Dear Parents and Carers,

Over the last few days, we have come across lots of online resources that are available to support children’s learning at home during the unprecedented times. This list is by no means exhaustive, nor are we promoting anything in particular, but we thought we’d share some of them with you. All children have different learning styles and interests – maybe something below will click! We will also update our learning packs on the class pages as time goes on.

With very best wishes from the staff of Lickey Hills PSN.

https://www.themathsfactor.com/ THIS IS GREAT!! Carol Vordermann is offering free access to her great website for maths offering games, challenges and daily lessons to support learning. There are motivational medals to earn too… Also lots of fun times tables games at https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables . Finally – great online, live lessons and follow up activities from Gareth Metcalf at http://www.iseemaths.com/home-lessons/

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/ – Fantastic resources and games for reading, writing, spelling and maths.

Some lovely reading opportunities to share at https://www.storylineonline.net/

https://www.literacyshed.com/home.html Go to The Literacy Shed for some great ideas for story writing. The Literacy Trust have developed a fantastic portal of resources for families – go to https://literacytrust.org.uk/family-zone/ . Also there’s a list of virtual author activities at https://www.weareteachers.com/virtual-author-activities/

Joe Wicks – The Body Coach is running a daily workout, Monday – Friday at 9am. https://www.thebodycoach.com/blog/pe-with-joe-1254.html?fbclid=IwAR13SHNgsUZEGLVRZYjbFzTf8PDAJvD4I8BxOASuWkVmjSNI6fsKHP1vs40

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zhyb4wx (KS1) and https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zxsvr82 (KS2) to practise your Spanish skills

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/mar/23/10-of-the-worlds-best-virtual-museum-and-art-gallery-tours The Guardian published 10 of the World’s best virtual museum and art gallery tours – but this list is not exhaustive!! The Tate Modern, for example, will give you some ideas for really crazy art to try!!

https://kids.sandiegozoo.org/ Learn about all the animals around the world!

https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/ for geography and science ideas and fascinating facts. https://bpes.bp.com/the-emperors-new-clothes Some great science activities on BP’s website for Primary children – including this fun activity to help the Emperor find the right clothes for each season!

More science fun at https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/collections/primary-games/1

KS1 have been working really hard rehearsing for their big Christmas production and today was the premier of A Wriggly Nativity. The children have been amazing with their singing, dancing and learning their lines and we’re sure you’ll be so proud if you haven’t seen them yet – we certainly are.

(Right click and open an image in a new tab to see large version)

1KG had fun this week developing their map reading skills as they set off to find different trees around the school. Once found they needed to find out the tree’s name and sketch one of its leaves. We are lucky to have a lot of different trees at Lickey Hills!

1KG were very excited last week when members of The Cofton Village Hall Trust and Chris Newsome, Development Director at St. Modwen came into school to put our pictures of the local area into their time capsule. The capsule was later buried near to the new village hall. 

Today  in Theme Year 1 made our own Bayeux Tapestry. We enjoyed being Medieval knights and defending  the castle we made.

In Maths we have used what we have  learnt this term to make numbers in different ways. We used whole/part models, ten frames and wrote numbers in words. Some of us used pictures to make subtraction stories and we wrote addition and subtraction sentences. 

Wow! What an exciting day we had today. 

This morning on the playground we found lots of interesting clues. We found some white, sharp teeth and a large claw. There was also some green, shiny scales.  

What could it be?

It was a large egg!

Year 1 have been exploring changes that we can reverse, such as melting chocolate, and changes that we are stuck with – in this case turning bread into delicious toast. We knew that the change would result in crunchy, golden brown yumminess but, having first drawn around our slices of bread, we were surprised to find it had also shrunk!

The main conclusion was that we love any experiment that we get to eat.

A strange parcel arrived in Year One this morning to help us with our learning!

What could it be? What was inside? 

We opened it and discovered clues to help us infer what we might be learning about. 

There was a black curly wig, an old map of London, a burnt letter from Samuel Pepys  and a burnt loaf of bread.