Teaching And Home Schooling Ideas

Make a mini raft to float. We got some twigs of a similar length. We bound them together with string. Added a twig for the mast and a leaf for the sail. We put the raft in the Beck to see if it would float and it did. If you don't live near a Beck or stream then you can float it in the sink or bath. If you have a group of children they can work together or make individual rafts.

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 We started with the ingredients we'd used for our rain in a jar and then raided the pantry and bathroom cabinet for out of date items.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.

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?

Practise x tables with a Calculator Connect 4 game. Draw the grid of numbers.  You can only use the following numbers to multiply.  1,3,5,6,7,8,9,11,13 Take it in turns to multiply two different numbers together using a calculator.  Colour in the number on the grid.  First player to get 4 in a row wins.  We carried on and got a point for each four in a row we made. 

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.

Learn spellings playing hangman game. We have a list of Year 3/4 common  exception words to learn so we have played hangman to practise them. Write the words on card and then take it in turns to pick a word and get the player to guess the word picking letters from the alphabet. We talked about vowels - a, e, i, o, u, and commonly used letters eg s, t, p, r, f, d, b etc Thomas wanted to think of his own words, not his spelling words so we went with it. I used the spelling words for my turn. Thomas really enjoyed this game and we spent about 45mins playing it and he wanted to play it again the following day.

Make Salt Dough Fossils. For the salt dough we used 8 ounces of plain flour, 4 ounces of salt and mixed with warm water until the mixture came together. Initially we added about 100ml of water and then just kept adding water till the mixture combined to form a dough. Roll out the salt dough and use a cutter to make the shapes. Place on a tray.  Print patterns in the dough with dinosaur toys or any toys you have, lego pieces, cars, playmobil people, toy animals etc You can air dry them for a few days or bake in the oven at 120 degrees for 2 hours or until hard.  We waited a few days before we painted them. 

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.

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?

We have an old xbox 360 that has been passed down from an older cousin. In this game children can use their imagination to create a world. If playing it with a sibling then they can take turns, work collaboratively. Thomas wanted to create a wooden house but was unsure how to do it. We found a youtube video which was like a tutorial so Thomas followed the instructions in the video, then adapted it for his own creation.

For those of you with plenty of lego around. Challenge your children to create a lego picture or object. Maybe related to something they like or a project they are working on. We picked some daffodils from the garden the other day, so whilst Thomas was setting up all his lego vehicles to attack mine, I created a lego daffodil picture.