Learning Project - to be done throughout the week

STEM Learning Opportunities ​#sciencefromhome

Lonnie Johnson

• 31 years ago Lonnie Johnson, an aerospace engineer for NASA, invented the super soaker. Can you invent a game or toy that you can use with water?

Rose Mitchtom and Margarette Steife

●    Over 120 years ago two women came up with the idea to make a teddy bear. Collect all your teddy bears. Are they all the same?  What do you think makes a good teddy bear? If you were going to invent a new teddy bear what would it look like?

Banu Musa brothers

• Over 1000 years ago, the Banu Musa brothers invented early robots and lots of other ingenious inventions. Have you got any robotic toys in your house? How do you make them work? If you were going to invent a robot, what would it do?

Weekly Reading Tasks

Monday- Ask your child to think about their favourite books and read one of them​ together. Find out about the famous authors and encourage your child to think about why they like these books?

Tuesday- ​Read stories written by the famous author, Julia Donaldson. You can also listen to them if you click on the following links: ​Room on the Broom​ / ​Gruffalo​.  

Wednesday- Ask your child to draw pictures showing what happened at the​ beginning, middle and the end of Room on the Broom or The Gruffalo.

Thursday- Ask your child questions about the books that you have shared- Who​  are the main characters? How are the characters feeling? Who is your favourite character? Why? What did you like/dislike about this story? 

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

Weekly Phonics Tasks

1. Voice sounds is part of the Department for Education’s Letters and Sounds programme which supports speaking and listening skills to support the children with the future reading skills.
2. We also recommend doing Read Write Inc Set 1 sounds

sessions (if your child is ready). Please take a look at our Read Write Inc Phonics page if you’d like to find our more.

We think Mr Thorne’s alphabet series is a fun way to introduce letter sounds (phonemes) too.

Monday-  (voice sounds) Mouth Movements Explore different mouth movements with children – blowing, sucking, tongue stretching and wiggling. Practising these movements regularly to music can be fun and helps children with their articulation. See from 6.20 on the video.

Tuesday- ​ (voice sounds)Sound Effects Ask your child to use their voice to create sounds effects. Can they make the ‘tick tock’ sound of the clock or the ‘weeeee’ sound they make when the slide down a slide.

CHALLENGE: Ask your child to look for / listen to objects around the house or in books and see if they can make the sounds effects for them.

You could talk about the volume of the noises.

Here is an example of the Sound Effects activity (0- 6.20 minutes).

Wednesday- (voice sounds)Target sounds Give your child a target sound to put into a story when they hear a particular word or character (e.g. make a ‘ch’ sound when they hear the word ‘train’). Start with a single sound that they can make when they hear a target word. Be prepared to prompt initially and leave pauses in your reading to make it obvious where the sounds are required.

​(Letter sounds) Online: Play ​Viking Full Circle​ - Click on the Phase 2 sounds. Listen carefully to the word and have a go at choosing the correct letters to make the word. 

Thursday- (voice sounds) Making trumpets Make amplifiers (trumpet shapes) from simple cones of paper or lightweight card and experiment by making different noises through the cones. Model sounds for your child: the up and down wail of a siren, the honk of a fog horn, a peep, peep, peep of a bird. Contrast loud and soft sounds. Invite the children to share their favourite sound with you. Use the trumpets to sound out phoneme that begins your child’s name (e.g S S S for Salahuddin).

Letter sounds - Offline: Sound Sprint​  - Make some sound cards (you could use paper). Place​     and spread them out across the floor. Ask your child to run and stand on the sound you call out. Say simple words as a challenge e.g. f-o-x. 

Friday- (Letter sounds) Choose a letter of the alphabet. How many famous people or book​ characters can your child think of that start with this letter? 

Weekly Maths Tasks- Adding (where different challenges are given, please choose the challenge that best suits your child’s needs)

Monday- ​Practice counting on from any given number. Try to create rhythmic patterns: 1,2  3,4​,  5,6     or    2​,3,4,   5,6,7   8,9,10. ​

ONLINE CHALLENGE: Play this online​ adding machine game, ​add up the animals and objects.

SINGING CHALLENGE: Sing number songs such as Up to the heavens and 1,2,3,4.5 once I caught a fish alive.

Tuesday- ​Ask your child to make 10 using different objects from around the house/garden e.g. dry pasta.

OFFLINE Challenge: Can your child add up 2 sets of objects e.g. What do 1 and 1 make altogether?

Wednesday- ​

COUNTING CHALLENGE: Count hops, jumps, bounces of a ball etc

ADDING CHALLENGE: Choose 2 numbers (under 5). Show your child how to add them together using your fingers.  

ONLINE CHALLENGE: Watch ​Numberblocks​ (clip 1) to support with adding. You can also click on ​clip 2​ or  clip 3​  .  

Thursday-  ADDING CHALLENGE: Generate your own addition number stories: First, there are 3 people​           on the bus. Then, 2 more people get on the bus. How many people are on the bus? Now there are 5 people on the bus.

Using toys to represent the numbers really helps. This fits with the CPA (concrete, pictoral, abstract methods that the children will be taught in school – essentially use real things to count with so that the children understand numbers really well).

Friday - Make a pretend shop using items from the kitchen cupboard. Ask​ your child to pretend to be the shopkeeper and do different things such as sell the food, sort it into groups such as types of food, sizes, weights etc. 

Weekly Literacy Tasks 

Gross motor, fine motor, and speaking and listening skills are very important aspects of literacy.

Monday- ​ Watch/ read ‘The Gruffalo’ .
Gross Motor Activity –  Do some big movement for each of the creatures. For example do a Gruffalo Stomp or a Snake slither.

Speaking/ Writing activity: Ask your child to draw a picture of their favourite character. Can they say words/ phrases/ sentences to describe their character, i.e. ‘furry’, ‘knobbly knees’ and ‘The Gruffalo has black teeth’. You could write some of their descriptions around their picture. If your child wants to, the might do their own labels too.

You might use felt tips or crayons on paper or chalks on the pavement to create the picture. 

Tuesday-  Fine motor activity: Collect some grass, flowers, stones etc (household items woould work too). Put them in a bowl and mix them into a Gruffalo soup with a big spoon.

Speaking activity: Can your child decribe the soup. If they struggle, model describing the soup so they can copy you.

Wednesday- ​ Watch/ read Super Worm
Gross motor activity: Super worm balancing Get 2 scarves and put them on the floor like wiggly worm. Can your child walk, jump, hop along it. They might show you other ways of moving along and over it.

Writing activity: Your child could practise making marks, Super Worm characters or letters in fun ways e.g with their finger in shampoo or with a wet sponge on the pavement​.  

Thursday- Gross motor activity: Superworm toss – Collect
* some hoop type objectse.g. plastic bracelets, empty sticky tape rolls
* kitchen roll holder or stick
* scarf – Superworm
Stand inside Superworm (the scarf) and toss the hoops over the kitchen roll holder or stick.

Writing / fine motor activity: You and your child could draw wiggly lines and swirls for worms. Then get your child to cover the lines with available objects e.g buttons, bottle tops, pom poms or pebbles.

Friday- Gross motor activity – Talk about how Superworm can turn himself into different things like the lassoo. Can your child use scarves, ribbons, or ribbons on a stick to make the different shapes.

Writing/ speaking activity - Ask your child to think about and draw someone who is very important to​ them. Can your child say a sentence describing why this person is​ so important.