaching And Home Schooling Ideas

Create a patterned picture. We have drawn pictures of our village canal and the local landscape.  Go over the pencil lines in black felt tip.  We drew our local canal but you can draw anything.  Using coloured felt tip pens create patterns in different sections of the picture. We tried to use different colours and patterns next to each other. I think these pictures are very effective. 

If your child enjoys art and drawing. Why not enter the York Walls in Spring competition by Little Vikings. Here is the picture I did whilst my son and some of his friends on zoom had a go at drawing, colouring and painting their pictures. Send a photo of your child's art work to hello@little-vikings.co.uk. Include their name and age.  The competition will close on Sunday 21st March 2021. Visit the Little Viking's website for more information. 

Make personal initial letter homemade cards for birthdays or Christmas. You will need...  A4 white paper Paint Glitter glue tubes/pens Coloured card Scissors What to do...  Paint A4 paper in desired colours.  Then add dabs and swirls of glitter glue.  When dry cut out initial letter.  Fold A4 coloured card in half, then half again to make 2 cards.  Glue initial letter to front of the card.  We love these simple, personal handmade cards. 

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.

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...

Make a wax crayon scratch picture. Colour in your paper with wax crayons. Then you can either paint over the crayon in black paint. (Picture is below.) Or draw over in black wax crayon. I did this on my first attempt but the black wax crayon didn't cover all the coloured wax. Then scratch a pattern/ picture in the black wax or paint. (1 is black wax crayon, 2 is black paint.) Let us which method you tried/preferred. 

Thomas wanted to draw a dragon's eye so we found a tutorial on youtube that we kept pausing so we could follow the steps. (You can find tutorials for drawing lots of different animals or objects that your child is interested in.) We drew in pencil, then went over in felt tip. I double mounted onto complementary coloured card. We will use the artwork as stimulus for a piece of descriptive writing about the dragon eye.

Practise x tables with a x table colouring sheet. We have a minecraft fan in the house and twinkl have some minecraft x table sheets on their website. I am sure that they will have other themes so you can get your child to practise their x tables whilst colouring in a picture they like.

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 a...

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!

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.

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.