Week 8 of stay at home learning and the U.K this week have announced that they will be relaxing lockdown. Personally, I think this is not yet the right time to be doing this as the daily number of infections and deaths are still pretty high. Worse is they have announced conditional plans to re-open primary schools for those in Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 from the 1st June. This is only 2 weeks away and the thought of that makes home learning seem like the best thing since sliced bread!

As we digested the information from the news, it quickly dawned on many families that what the government has put forward is not feasible. There is no way children of that age will be able to socially distant. Hands-on play and touching everything, everywhere and everyone is part of what that age group does. Even if they do understand social distancing, it seems ludicrous to want to rush into it. We can’t even start to imagine what the cleaning regime will be like for EYFS. Some of us think that our little ones may struggle more being at school under these circumstances. Being told they can see their friends, but from a distance, they can’t play, eat, sit properly together etc. The kids crave attention and physical contact, I’m just afraid that being told no or that they are too close to one another will be emotionally hard for them.

We are worried that the government is only trying to kick start the economy and want parents back at work at the expense of their young children. I understand there may be at risk children who school for them is a safe place, but they should be dealt separately. Of course, there may also be scientific backup to say young children are less susceptible, but this virus is still very new and at a very early stage. Anyway, I’ve said my piece and I’m sure we will learn more and find out how things progress in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we will continue to stay at home learning and playing! Scroll to the bottom for our weekly stay at home learning and activities.

Note: #JasperBean is in Reception (age 4-5: EYFS), therefore his home learning is specific to him/his age. I have received permission to share parts of his home learning plan from his teachers.

English

We have finished phased 2 & 3 sounds and tricky words, so this week was all about revising and familiarising ourselves with what we have learnt.

•  Revised
  • Here are some fantastic Youtube videos to revise Phase 3 phonics (graphemes and phonemes)
    • ch, sh, th, ng
    • ai, ee, igh, oa
    • oo, ar, or, ur
    • ur, ow, oi, ear
    • air, ure, er
  • Phase 3 and phase 4 tricky words – These songs are very catchy and we love singing along to them.
• Phonics worksheets from Twinkl and Mrs Mactivity.
• Live Phonics from Twinkl Parents Group on Facebook
• Watched “Barry The Fish With Fingers” and discussed:
  • How did everyone feel when they met Barry? Why?
  • How did Puffy feel about Barry at the beginning? Why? How did he feel at the end? Why?
  • Discussed the purpose of a letter and that Puffy needs to thank Barry, and maybe even apologise too. What could he say?
  • We turned our discussion into simple sentences and wrote a letter from Puffy.
    • You can buy the book from here.
• Write off – we wrote about Mister Seahorse, our story from last week to see how much we could remember.
• Ordered the days of the week and removed one to see if they know which one is missing.
• Independent Reading
  • Plunge Into The Pirate Pool
  • The Tiger Who Came To Tea
  • The Gingerbread Man
  • Supertato

Maths

• This week we focused on Time.
  • The aim was to be able to use time in everyday language.
  • We looked at different o’clock and half past time and discussed what the big and small hand was for.
  • We printed out a clock and stuck it on the wall to show different times. Sometimes I would deliberately make a mistake and see if they could correct me.
  • We drew a timeline and labelled each hour. Using the timeline we discussed what happens at each time and drew drawings to the line.
  • Played “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?” O’Clock and Half Past version on Twinkl.

There are a lot of activities and worksheets on Twinkl and Mrs Mactivity (free and paid subscription).

TWO great FREE resources to support and supplement your work.

• National Oak Academy– An online classroom for reception age to year 10.
• BBC Bitesize – Online study support resource for school-age students in the United Kingdom.
  

Some activities

• Daily PE with Joe
• Roleplay – Post Office from Learning Resources
• Bubble art
• Finger painting
• Created finger puppets and put on our own puppet show
• Skateboarding
• Created a giant Maze with masking tape
• Thread giant wooden beads
• Osmo – Adventures with Coding Awbie
• Water and bubble play

Board games

We played some classic games this week.

• Uno card game – the world’s number 1 card game!
• Dominoes
• Snakes & Ladder and Ludo

PS. Lots of you have been asking me about the face shield in the collage above, I have posted a step to step guide on how I made this on here.

What will we get up to next week?

Thank you for reading and until next time…  have fun and happy social distancing!

Love MsMamaBean.

Quick links to our Home Learning Diary:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• After 2 weeks of Easter holiday, we continue with Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5

Disclaimer: English and Maths support links and suggestions are part of the children’s at-home learning plan provided by their teacher during social distancing/lockdown. I have only added supplement worksheets, reading and activities to support his learning.