Play a game of quickwrite. How many digraphs and trigraphs can you write in one minute? Make sure to set yourself a timer. Practise this daily and see if you improve. You can also play this game with tricky words.
Play a game of pictionary. Adults can draw something and you have to write the word as quickly as possible on your own piece of paper. Can you guess the picture before your grown-up finishes drawing? Choose your own pictures to draw or choose from the list below;
Remember that you have the phonics basic code in the back of your reading diary if you need it to find sounds.
Literacy
Discover the life cycle of a plant by watching this short BBC Bitesize video. Discuss the cycle with your family. Do you have any plants or flowers that you can talk about? How did they start their life? What do they need to flourish and grow?
Get your maths brains warmed up with a game of Bullseye. The adult secretly writes a number between 1-10 or 1-20 on a piece of paper. The child has to guess the number. If they guess wrong, give them clues using language of more or less, higher or lower until they can narrow it down to the correct number. When they get it right turn the paper around to show them and call out “BULLSEYE.” Repeat as many times as you like. Let your child be the teacher and write a number for you to guess.
For the next two weeks we are focusing on doubling and halving in our maths learning. We touched briefly on this before the Easter holidays. The children explored dominoes as an introduction to doubles. If you have a set of dominoes at home play a game together.
As the weather is changing and it’s becoming warmer why not go on a doubles hunt in your garden or during your daily exercise. You can find many doubles in nature. Try looking for insects and carefully find the doubles in the amount of legs they have, how many wings they have, how many spots you can see on a ladybird. Talk about doubles in the home; a double bed, a pair of socks, look in the mirror at yourself and talk about the doubles you can see looking back at you. Get creative by creating your own doubles, see the pictures below for some inspiration.
Our PE focus for the next few weeks is ball skills. Look back at your home learning pack to remind yourself of some great throwing and catching activities you can do using balls or household objects. Remember to make the distance between yourself and your partner or target bigger as you get better for more of a challenge!
The Change 4 Life website has lots of Disney themed 10 minute activities including those with ball skills. Dash’s Ball skills challenge you to do as many keepy-uppys as you can or Buzz’s Superbowl challenges you to catch a ball whilst on the move!
Practise your tricky word reading with a game of tricky bug splat! Write out some tricky bugs onto pieces of paper and spread them out on the floor. Use a fly swat or spatula to splat the words as your grown up calls them out to you. How many splats can you do in 1 minute?
Play the Yes/No game. Get an adult to write down some of these sentences for you to read outloud and answer. Remember to think about your tricky bugs and use your robot arms to help you blend the words together. Refer to your basic code sheet in your reading diaries if you need reminding of the digraphs or trigraphs.
Do sheep go moo?
Do cows have horns?
Can a goat have a beard?
Can you milk a chick?
Have you ever been to a farm?
Literacy
Since Mrs Smith’s planting assembly, your seed hunt and Earth day, lots of you have been planting seeds inside and outside. Have a go at writing some instructions for how to plant a seed. Think about using time conjunctions to begin each step such as first, next, then. Remember to use your basic code sheet to help you segment each word for writing. Parents, it’s okay for words to be written with the sounds your child has learnt even if this is not the exact spelling eg. ‘water’ could be written as ‘worter’.
If you still have some more seeds and pots then have a go at setting up a science experiment. Plant the seeds in different conditions such as a dark place, cold place, no water, sand instead of soil and make predictions about what you think will happen. Observe whether this stops the seed from growing or not and discuss why this has happened.
Good Morning everybody! I hope you’ve all had a relaxing weekend. I know that I have had a lovely weekend of cooking and baking following your inspiration and the amazing recipes that I needed to try out following last week’s assembly!
In our assembly this week, I’d like to explore a word that we often talk about in our assemblies in school – Diversity. Particularly thinking about the diversity that exists within our families and how important it is to celebrate this at this time.
I know if we were in school and I was to ask you ‘What colour is a leaf?’ you would all show me that you recognise that this is a silly question to ask as leaves aren’t all the same colour! If I were to ask you ‘How do families have fun during lockdown?’, I am sure that you would tell me that not all families are the same and that everyone has fun in different ways.
So as a starting point, I’d like us to think about the beautiful things that can happen when we all work together in harmony. In school this could be the music that is created when we all sing our hearts out together, the artwork that emerges when we all share our creative talents or maybe just the friendships that form when we play exciting games with our favourite classmates.
I’ve included a few clips below which show the awe and wonder that can be created when shared talents are celebrated together, or in the case of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, when shared talents come together virtually during lockdown.
I have been thinking a lot about what it must feel like for you at home at the moment, and what I am really interested in is what you are doing to have fun in your relaxation time. In school, we are usually in classes with lots of children, all different and all with our own individual interests and passions. Sometimes we share the same interests with our friends and have fun together and sometimes we simply don’t. You now have new ‘classmates’ at home for a while and I’m sure that similar things are happening.
I know that if you were to ask my family about the best things to do in relaxation time, they would probably give you 5 very different answers as their first choice but I’d hope that they’d also tell you about how great a family walk in the countryside actually feels when your mum has convinced you that you need to see daylight, experience nature, talk and laugh!
Mrs Goldsack was telling me the other day about all of the very different things that her children are doing at home now and that one of her children has been appointed as ‘Head of Entertainment’ during lockdown. Mrs Scott and Mrs Godfrey have been using technology to ensure that they are able to read stories to their grandchildren in the evenings and Mrs Campbell has been keeping all of the grown-ups in school laughing with tales of the many new and diverse activities that she has been enjoying during her relaxation time.
So – what happens in your family when you just need to relax and sometimes have a really good giggle?
Card games, puzzles, dancing together, sharing a story together, creating art, cleaning together, learning a new skill together (such as juggling / speaking a new language), cooking, gardening, board games, camping in the garden … ?
This week I would really love to hear about all the ways that you are learning to have fun with your new classmates and how you are celebrating all the diverse interests and passions that exist within your own homes. I think the final clip below is a beautiful illustration of what is happening in our homes at this point in time and I am sure that you will be able to explain to your grown ups how we celebrate the many diverse butterflies that emerge throughout our lives at Damers.
So – let’s get playing together this week Team Damers. I am excited to hear from you again and to see all the fun activities that you get up to with your new classmates (your grown-up will help you to share pictures and stories with me). I will reply to any messages that come in and I will share all the highlights in our Celebration Assembly on Friday.
I also can’t wait for the day when your unique, much loved giggles and diverse interests and passions are filling the playgrounds and corridors of Damers again!
I feel privileged that you and your families have opened the doors of your homes and your incredibly warm (in every sense of the word) kitchens to me this week. It has been wonderful to hear about …
Meal times becoming an increasingly precious part of your days now
Recipes that have been shared with you by family members and special friends
Traditional dishes that help you and your family to celebrate religious festivals such as Eid
Favourite foods that bring back happy childhood memories
How the smell of ingredients can take you straight back to a holiday in a special place
Your efforts to plant more bee-friendly plants to help with the growing of food
How to make a dish even more relevant with a few ‘rainbow’ ingredients
Your treasured newly-introduced ‘Homemade Pizza and Movie’ nights
Siblings enjoying each other’s cooking more than their mum’s (and babies not throwing it on the floor!) and being inspired by big brother’s baking skills
Your experiences of baking alongside granny via Skype
Favourite recipes from around the world
Experimenting with new recipes following ‘Mystery’ food deliveries
How good locally-sourced food tastes – particularly when it’s the delicious rhubarb from your own garden
Food inspired by heroes such as Mary Berry … and Joe Wicks (can he bake as well?!)
Harvesting home-grown lettuces
Reading novels to vegetable plants to help them grow
Innovative ways to get around the current flour shortages
Baking bread for the first magical time
How a Yorkshire Pudding and gravy should be eaten as a meal in its own right
And how it feels to celebrate Nana and Pop’s 50th Wedding Anniversary without them, but whilst sharing and celebrating a favourite family dish that reminds you of your wonderful childhood (Happy Anniversary Nana and Pops from all at Damers!)
You have made my week once again, allowing me a beautiful insight into our community and our shared love of cooking, alongside all your regular growing and life updates too. Thank you!
Miss Barnes is very kindly collating all of your wonderful recipes into one document and we will share this with you once complete but for now, time for a hearty Damers feast …
And finally, this week’s story involving a magic paintbrush and a very special celebration …
https://youtu.be/q7WvO76oWwA
Happy Birthday Damers!
Enjoy your weekend, keeeeeeeeeeep cooking … and don’t forget that main ingredient that makes it taste even better … ❤
Try some lovely ladybird or butterfly art linked to our doubles math learning. Look at the spots on a ladybird, what do you notice? Explore symmetry when looking at the wings of a butterfly.
Create your own beautiful drawing or painting or sketch of a ladybird or butterfly. Take your time and be careful to make sure that the wings are exactly the same. You could draw your own or if you have paint you could explore painting half of the insect and then fold the painting over and print on the other side of your paper. Use some old potatoes to print a ladybird shape and then add spots. Make sure the spots create an even number.
Play a version of the 90’s game show. Prepare number cards to 10, making sure all your numbers are formed correctly and then shuffle them up and place them face down in a line. Turn over a card, read the number and then try to guess if the next card will be higher or lower based on the card you’ve just turned over. Turn over the next card to see if you were right. Remember that, although this is a guessing game, you need to think about the cards – the higher the number the more likely it is that the next card will be lower and visa versa. Play until all the cards are gone. Repeat, shuffling the cards for a new game or challenging somebody else to play in your home or over video call. Encourage children to use ‘more’ and ‘less’ language.
Bingo!
Reuse your 1-10 number cards to play a game of bingo! First, you will need to also create number cards 11-20 (or 30) to extend your quick number recognition. Next, shuffle up all the cards and place them in a pile, face down. Then, create some muddled up bingo grids ready to cross off or cover up the number called out. Grab a pen or counters and you are ready to play. First person to cross out a line of numbers shouts BINGO!
Earth Day is celebrating its 50th anniversary today. It is a global event that happens every year where more than 1 billion people take part in what is the largest civic-focused day of action in the world. Usually, people march, sign petitions, meet with their elected officials, plant trees, clean up their towns and roads. Environment Organisations and governments use it to make pledges and announce sustainability measures.
The theme this year is Climate Action. Earth Day is running a Climate Action Challenge which you might like to get involved with at home. https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-challenge/
We would like you to take part in this day if you can. You may want to link it with Mrs Smith’s assembly task this week to make it even more relevant.
You could:
Plant a vegetable from seed
Reuse an item like newspaper, carton or toilet roll tube to make a plant pot or maybe upcycle something in your house giving it a new life as a plant container
Reduce your food waste
Create a healthy snack
Make a meal from locally sourced food
Try a plant based meal for lunch or dinner if you’ve never tried one
Make your own wormery
Make a bug hotel or a bird box using recycled items that could be found around the home
Sow wildflower seeds to create a habitat for bees and insects
Make a pledge linked with protecting our environment
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair, Refuse, Rethink!
You might have your own ideas about what you could do on this day. Please send photos with a short explanation of what you did along with any environmental pledges to earthday@damers.dorset.sch.uk by Friday.
Finally, you could watch Jane Goodall: “The Hope” documentary on Wednesday 22nd April at 8pm on National Geographic and Nat Geo WILD.
Have a great Earth Day, we look forward to seeing what you got up to.
Maths:
Whilst thinking about Earth day and Mrs Smith’s cooking themed assembly this week, why not include some maths learning.
Counting – carefully count out how many seeds you have at home, how many recycled items you have found for a bug hotel or how many different types of ingredients you have for your cooking.
Weighing – use scales to weigh out your ingredients for your cooking. Have a go at reading the numbers on the scales. Compare which food items are heavier and order them from heaviest to lightest.
Shapes – what 2D and 3D shapes can you spot in your recycled items for the bug hotel? Are there any shapes in the food you use for your cooking or the kitchen items you use?
It is really important that you keep reading and writing those tricky words. To help with this you could try this spooky look, cover, write, check game. There isn’t a foundation stage option but the year 1 words are words that you will know.
This week have a go at reading and writing some silly sentences. Grown ups if you write one word at a time allowing children to read slowly and carefully. Choose sentences to suit your child or use ones below. Encourage your child to have a go at writing their own one for you to read too.
A fox can sleep in a box.
The sun is wet.
A chimp can hang on a chair.
We go to bed at lunch time.
A cow can bark.
The pot can sing.
Segmenting to spell – hide the bear!
Why not try to write the different areas of your home.
Grown ups can use one of your stuffed toys and hide it around a room in your house while you shut eyes. Open your eyes and find your toy, write down where it is or something that it is near! Places that your toy could be hidden are chair, stool, books, bed, lamp, picture, desk, freezer (as an extension use positional language – on top of the bed, under the stool, next to the books) Keep moving the toy around.
Today is PE day!
We hope you have been enjoying joining in with Joe Wicks or the Comic Yoga PE sessions. To mix things up a little you could always try a few of the following dances from Just Dance on YouTube!
We hope that you all had a lovely Spring Break and were able to enjoy some of the good weather. We are still missing all of you and hope that we can all see each other again soon.
During the Summer term we will offer some home learning suggestions based on farming, growing and animals, this should fit nicely with the assemblies that we had just before the spring break too. We will be learning about plant life cycles and where our food comes from, typical farm animals and the names of their young. For our maths learning we will be exploring pattern, shape and doubles.
Let’s kick off our new topic with this wonderful story by Eric Carle called ‘The Tiny Seed’. If you have a copy of this at home please read it today, if not please watch it here.
Today we would love you to be seed investigators. Why not take a pad and pen with you on a walk and try to find as many things as you can that have grown from a seed. You or your grown up could write the names of the things that you find down or draw some pictures.
You could also take a look at the food you have in your house to see which foods have seeds in them or which foods may have grown on a plant or tree from a seed.
Happy seed hunting friends!
Don’t forget to check back daily for more learning ideas. We would love to hear what you have been up to so comment on the blog or post a picture on EExAT. 🙂
