‘Back to school’ after the Easter Holidays today, such as it is. We’ve been working our way through the various tasks set by school this week. For the little boys that means uploading their work via the See Saw App, and for the older children, via the online system they use to send their work to their teachers.
Using helpful props
The definition of madness is apparently doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Given that the ‘let’s sit down and do this maths work’ was not going down too well this week, we changed things up a bit and started using some fun times tables gloves.
These are called COGS. So how do they work? Essentially the idea is that children reduce the time taken by weeks to days to learn their times tables by counting the numbers on the gloves, using their cognitive skills (COGS).
I’m so impressed with these. I love the concept and it’s quite possible this is a breakthrough in learning times tables at speed. These are ideal for home schooling!
We’ve also been using some wonderful books from QuartoKids. These have been designed to help children and parents cope with the fresh challenge of learning at home.
We absolutely love the Atlas of Adventures: Wonders of the World. The illustrations are incredible and it makes learning about the world totally fascinating, like Stonehenge pictured above. This is a great book for supporting learning on so many levels, including: geography; history; reading and comprehension.
QuartoKids also have an incredible lift the flap book for learning about the human body, suitable for both young children and teens, as the book can be used on multiple levels. Again, the illustrations are wonderful, which I always thinks aids learning.
Lift the flaps to find the answers to common questions, such as, ‘What do I need to stay healthy?’, ‘How often does my heart beat?’ and ‘Why do I have hairs up my nose?’ With 100 questions and 70 flaps to lift, Life on Earth: Human Body provides the perfect way to keep engaged while learning.
Busy in the kitchen
We discovered that National Dinosaur Day took place this week, so we decided to make a cake to celebrate. We made it as a basic Victoria Sponge recipe and then made one side green and one side yellow, before finishing with jelly tots and a plastic dinosaur from the toy box of course!
Busy in the garden
After finding some old tyres on a walk recently, we’ve been spray painting them to recycle in the garden. The children love doing things like this. We use them as obstacles in assault courses and we are planning to plant some flowers in them too.
Getting creative
We’ve done lots of craft activities this week, the children always enjoy getting the glue out and coming up with colourful creations. We’ve done some jungle collages this week.
What have you been up to?
