"Use your God-given gifts to serve others." 1 Peter 4: 10
The project this week aims to provide opportunities for your child to learn more about the world’s rainforests. Learning may focus on the plants, animals and insects that inhabit the rainforest, food that originates there and weather patterns. It could look at plants and animals that can be found in the garden too.
Activities that can be done throughout the week |
Use the template to make some Rainforest animals.
Click on the link below to get a template, to help you make some rainforest animals.
https://www.3dgeography.co.uk/3d-model-animals
Which Animals Live in the Rainforest?
Draw a Picture of a Rainforest Animal on the Computer
Explore with magnifying glasses
Play the Animal Jungle Quiz
Make a mask Ask your child to create a rainforest animal mask then talk about the sounds that different animals make. CHALLENGE: Can they write a sentence to describe the animal e.g. I like the monkey. He is cheeky. He jumps in the trees.
Make a Collage of a Rainforest Animal
Make an Animal Home
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Weekly Phonics Tasks – alliteration focus |
Monday- Think of words to describe the rainforest animals - each word should start with the same letter i.e. mad, munching monkey or large, loving lion. |
Tuesday- Mirror play (see 2.05 on this video) - Provide a mirror for each child or one large enough for the group to gather in front of. Play at making faces and copying movements of the lips and tongue. Introduce sound making in the mirror and discuss the way lips move, for example, when sounding out ‘p’ and ‘b’, the way that tongues poke out for ‘th’, the way teeth and lips touch for ‘f’ and the way lips shape the sounds ‘sh’ and ‘m’. |
Wednesday- Digging for treasure - Collect two sets of objects suitable for use in the sand tray (or to be hidden around the home/ garden). Each set of objects must have names beginning with the same initial sound. Choose initial sounds for each set that sound very different from one another. Bury the objects in preparation for the session. As the children uncover the treasure, group the objects by initial sound and each time another is added recite the content of that set: Wow! You’ve found a car. Now we have a cup, a cow, a candle and a car |
Thursday- Play ‘I Spy in the Rainforest’. ‘I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with t’. |
Friday- Made up animals Preparation - Think up some strange names for made up animals, creatures or aliens) – the names must be strings of non-words with the same initial sound e.g. Ping pang poo pop or Mig mog mully mo.
Talk to the children about the names you have made up and help them to imagine what the strange creatures might look like. · Provide creative or construction materials for the children to make their own made up rainforest creature (or alien). · Comment as the children go about shaping the creature and use the creature’s strange names. Invite the children to display their creature(s) along with the name. · Make the pattern clearer by emphasising the initial sound of an alien’s name (e.g Fo fi fandle fee). Draw the children’s attention to the way you start each word with the shape of your lips, teeth and tongue. |
Letter sounds lessons: |
Weekly Reading Tasks |
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Monday- Watch Go Jetters: Amazon Rainforest. Can your child tell you where the tree frog was found? What sound did it make? Which rainforest insect steals the picnic? What happens when the tree frogs aren’t there to eat the ants? |
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Tuesday- Help your child to look through cookery books for a recipe involving cocoa/chocolate. If you have the ingredients, make the sweet treat! |
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Wednesday- Ask your child to use pictures from a familiar story book to make up their own story or to retell their favourite story. |
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Thursday- Enjoy listening to online stories together including: Slowly, Slowly, Slowly Said the Sloth and The Tiger Who Came To Tea. |
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Friday- Sing Nursery Rhymes together. If you are looking for some new rhymes please take a look at the Nursery Rhymes section on the website. Miss Ibbetson singing Incy Wincy Spider was one of our favourite moments this week. She even made her own spider and sunshine!
Research has shown that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they're four years old, they're usually among the best readers by the time they're eight. |
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Weekly Writing Tasks We will have added gross and fine motor activities as these are essential activities for developing the strength and brain connections for future writing. |
Monday- Gross motor development Throw a dice and get the children to do different rainforest animal action for each number. E. g 1 – Swing like a monkey 2 – March like an ant 3 – Fly like a bird 4 – Chomp your arms like a piranha 5 – Jump like a frog 6 – Creep like a jaguar
CHALLENGE: Make up different moves based on the rainforest. |
Tuesday- Fine motor development – Use scissors to cut leaves and flowers. If you want to take this further, you could use them to make a rainforest collage.
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Wednesday-
Fine motor development – Make your own snake out of household items e.g. pipe cleaners (or string or spaghetti), pompoms, and buttons (or cheerios).
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Draw/ paint- Talk about the rainforest with your child and ask: What can you see? What can you hear? Ask your child to draw/paint a picture of the rainforest and say a sentence about what they can see or hear. You could model labelling the picture and see if they will copy you. |
Thursday- Say or draw a list of all the animals you would find in the rainforest. You might model some of the simpler animals names and see if you child would like to write the words too. CHALLENGE: Can your child think of an animal for each letter of the alphabet e.g. a=alligator, b=bird. Watch our animal alphabet challenge. There is a second video just for drawing a cats. |
Friday- Using the story The Tiger Who Came To Tea, draw a picture of the tiger and label the picture using words to describe him e.g. stripy fur, sharp teeth. Here’s one way to draw a tiger. You could get your child to animate their drawings like Miss Benton did using the Chatterpix app.
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Tip for developing handwriting skills: Do lots of gross motor/ postural activities e.g.…
More activities and ideas for supporting your child’s pre-writing skills. |
Weekly Maths Tasks- Number Recognition and Counting |
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Monday- CHALLENGE 1: Sing a counting song together. CHALLENGE 2: Get your child to count out objects up to 3, 5, 10, or 20. This could be by touching each object or passing each object. I also love counting steps and stairs. CHALENGE 3: Get your child to count objects then you could make marks (e.g. lines or circles) to represent each object. Encourage your child to do the same (if they don’t want to don’t worry, you showing them means they will do eventually). CHALLENGE 4: Write down a numeral for numbers up to 5 or 10 (or maybe 20). See if your child can recognise it and count the same number of objects. Ask your child what other numbers you could write down (they may or may not also want to write the numeral for the next go).
If your child is starting to become interested in writing numerals, they could do this in chalk in the garden, using felt tips, crayons or anything that will engage your child. To support their fine motor skills think about using bigger tools (such as chubbie felt tips).
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Tuesday- Get your child can practise making amounts to 5 or 10 using different objects from the garden or home e.g. leaves. Or, make a tens frame to practise making different amounts.
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Wednesday- Play this Ladybird Spots-Counting, Matching and Ordering Game. You can tailor the difficulty to your child’s level.
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Thursday- Make a garden/ home trail using arrows made from sticks. Ask your child to follow the trail and identify the direction. This could be done on your walk.
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Friday- Use a teddy and count forwards (e.g. 0,1,2,3) and backwards (5,4,3) making deliberate mistakes. Can your child spot the mistakes? Mistakes can include omitted numbers, repeated numbers or a number in the wrong place. CHALLENGE: Ask your child to spot the mistake when the numbers are written down. |
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STEM Learning Opportunities #sciencefromhome |
Rainforest Materials
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Additional learning resources you may wish to engage with |
White Rose Maths online maths lessons. Watch a lesson video and complete the worksheet (can be downloaded and completed digitally). Numbots. Please ask your key worker about your child’s login. Talk for Writing Home-school Booklets are an excellent resource to support your child’s speaking and listening, reading and writing skills. |