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.