Summer Learning Activities | Home Learning | Learning at Home | Summer Activities | KS1 | KS2

Welcome to Learning More. Today we have decided to go live because it's the summer holidays and I'm sure there's lots of parents out there that are looking for little fun activities that they can do with their children that aren't too difficult to organise and don't cost a lot of money because I know when you've got a family and same I've got three children and it can get very very costly taking them out everywhere. I do believe as well that you know really over the summer children should be doing something a little bit educational and fun at the same time just to keep their hand in so when they go back in September they're not too stressed out about having to get back into routine. So I'm just going to talk about two little activities that are loads of fun and only really require a piece of paper and maybe five minutes of preparation. So the first one is little draw a stories or tell a story. Now I've done this very very low level it just depends on your child's ability, your child's age and what concepts you want to look at but I have just thought about addition and subtraction. Now really I would actually get my child to draw these but just for the purpose of the video I have done it and prepared it and it's basically using little drawings to tell a little story, a mathematical story and then to actually work out the answer through drawing as well. So on this one I've got some little ladybirds. My drawing skills aren't absolutely amazing so I like to draw things that are easy. So I've got four little ladybirds and I would be getting my child to tell me a story about those ladybirds and I would maybe do an example first so I might say right well there are four little ladybirds and they're all having a lovely time together and they're all in the park playing but then one spots a leaf and they decide they're going to run over to the leaf and they're going to have some of that nice juicy leaf and leave their friends behind. How many friends are left behind? And the child can actually cross out the ladybird, draw a little ladybird on the leaf and really think about the story. The one below is I've got some sweets on here and again you can get your child to colour it, you can get your child to enjoy whatever they are really interested in. If they're interested in Pokemon get them to draw Pokemon and I would be asking them to tell me a story. So I would be saying that you've got five sweets here and you've got a mouth and the mouth says yum what do you think might happen? So you might say I've got five sweets, I've got two more in my mouth, how many sweets do I have all together? Or I've got five sweets, I eat two, how many sweets have I got left? And allow them to make up their own stories. From this I would then progress on to using a whiteboard and again just a clean whiteboard, nothing too special or too expensive. This one's actually a really little flimsy and card one and get them to actually make up their own little stories for you, for their brothers and sisters, for friends and it's just a really fun activity that's quite visual, really helps them with the counting and actually helps them to just really have a fun time without being too maths heavy and actually getting them to answer loads of questions and doing calculations. Now my second activity is a really favourite one in our house and this one you can be as creative as you like. It's called roll and spell and it's really really good for those tricky words that maybe your children are getting stuck on and especially when if they're looking at phonics and there are those tricky words, words like was and that don't follow an actual pattern, words like saw that maybe don't follow a phonetic pattern and that your child really does need to learn but are finding quite difficult. So basically what this is is you just need a piece of paper and a dice and you can make up the rules as you go along. So I've made up some rules here, so basically the idea is if they roll a one they have to write the word backwards, if they roll a two they have to write the word in rainbow colours, if they roll a three they have to write the word upside down which causes loads of laughter and fun in our house. Number four how many times can you write the word in 30 seconds which always ends up in a big competition between us all. Number five write the word with your opposite hand so if you're right-handed write it with your left hand and number six write the word with your eyes closed and again you can be as creative as you like with these and it's just a really good way of exploring those tricky words that children find difficult without actually having to ask them just to practice spelling it so very simple. The beauty of this is once you've made it you can keep it and it doesn't matter what the word is, even laminate it or you can keep changing the rules and allow the children to actually make the rules. So I know in our house we've had funny ones like if you roll number one you have to run around the house while spelling the word, you run around the garden, jump on the trampoline and say a letter each time you jump. They are really creative when they come to it so basically you roll the dice. Number two okay I have to write the word in rainbow colours, you can even do it on a whiteboard or a piece of paper and just another really fun activity to get your child really thinking about those trickier words in a fun and interactive way. I hope you've enjoyed these ideas, not too time-consuming and not too taxing and if you do want to leave any comments do leave it in the comments below or send me a message and I can get back to you if you've any questions and do check out learningmo.com or the YouTube channel because there's loads of ideas on there and you'll see my two superstars featured, Aaron and James, they often are in the videos as well so it's just good to see those ideas in context but enjoy your summer and have fun learning together.