It has been so lovely to speak to you this week. You have all been so busy. If we haven’t been able to get in touch, we will send you a message via Tapestry. If you need to get in touch, Tapestry is the quickest way to speak to us. If you are unable to access Tapestry, please email admin@archibald.newcastle.sch.uk and we will sort this out.
We hope you enjoyed our Pass the Teddy challenge. If you haven’t seen it yet we shared it on Tapestry. It was so lovely to see so many faces.
What you’ve up to
We love to see what you are up to. We are inspired by what you do and thought we would share some of the things that have impressed and inspired us this week.
Nursery 1
Why not try a marble run or cress heads? Hold a tea party for your teddies. Invite mum and dads by writing invitations. Write us a letter or make a life size version of yourself. Puzzles are a great way to learn through play.
Nursery 2
You could make Numicon biscuits (see Tapestry for the recipe) Use objects in your home to make a life cycle. Get messy making a caterpillar or just chill out in your tent.
Class 1
Get drawing like these fruit trees or a dragon. This often leads to writing. Make a drum kit or musical instruments from junk.
Class 2
Encourage your child to be the teacher. Write a menu or create a story map. Make your own dolls house from junk.
We hope that these ideas might inspire you too. Please keep sharing what you are up to on our Facebook group. It can really help when people are running out of ideas. We know that sharing ideas helps us.
This week’s activities
Below are some activities for you to try. From speaking to you this week, lots of you find the activities useful, but will pick and choose which parts work for your child. This is exactly the strategy we would encourage and we find this works in our own homes too.
Literacy
Nursery
Week 3 – Supertato!!
Task 1 : (Don’t tell them it’s Supertato just yet!) Watch the video message from Mrs Nelson – Help!! Our vegetables have gone missing. (Mrs Jones and the other teachers will post messages over the week so keep checking Tapestry)
The importance of this week’s planning is to try and spark some motivation and engagement from the children, so in school it would very much be about taking your child’s lead – now some children will get inspired and you will be able to think of many things to keep them busy, other children may spark for a little then nothing or then return to it later. Below we list some ways in which it could go and support you with suggestions, but anything goes.
- Can you make a wanted poster – for the person/character who has stolen the vegetables, for the Evil pea (if they make that connection), to find the vegetables. You could cut out pictures of vegetables and stick them on a larger piece of paper or paint/draw your own pictures and some initial letter sounds or mark making to it.
- Send a short video explaining who you think has taken the vegetables
Task 2: Watch the next teacher update and Watch the story of Supertato on Tapestry or read it at home (there are also versions read on YouTube.)– make the link between the story and the teacher’s missing vegetables.
- Can you make or paint/draw a super vegetable that can come to the rescue – send over a photograph.
Task 3: Watch another teachers video from Tapestry. Now we know it’s the Evil Pea read the letter he has sent.
- Read the letter received from the Evil Pea on Tapestry
- Can your child write a letter back? Mark making is encouraged at this stage – can they tell you what their letter says? Post on tapestry. (Leave out at home for the Evil pea to collect)
Task 4: Can you sort some vegetables in your house (or pictures of them) talk about how you have sorted them.
You could sort by colour, by size, by which ones you like or don’t like.
Play hide and seek with the vegetables – try to use positional language such as under, next to, in front of, behind to describe where the vegetables are hiding.
Task 5: Share the teacher videos about the safe return of the vegetables and the thank you’s to the children for their help.
- Can you draw yourself or a family member as a superhero – think about what your superpower would be and why. Grown ups can write on what the superpower would be.
Reception
Week 3 – Supertato!!
Task 1 : (Don’t tell them it’s Supertato just yet!) Watch the video message from Mrs Nelson – Help!! Our vegetables have gone missing. (Mrs Jones and the other teachers will post messages over the week so keep checking)
The importance of this week’s planning is to try and spark some motivation and engagement from the children, so in school it would very much be about taking your child’s lead – now some children will get inspired and you will be able to think of many things to keep them busy, other children may spark for a little then nothing or then return to it later. Below we list some ways in which it could go and support you with suggestions, but anything goes.
- Can you make a wanted poster – for the person/character who has stolen the vegetables, for the Evil pea (if they make that connection), to find the vegetables. Encourage pictures and writing where possible.
- Write to Mrs Nelson/or send a video explaining who you think has taken her vegetables
- Write some instructions to Mrs Nelson about what she can do to get her vegetables back
- Write down where she needs to look for her vegetables
Task 2: Watch the next teacher update and Watch the story of Supertato on Tapestry or read it at home (there are also versions read on YouTube.)– make the link between the story and the teacher’s missing vegetables.
- Can you write or make a video to tell Mrs Nelson/Mrs Jones it could be the Evil Pea – What can they do?
- Draw a machine that could catch him and label it
- Write a way to catch him
- Draw a picture with a sentence about how to catch him
Task 3: Watch another teachers video from Tapestry. Now we know it’s the Evil Pea read the letter he has sent.
- Read the letter received from the Evil Pea on Tapestry (encourage your child to read as much of it independently as possible)
- Can your child write a letter back? Post on tapestry. (Leave out at home for the Evil pea to collect)
Task 4: Make or draw your own super vegetable! Write a description – what can it do, what vegetable is it.
Can you make some Supertato picture and put superhero words to go with it.
Task 5: Share the teacher videos about the safe return of the vegetables and the thank you’s to the children for their help.
- If you could be a superhero what would your super power be? Collect your families and write them in a list…
- My superpower would be…
- My Mum’s superpower would be….
Other Supertato related other activities to try:
- Potato printing – cut shapes into potatoes and use them to paint with
- Count peas, match the right number of peas to a number card.
- Design and make your very own Supertato
- Make a story map of the story of Supertato using pictures – adults could draw or print some out for your child to order
- Weigh different vegetables – which is the heaviest/lightest? How do you know?
- Make paper plate Supertato and Evil Pea characters – use them to act out a story
- Grow some vegetables
- Cut off some carrot tops and see if you can make them grow
- Experiment with freezing – explore ice cubes – how do they melt? Why do they melt? How can you make something freeze? Place a small toy inside some water and freeze it then help it escape.
- And of course…make your vegetables disappear.
- There are many Supertato stories out there to share too.
Numeracy (Reception)
This half term our Maths Challenge would have been all about measures. Measuring is great to do at home so here are some activities to get you measuring. Remember to use lots of the language while you are doing the tasks as this is the most important part.
- Length- Can your child talk about objects that are longer or shorter than their hand or arm?
- Height-Can your child find things that are taller than them or shorter than them?
- Capacity-Can your child talk about containers being full, empty, half empty or overflowing? (Bath time is a great time to do this)
- Weight-Become a human balance-put an object in each hand can your child describe which object is heavier or lighter?
Extension
Can they put the objects in order from longest to shortest, heaviest to lightest, largest capacity to smallest capacity, or tallest to shortest.
Extra challenge
You could explore packets and bottles to see what the capacity or weight of items are.
Can your child use their knowledge of measures to solve problems-getting the right container to fill something larger, using the kitchen scales to measure the right amount, cutting the right amount of string or tape?
Topic
This week is all about keeping healthy. We know that lots of you are doing exercise. Have you tried Joe Wicks or Cosmic Yoga? Could you try a challenge- how many times can you catch a ball or score a goal?
What do we need to do to be healthy? Write a list or send us a video. Think of other things rather than just food e.g. Exercise, keeping clean. Why are these things important?
Come up with a new healthy work out for you and your grown-ups to enjoy e.g. 5 jumps, 3 press ups, 2 sit ups, jog to the count of 20.
Can you write it down? You could use your signs to make circuit that you do each day. This worked great in our garden.
VE Day
It is VE day on Friday. Mrs Sinclair has shared some activities and we would love to see what you do to commemorate this anniversary.
