Teaching And Home Schooling Ideas

 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. 

Think of a word or phrase linked to the time of year or something your child is interested in eg Harry Potter, Easter time, Happy Christmas, Animals of the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, Charles Dickens, Syrian Hamsters etc Ask your child to make words from the letters. We chose Cristiano Ronaldo and we have recently done this again in a zoom call with friends. Our words this time were Charles Dickens as we had been watching a PowerPoint about the author and doing research on Dickens.  I drew a grid with headings - 1 letter word, 2 letter words, 3 letter words, 4 letter words, 5 letter words, 6 letter words etc Write the words in the grid. Think about rhyming words eg sit, nit or toad, road, load, link, sink.  If there is a letter s then which words could be made into a plural eg toads, roads, loads, sinks, links.  We even found some homophones which we had been looking at eg hare, hair, her.  We did this challenge over a few days. We go about 40 words, ho...

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 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.

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...

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.

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.

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 ...

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

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.