Now don’t get too upset everyone but no daily home learning tasks will be set during the Easter holiday!
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t keep busy, have fun and learn at the same time. Below are some ideas and suggestions for making the most of your Easter holiday. Also included are some links to important information from Dorset Council so be sure to scroll down for those even if you don’t read all the learning ideas straight away.
Writing
Write a story! It could be about someone who is stuck at home for a long time(!) but one day something amazing happens. They might discover a way to enter another ‘world’ (a bit like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) or perhaps they can see across to another house and they start to notice strange/interesting/funny/scary things going on in their neighbour’s house! Your story could be about anything of course and it will need to be illustrated too!
Write and perform (perhaps even film) a play. This could be an entirely original idea or your play could be based on a book you’ve read. You’ll need to make sure you set out your playscript properly and think very carefully about how easy/difficult it will be to perform. Perhaps you could use puppets of some sort to perform your play – in which case you’ll need to design and make a theatre, possibly using a cardboard box. Of course you’ll need to design scenery too, a poster to advertise your play and a programme to sell to the audience when they arrive at the theatre!
Maths
Why not design and make a maths board game? You could base your game on an established favourite such as Monopoly. Your game could include question/answer cards and you could earn points/’money’ by answering the questions correctly. Your board game will need to be produced to a very high standard. The board will need to be durable and visually appealing. You’ll need a range of questions to make the game accessible to your whole family and ‘devices’ to keep it interesting: some of the questions might be for everyone to answer, some for only one player. Can you think of an interesting way to decide how players move their pieces? Dice are okay but perhaps there’s a more original way? A spinner? Tossing a coin or coins? Picking a card?
Don’t forget to keep working on your multiplication tables at TTRockstars and remember there are loads of fun maths games online at sites such as mathplayground. Perhaps you could record your scores and even present them using line graphs.
What about thinking up a maths investigation of some sort. Remember Mr Prior’s assembly about probability and dice rolling? You could investigate how likely you are to roll different numbers using 2,3 or even 4 dice. This might even lead you to invent a dice game of some sort.
Perhaps you could investigate Napier’s Bones. Click on the link below and have a go at creating and using a calculator hundreds of years old. When you’ve used Napier’s Bones, can you explain how they work?
https://www.learn-with-math-games.com/napiers-bones.html
What about trying out some maths magic? Follow this link to a trick that amazed me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7rRi0EUHiM
What amazed me most about this trick wasn’t the final answer but that the four numbers the narrator said I could have picked were the exact four numbers I did pick! Let me know if that happens to you too.
Projects
The Easter holiday is an ideal time to crack on with the projects you started to plan before school closed. I mentioned the projects in Tuesday’s blog and you could incorporate some of the ideas above/below into your projects to make them as entertaining as possible for your target audience. Of course, once you’ve finished reading this blog post you may well have 101 new ideas for projects you’d like to create. I would love to produce a project all about fountain pens or typewriters! What could be more exciting than those ideas?!
Reading
Don’t forget to keep reading as much as you can and if possible keep taking those quizzes. Lexia is always a great way to liven up a dull afternoon too!
Why not write a book review for each book you read or design a new cover?
You could pretend that you are a Hollywood producer who wants to turn a book into a blockbuster movie. Who would you cast in the main roles? Design a movie poster to promote the film.
Remember the ‘Book in a Box’ competition we ran a couple of years ago in school? You could create a scene from a book you’ve read and present it inside a shoe box or something similar. Something could pop up when the box is opened and pictures of characters, important objects and quotes from the book could all be incorporated.
You could design and make a game based on a book. What about creating a Top Trumps game full of characters from the books you have read?
Map a book you have read. Become a cartographer and create a map to represent the locations/action in a book. We created sketch maps for Wolf Hollow remember? Your maps could be much more detailed and, if you draw them carefully, something worth displaying on your bedroom wall! You’ll need a set of symbols and a key to make reading your map easy and you’ll need to decide what you want to show on your map: if physical terrain is an important aspect in a book you might want to include things such as contour lines.
I don’t know about you but I’m worn out just thinking about all of these ideas. You’re going to need a holiday to recover from your Easter holiday at this rate! Go for it! And of course I’d love to receive photographs of some of your fantastic creations.
Dorset Council resources
There’s lots of information on the Dorset Council website, this includes contact information and ideas for things to do, including for children at home. Here are some of the links:
Online resources for families
https://mailchi.mp/dorsetcouncil/online-resources
Schools and families:
Information and landing page:
Co-ordinated Community Response: Information about our co-ordinated community response is available online here:
Below are still more links that will keep you busy:
White Rose Maths – Home Learning with guides for parents if they want to keep going with maths but not follow MNP – there’s a Maths Party every day at 10
https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/
Cornerstones Love to Read Guides
Free access to Cornerstones’ Love to Read resources for home learning
Cornerstones Home Learning Challenges
10 Big Ideas – FREE home learning challenges for children and families
Newsround
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround
Joe Wicks Daily workout
https://www.thebodycoach.com/blog/pe-with-joe-1254.html