Can you believe it’s another week already!? Never in my wildest dream did I imagine home learning with my boys and to have done this for 9 weeks! How do you homeschooling mums do it?! #hatsoff.

It has been 11 weeks since we have been in lockdown. This week we finally ventured out of the house, (hooray!) but only out for a short walk at the nearby park. We chose to go on a cloudy day, which later rained, so there weren’t many people about. Hopefully, as the lockdown eases, we will be able to go out a bit more. Playing in the park and being surrounded by trees is so refreshing and we had so much fun. We understand that home learning is not just about learning at home but also from our environment and community. The community is an extension of our home, so we are glad that we have such a big park local to us. Let’s hope that when the weather perks up, people will still be sensible and social distance.

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 are fully into Phase 4 phonics which has a bunch of tricky words but no new sounds. Therefore we have been revising Phase 2 and 3 sounds, with a focus on “Consonant Blends”, such as “st”, “tr”, “nd”, “pt” etc.

•  Revised
  • First 100 High Frequency Words
  • Phase 3 Phonics
  • 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
• This week we read/watched the story “Mad About Minibeasts“:
  • We identified the rhyming words in the book and made a list of words that rhymed.
  • Researched the minibeasts from the text and found out some new things about them.
  • Discussed what our own made-up minibeasts would look like, where they would live and what they would eat.
  • Drew, labelled and constructed our newly discovered minibeast.
  • Wrote a short poem about our minibeast.

• We created lots of silly sentences by combining different words together as well.

• Independent Reading
  • The Invisible String
  • How to be a lion
  • Mog The Forgetful Cat
  • Giraffes Can’t Dance

Maths

• This week we continued on our topic about Money.
  • • The aim was to be able to use everyday language about money.
    • Focused on coins and explained the value of each. We put them in order of value and showed different combinations of the coins.
    • Counted different amounts (value) and made mistakes deliberately to see whether it was noticed.
  • We role played restaurant and shop keeper and used our new knowledge of money to purchase different things.
  • We played a few online coin games too!
    • Coin games from Topmarks. This has 3 mini-games for little ones to sort, order and count. Currencies are available for British £, American $, Australian $ and Euro €.
    • British Money Interactive Matching Activity – Twinkl
    • Piggy Bank Money Counting Game – 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 our 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
• Threading butterfly key rings from Baker Ross
• Drawing, painting and creating a collage and model of our minibeasts
• Science colour experiments
  • Skittles experiment
  • shaving foam cloud
• Indoor camping
• Masking tape shape twister
• Tree climbing
• Cook pancakes
• minibeast hunt
• role play to tie in with our money learning

Check out some of the arts and craft we have done on our Instagram highlights!

Running out of activities? Why not have a go at one of these tried and tested boredom busters.

Board games

These are some of the board games we played this week:

• FlipSlide game – technically not a board game, but does have multiplayer mode. It’s a bit like an electronic fidget challenge to match the colours under pressure.
• Blokus
• Jenga
• Connect 4
• OK Play – a family strategy game, easy to learn and play.

What will we get up to next week?

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

Love MsMamaBean.

Here’s a quick link to our Home Learning Diary. What a journey it has been!

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.