Home School resources

Many thousands of parents and carers throughout the UK are now having to home school their children. Bit of a shock to the system, eh? We can feel ill-equipped to carry out tasks that we usually leave to the professionals – our teachers, teaching assistants and other educators. But – in addition to the worksheets and learning packs that schools have prepared for their pupils, both on and off line – there are lots and lots of resources online to make use of. Many are already set out into mini lesson plans, so this reduces the amount of time required for preparation.

Draw on the older generation

If your children are lucky enough to have grandparents, and those grandparents are connected to the internet, then why not get them involved? It’ll help keep the relationship with the children going and helps to reinforce that all-important sense of purpose for our older relatives – we all need to feel needed. And this is especially so during these times of temporary isolation as we all have to stay at home as much as possible.

Margaret and I are lucky enough to have an iPad and good internet connection, so our daughter has asked us to do a live half-hour video lesson for our two granddaughters twice each week. And…it’s great fun! Our favourite resource so far has been Twinkl (get a month of free access using code CVDTWINKLHELPS). Lots of ideas here: “Can Chief Inspector Sarah solve the clues and discover which naughty person has been removing Powburn’s daffodils?”; “I’m a confused frog. Can you tell me why the eggs I’ve laid don’t look like a chicken’s eggs? Is that normal?”

There are lots of different video chat apps out there. Skype has been safe and solid for years. Recently Zoom has become popular but we’ve used Google Duo.

But I don’t know if I can do it

You know what? I don’t think it matters. Really! While it would be great if every grandparent could align there incredibly slick presentations with each stage of the National Curriculum, that’s never going to happen…and it just doesn’t matter. Just have fun. Make mistakes. Giggle. Just talk.

When you look back on your childhood, do you ever think, “What a great bathroom we had!”? No. You think about the times your dad kicked a football around with you or when your mam showed you how to bake. You remember relationships, not things.

And it’s the same here. When all this is over, and we can see each other face to face again, the grandchildren won’t remember what a great, error-free maths lesson you did, they’ll remember that you did – that you just spent time with them.

Resources

The following lists of resources have kindly been distributed by Zöe Ryan, Head Teacher at Branton Community Primary School (received 29 Mar 2020).

Collections of resources from Times Educational Supplement (TES)

List from Learning and Exploring through play – 

Endless activities – art, crafts, sensory play, science, RE, maths topics and literacy –
www.learningandexploringthroughplay.com

And on Instagram –
www.instagram.com/learningthroughplay8 [WWW] Accessed 13 March 2020

A full day of activities:

9:00am – PE with Joe Wicks https://youtu.be/6v-a_dpwhro

10:00am – Maths with Carol Vorderman www.themathsfactor.com

11:00am – English with David Walliams https://www.worldofdavidwalliams.com/elevenses/ [WWW] Accessed 13 March 2020

12:00pm – Lunch (cooking with Jamie Oliver) https://youtu.be/eJLA2RlZNq4

1:00pm – Music with Myleene Klass https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQh2wgJ5tOrixYBn6jFXsXQ/

1:30pm – Dance with Darcey Bussel https://twitter.com/diversedance

2:00pm – History with Dan Snow (free for 30-days) https://tv.historyhit.com/signup/package

4:00pm – Home Economics with Theo Michaels (Mon/Wed/Fri) https://www.instagram.com/theocooks

Non-daily events include:

Science with Professor Brian Cox, Robin Ince & Guests https://cosmicshambles.com/stayathome/upcoming-schedule

9.30am Wednesday 25 March – Geography with Steve Backshall https://twitter.com/SteveBackshall

Also Chester Zoo, Dudley Zoo and Edinburgh Zoo are all doing webcams in various animal cages live every day. Chester Zoo did some amazing live videos yesterday feeding the animals and telling you lots of interesting facts. All the videos have been posted to their feed so do check them out too!