For anyone new to this blog, the idea is simple - each day my boys (Joshua - 9 and Archie - 8) choose a stimulus that drives the learning. We hope that you enjoy the blog and can take some inspiration from what we love doing - making learning as engaging as possible!
Feelings & Emotions
Education is far more than simply lessons in English and maths. Centric to everything that we do is personal, social and health education. Today's stimulus is designed to help the boys explore feelings and emotions and to talk about how they are feeling at the moment.
English
Abstract nouns
Proper nouns
Symbolism and description
Warm up
A great grammar warm up is called City of Stars, from Jumpstart! Poetry. I love this game as it opens the world of creativity and imagination and is amazing for description.
Begin by making two piles of words:
A pile of containers (e.g. a cup / jug / bag / library / graveyard / etc.)
A list of abstract nouns - emotions and feelings (e.g. love / hate / sadness / etc.)
Then, shuffle the piles, pick one from each pile and create new unheard objects or places. You need the word 'of' between them, e.g. The Cave of Curiosity. Here are the ones we came up with:
With our new magical objects and places established, we then chose our favourite combinations and brainstormed what we would find there. The purpose of this was to help the boys connect with key emotions. We then wrote freely about our creations. Here is what we came up with:
The Graveyard of Joy
A midnight moon lights the stage;
the chorus of lost souls rises once more.
Friends reunite, memories rekindled:
a performance full of life,
feasting upon worlds lost.
As the curtain falls,
the actors return to their coffin beds
and peacefully sleep.
© Jamie Thomas 2020
The Cauldron of Hunger
I saw angry eyes, staring,
wondering, 'When is the next time I'll eat.'
I hard a bellowing belly, rumbling rapidly.
I saw mad hands, clenched in desperation.
I heard disappointment whisper out from sad faces.
I wondered why the world was so unfair.
by Archie
The Lake of Happiness
Smiley Emoji faces bounce like rabbits.
An amused coffee waits to be drunk.
Amazed fingers laugh like hyenas.
Sand faces melt like ice.
Balloons are set free - they fly, fly, fly.
Elizabeth's happy face rests upon the note.
People dance, sing and laugh around fire.
Healthy food waits to be eaten.
A fish full of happiness.
by Joshua
Maths
drawing and plotting graphs
time (12 hour / 24 hour clock)
To help the boys explore their own emotions, today's maths lesson is all about plotting a graph of emotions. I wanted to help the boys understand some of the emotions they feel each day, especially given the challenges that come with lockdown.
We began by revisiting time, looking at the correlation between 12 and 24 hour clock. We then plotted this on an x-axis. On the y-axis, we plotted a range of emotions - from negative to positive. This evoked a good discussion of how our emotions change at different times of the day and some of the triggers and reasons for this.
We then plotted a 'typical' day in lockdown, talking through the emotions and how this makes us feel. It was good to be able to have this open discussion with the boys and talk through how we all feel different things at different times and that is ok. Here are our graphs:
We are so thankful to those of you who have inundated us with stimulus requests. We have made a list and will do our best to explore as many as we can. Tomorrow, we shall be using the following stimulus:
Yetis
My thanks to Pie Corbett, Julia Strong and the Talk for Writing team for inspiring many of the ideas explored in this blog.