Teaching And Home Schooling Ideas

Practise spellings with a fun Easter game.  Draw egg shapes onto a sheet of paper and label with a number.  However many spelling there are draw same amount of eggs.  Write each spelling word onto paper and fold up and place each spelling in a plastic egg.  Label each egg with a number.  Throw the dice (We have a 12 sided dice) and open the corresponding numbered egg.  Write the word onto the numbered egg on the sheet.  Write the word as many times as you like or write once and then again when you throw that number again. 

 Rainbow Spellings Write a set of words for spelling practise in different colours then write each word in an arch shape in a rainbow colour to create a rainbow. Looks pretty and they get to practise writing out their spellings in felt tip or gel pen colours. 

Have you had some snow and managed to build a snowman? Finally we have had enough snow to build Bob the Snowman! You could get the children to draw a snowman and write an acrostic poem about the snowman. An acrostic poem is when you use the initial letter from the word to start the sentences.  Snowman Steve stands slightly sloping!  Nose pointing towards the house.  On the grass he stands majestically.  With eyes searching for the warm enemy!  Melting fast in the sun.  Away he goes.  Not back until it snows again.  If you have named your snowman you could use the name of your snowman for the poem. Think about what your snowman looks like - tall, short, wide, smiling, what is your snowman wearing, how have you made the face, arms, buttons etc think about snowy words - icy, melts, white, frosty, frozen, icicles, snow crystals, snow flakes, thaws, powdery snow, wet....  Have fun. 

A great way to get children writing is to use a photograph. Last week school sent my son a photo of a spooky looking house which we used as a stimulus for writing the start of a story.  Features to think about for a story opening.  Use of questions to hook reader in.  Create intrigue with use of good adjectives, adverbs, similes, personification, metaphors.  Use dialogue.  Set the scene describing the setting or characters.  Dive straight into the action We created a helping hand for story starts.  Use an atmospheric photograph as a stimulus. Could be a building, animal, countryside/city scene, holiday beach picture. We'd love to see your writing. 

Read extract from chapter one of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where Charlie can only think of one thing, chocolate and he only gets a chocolate bar once a year on his birthday. Imagine you are Charlie. Ask how do you feel about chocolate? It's my favourite thing, I dream about it, it's delicious....  What do you think about the chocolate bar you get on your birthday? It's special, yummy, mouth watering, scrumptious.... Imagine you are Charlie and you get a bar for your birthday, how would you describe the chocolate? Think about size, shape, colour of wrapper, taste, smell....  Size - gigantic, huge Shape - rectangular, a slab Colour - golden, multicoloured Taste - delicious, scrumptious, yummy Smell - heavenly, chocolatey Draw a rectangle in centre of page and write My Chocolate Bar inside, then write adjectives to describe the chocolate bar. 

Play A Spelling Memory Game. Write out the list of spelling words onto card or paper twice and cut out separately.  Shuffle the cards.  Spread out cards face down.  Turn over two cards and see if they match.  If they don't match, turn back over, face down.  If the two cards do match, the player could spell the word without looking to win the cards. 

How to play Spelling Bingo. Write your child's spelling words onto card or paper and cutout. We had about 30 words as you need some not listed on the grids.  Cut a sheet of A4 paper in half then draw a grid on each half with 9 squares.  Write 9 spelling words on one grid.  Write 9 different spelling words on the other grid. We are a family of 3 and mum was bingo caller, with dad and son playing with a spelling bingo grid each.  The caller picks a word off the pile and reads it out.  If the word is on your grid, use a dabber or felt tip to cross it off. (We just looked for the word as it was the first time we played, another time you could spell the word out without looking and if correct you can cross it off the grid.)  First one to cross all the words out, shouts bingo! We had great fun and took it in turn to be bingo caller. 

Does your child love cooking or baking? Thomas made his own salad the other week, a tomato, pea and cucumber salad. Simple but tasty. We then wrote instructions for making the recipe. We used a template from twinkl but you can just set it out like a recipe. Have a look at recipe books. We looked at Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes book. We listed ingredients, equipment, then wrote out numbered instructions using verbs eg cut, put, add, chop, wash. We used time vocabulary to start sentences first, then, now, next, finally. If you make the food first this helps when you come to writing the instructions.

Write a postcard to a friend or family member. If you don't have a blank postcard you can always make one from white card and do a picture on the front of what you have been doing. We usually ask how the person is, tell them what we have been doing and ask them a few questions so they can reply.

Make sentences or silly sentences from flash cards. You could write them out, punctuating correctly. Next time we will extend them with connectives. Add your own words to cards as you think of new words for your sentences.

We read Superworm by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. On A4 paper I drew an oval shape in the centre and wrote the questions, What is Superworm like!? What does Superworm do? After we read the story Thomas drew Superworm in the oval and then wrote phrases from the story about what Superworm was like and words to describe Superworm's characteristics. Eg long, strong, stretchy, wriggly, kind, caring, lots of friends, Wizard Lizard is his enemy, scared of crow, helps his friends, hero, super... You could also pick out what Superworm did in the story to help his friends. We found some stickers we had from the Superworm story and added them to the page.

We have the bananagram word game at home. Give each person 21 letters and then they make as many words as they can out of them, forming their own crossword style pattern with the words. You can swop letters with the main pile but the rules say if you put a letter back, take 3. It's a good way to generate words and learn spellings. You could have a dictionary on hand to check spellings of tricky words are correct. If you don't have this game, any word game with letter tiles is good to play this. Or you could write letters on white card and make your own letter tiles so you can play.

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.

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!

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.

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 did some work on metaphors. What is a metaphor? A phrase that describes something as if it is something else. Eg The cliffs are a face looking out to sea. We discussed what a metaphor is and how it's different to a simile (  What is a simile? A phrase that compares something to something else using as or like. Eg The sun shone like a diamond or the wind blew as fast as a sports car.)  We then completed the metaphor sentences. The sea is..... The tree is.... The forest is.... The waves are.... The cliffs are.... The river is.... The branches are.... The waterfall is. ... The leaves are .... The sky is.... The sun is.... Let us know what metaphors you write.

School suggested we could write a poem about this time in lockdown. We chatted about this and Thomas came up with a couple of sentences. I then asked a few questions as prompts. First thoughts when you heard school was closing. How did you feel? What do you miss most about normal life? What don't you miss? How long in lockdown so far? How do you feel now? What have been the highlights? What's difficult about lockdown? What have you learnt about yourself? How has life changed? How has your family reacted? What will you remember the most? We used the answers to the questions to come up with some sentences for a poem. I wrote each sentence on a strip of paper in different coloured felt tips. We could then reorder the sentences. Another day we typed up the poem. The process took 3 days. Thomas suggested an acrostic poem called isolation where the letters of the word isolation start the sentences but the sentences we came up with didn't fit.