We have all heard the news by now – we are home schoolers! Eek. For our family, schools closing has been great news. But the idea of having to home school is quite daunting. I have spent some time preparing because as of Monday, I better get cracking! We have no way of knowing how long we will have to isolate for; it could go on for months, I guess.
I am not too great with teaching but I’m pretty sure that most of us are feeling the same way. I absolutely do not have the patience for this – but it looks like I’m going to have to!
Our plan is to do a mixture of home learning (learning packs from the school as well as our own resources) and learning-through-play type activities.
There are some amazing free resources out there, so here are a few of the ones I have found:
Oxford Owl – Book Resource for ages 3-11, to help your child learn to read. 100+ free books to access!
Reading Eggs – These also do ‘Mathseeds’ which costs, however we got a free subscription from school and it’s AMAZING; definitely worth it if you can afford it.
DuoLingo – Learn a different language
Scratch – Creative Computer Programming
DK Find Out – Activities & Quizzes
The Kids Should See This – Educational Videos
Nature Detectives – Outdoor activities (may be great for in the garden)
Paw Print Badges – Challenge packs (optional extra that cost)
Cbeebies Radio – Listening activities
Twinkl – Usually a paid-for service, however they are offering a free month trial due to school closures
Toy Theater – Online games
The Artful Parent – Art activities
Now onto the bits of the day that I will actually be good at – the FUN! We will break up the day with fun activities and be spending our weekends doing not much else. Here are a few ideas that we have:
Baking
Indoor Picnic
Movie Afternoon
Build Lego
Jigsaw
Board Games
Build a City – use train & track, cars, figures etc
Play I Spy
Play Musical Statues
Play Dominoes
Make a Bingo Board and Play
Play Noughts and Crosses
Play Snap
Finger Painting
Colouring Books
Salt Dough
Make a Pretend Car out of Furniture
Make and Decorate Paper Planes
Make Bookmarks
Make Rainbow Crayons – using old, broken ones
Make a Tin Can Telephone
Draw a Family Portrait
Make Your Own Story Book
Design a T-Shirt
Hand-print Pictures – see how many different shapes or animals you can create using your hand-print.
Build a Den
Make a Time Capsule
Picky Dinners
Skype Grandparents
Camp in the Front Room
Pamper Day
Learn Days of the Week Song
Help to Make Dinner
Dress Up – Joshua loves dressing up and pretending that he’s that character, while acting out scenes from the film or story.
We’ve got this! If you have any other ideas, please share them below. I would love to hear what you have planned. We are all in this thing together, so let’s get sharing ideas 🙂
kaidenlaverty.com 
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