Four tips for a smooth home learning routine from the Education Endowment Foundation

Everyone is adapting to an unusual situation and some parents are feeling the pressure to replicate school behaviour systems. When supporting your child’s behaviour, and their social and emotional needs, there are a few key principles that should help:

• Find your new routines. Consistent routines are important for behaviour in school and our routines at home have changed significantly. Routines support behaviour and you will be finding a new rhythm for your family. You could share this video with your child. Talk to them to help them plan their new routines.
• Look for the positives. Because you need to be on the ball when things go wrong, it is easy to focus only on the unwanted behaviours and spend time addressing those with our children. If we can also catch them doing things right and praise this behaviour, we’re likely to get more of it. Could your daily routines include activities where your child is likely to make you proud?
• Model the coping techniques you are using. Children are still learning to self-regulate their emotions and behaviours. It’s likely that we will also face new challenges during this period: finding a new workspace, managing anxiety, being productive under new circumstances. Talk to your child about the struggles you face and how you are addressing them – and don’t be afraid to be open about getting it wrong and trying a different strategy. Encourage your children to explain the approaches they are trying too.
• Remember, there are no shortcuts.The most important principle for teachers in managing behaviour is to get to know and understand each pupil individually. This is good news! You already know your child. Speak to your child and trust your judgement about what works for them above any generic advice.

With all this fabulous sunshine and dry weather, let’s take the learning outdoors! Below you will find some suggested outdoor activities and websites where you will find lots of ideas, video clips and tips about how to get the most out of our gardens and green spaces.

https://www.edenproject.com/learn/for-everyone

outdoorclassroomday.org.uk

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swoops-balance-towers

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The Royal Bank of Scotland have created free, fun, interactive learning activities and games around the topic of money for age 5-18yrs. There are live interactive money lessons and activitites which focus on saving/budgeting, cost and understanding payment. Use the link below to access all activities.

https://rbs.mymoneysense.com/parents/

With all this fantastic use of online materials and resources, it’s important now more than ever that we discuss online safety with our children. Miss Farooq has been gathering some ideas of how we can do this and we will post up activities over the coming weeks for you to do with your children. I have attached an activity for P1-3 and P4-7 to get started.

Online Safety Activity P1-P3pdf

Online Safety P4-P7

Last Thursday p6 went to the science centre it was very fun. As soon as we got to the science centre a leader came and told us the rules on the bus when we were in the science centre we put or jackets and bags in a big box.

Next we went upstairs to the 1^st  floor and Miss Lynch told us that we had 10 minutes to look around the 1^st floor after 10 minutes was up Miss Lynch called us back to group together .

After that we went to play with all the activates on the 1^st floor here are some of them. The tilted room,  upside down room, money trick, invisible harp, beach ball with a air blower it was very fun.

Then we went up the stairs to the 2^nd floor and some of the activities are mind game, water activities, dance room, racing car.

Overall we had an amazing trip and would highly recommend the science centre for people of all ages!

By the Space Pandas

Recently, a comic book author called Paul Bristow came into the school and told as all about creating comics and how he created his own comic designs. He gave us sheets of paper and pencils to draw with. We debated whether story or artwork were more important – agreeing that both were important for different reasons. We used a character invention creator to help us come with unusual and creative main characters. These include zombie princesses, dog ninjas and many more! We looked at the importance of colour and onomatopoeia phrases to draw in the reader. Our work is displayed up in the library, have a look next time you are in. Overall, we had a great session!

By the Perfect Puppies

In science we are learning about the human body.

The first week we drew around each other’s bodies and drew all of the things inside our body and labelled them.

Last week we were learning about the blood in our veins and different systems in our body. We saw how the blood goes around our body in the veins to different parts of our body like a train stopping at different train stations.

Blog post by ‘the perfect puppies’