Rowan Class Home Learning Week beginning 27th April

Each week, I will post lots of suggestions for home learning. You aren’t expected to do everything. Please pick out the things that will work best for your family. We are covering similar topics across all classes so that siblings can work together – feel free to also have a go at activities set by other class teachers or help your younger brothers and sisters with their learning too.

For those of you who prefer to print work for the children to complete offline, you will find downloads below. For those who like online activities, there are suggested weblinks.

Spellings: the letters ‘ch’ can make a ck or a sh sound
Example Words: chemistry, orchestra, scheme, stomach, technology, chef, brochure, machine, chalet, moustache.
Fun Fact: The words where the letters ch make a k sound come from Greek and those where they make a sh sound come from French. Can you find other examples of each?
Do you know what all the words mean? Can you use each word in a sentence? Practise writing them as quickly as you can. Practise writing them in your best joined handwriting. You can also find more activities on letterjoin if you click on ‘Rowan’ after logging in or print off a wordsearch to do from the links below.

Maths: Money

Children should recognise all coins and notes and should be able to solve problems involving money. This might involve converting pounds into pence, finding the total of different things and working out change, or comparing amounts of money to see who has the most. Remember that you use either the p or the £ sign when writing amounts of money but not both together. (Right: 357p = £3.57 Wrong: £357p or £3.57p)

Maths Challenge for the Week: Make a list of jobs you can do to help at home. Get your family to give you a virtual price for each. (e.g. empty the dishwasher 50p; tidy your bedroom £1.20). Over the week work out much virtual money you could earn. If you saved it, how much would you have in 2 weeks time? What about six weeks? Make a wishlist of things you would like to buy and work out how long you would have to save to afford them.

Suggested Maths Activities:

Make your own play money: you could draw round real coins or do coin rubbings, then cut them out. Don’t forget to make the notes too.
Set up a shop: you could use your toys, food items or draw pictures to sell. Label everything with prices: some in pence (e.g. 50p) and some in pounds using decimal notation (e.g. £4.99). Take turns pretending to be the shopkeeper and the shopper.
Play any board games that involve money, buying or selling (e.g. Payday, Money Bags, Monopoly, Buy it right, The game of life).
Look at your family’s shopping list for this week and estimate how much it will cost. After someone has been shopping, look at the receipt and compare your estimate to the actual cost.
Look at mobile phone deals online: which is the best value for different people in your family? Is it better value to go on a cheap SIM-only plan and then buy a phone separately, or to go on contract for 12 or 24 months which includes a free phone.
Look at a pizza or other takeaway menu & use it to plan a meal for your family (an example pizza menu can be downloaded below). What is the total cost to buy everything? Look at the different deal options: what is the cheapest way of ordering the food you want? Imagine you have these vouchers: buy one, get one half price; get your most expensive item free; 10% off everything. You can only use one voucher – which will make your chosen meal the cheapest?

If you prefer printable activities, there are some problems for Year 4 and Year 5 below.

If you prefer online activities, there are some money activities set as TO Dos on Purple Mash and further practice with money can be found by clicking on ‘Maths’ and then click on ‘Measures’ under the Topics heading, then select ‘Money’.

English: My Awesome Japan Adventure

An extract from the book can be downloaded from the links below, along with grammar & comprehension questions to accompany it.

Writing Challenge for the Week: Imagine you are on a plane going to Japan. Write a diary about how you feel and what you want to do and find out when you get there. The extract below will help you but don’t worry if you can’t print it off or access it as you can have a go at writing a diary without reading the example one. Features of a good diary: informal (chatty), in the first person (I, me), describes what you have done in the past tense; includes description and your thoughts and feelings. Remember to you can use the Year 4 & 5 Writing Mats below to help you.

Other Activities if you’ve read the extract:

Draw illustrations to go with it. Can you turn the child’s description of the plane journey into a cartoon strip?
The book doesn’t have any pictures on the front cover. Can you design a new front cover with suitable illustrations?
Download & answer the reading comprehension & grammar questions.

Other Activities that you can do even if you can’t access the extract:

Make an ‘I know, I think, I want to find out’ chart about Japan.
What would you pack for a visit to Japan? Draw & label the contents of your suitcase.
Play ‘I packed my bag and in it I put …’ Can you think of a noun for every letter of the alphabet (e.g. aftersun, book, clothes …)? How about trying to think of an adjective & noun (amazing aftersun, blue book, clean clothes …)?
Keep a diary of what you are doing during the school closures.

Grammar Suggestions:

This half-term we are going to be practising recognising all the different word classes. The Knowledge Organiser (see links below) will help you. This week let’s focus on verbs & adverbs. Verbs are action or doing words. Adverbs describe a verb.

List 5 verbs you have done today. Can you think of three adjectives to describe each?
Play adjectives charades: walk into the room in different ways (e.g. quickly, suspiciously, nervously, loudly). Can the other person guess which adverb you are acting out?
Silly sentences: take a simple sentence with just one verb (e.g. the dog ran home). Change the verb. Then, add an adverb. Now change the adverb. Find & change a noun. Add an adjective. Change the verb again.

Topic: Japan

Focus for the Week: Festivals

You might like to find out:

What festivals and special days do they celebrate in Japan?
When are they?
What do people do?
Are there special foods that are eaten?
Why do they have these celebrations?

Suggested Activities:

Every year in Japan they have a Children’s Day to respect children’s personalities and celebrate their happiness. Can you design a similar event for England? When would it be? What would people do? You could write recipes or design a special menu for the day. You could create a special song for the celebration. What about making decorations?
Make your own Koinobori (flying fish) for Japan’s Children’s Day – see photos for ideas. Miss Brown made hers from toilet rolls, wool and attached them to a stick from the garden, but you could use anything you have at home or you could draw or paint some.
Traditionally on Children’s Day, all children are measured. Measure everyone in our family. Repeat this every week and see how much you are growing. You could even make a graph of your growth over the time school is closed.
Try some origami (paper folding) or kirigami (paper folding with cutting).