In response to school closures we’ve been busy filming and sharing a video each week day of an activity suitable for primary aged children to try at home with their family. These Home Learning videos can all be found here. There are now over 30 video’s/activities to choose from, ranging from fun phonics and numeracy games to exciting science practicals that you can do with household ingredients! (As with all our activities, please make sure you risk assess, we accept no responsibility)

These videos are all COMPLETELY free to watch and share all I ask is if you help spread the word about The SEN Resources Blog in return! Maybe pop us on your school website if you’re a teacher or tell your friends about it if your a parent. If you are able to and would like to say thanks for the videos I have a Ko-fi account which means you can buy me a virtual coffee (basically donate £3 to me to say thanks for saving you some time) here’s my link

To make it easier to find one that fits in with what you would like to work on, we’ve now divided them up into groups below.

Literacy

• Post Box- We loved creating this! Have a look at how to create a postbox using a cardboard box and then how you can encourage children to do some written work, writing letters/cards/postcards and posting them!

• Toy Passports– You should get hours of fun out of this little literacy based activity. Have a watch to see how we made passports for the toys.

• Secret Letters- Using wax crayons and paint we encouraged the children to do some written work by getting them to read and write secret messages! Brilliant fun!

• Spring Nature Watch– This activity involves children creating their own list of things they might see in nature on a walk and then reading them and ticking them off when they see them on their daily walk with their family. This activity has the added bonus of providing a bit of purpose for children on a walk (giving them something to do!) I made this video in spring but its just as easy to do in summer, just swap the blossom for sunflowers etc!

         Phonics

• Word Splat-Practise reading and recognising those tricky words with this fun game of splat! You just need some card and a pencil!

• Phonics Stones– What’s not to love, kids get to paint some stones and learn to recognise letters and digraphs and trigraphs. Fun and practical way of learning phonics (no phonics experience required)

• Duplo Phonics– Very effective phonics activity using duplo bricks. Shows you how to teach children how to form words using digraphs and trigraphs. (don’t panic- no phonics experience needed!)

• Playdough Phonics– Fun way to practise letter formation and phonics digraphs using play dough.

• Phonics Spin– Have fun making this phonics spinning wheel together and then practise phonics!

Numeracy

• Cars and Ramps– Using duplo/building blocks and cardboard we show you how to make ramps for toy cars and how you can encourage some basic maths practise whilst playing. A really fun activity that you can sneak some numeracy into!

• Car Park Maths- All you need is some paper, pens and toy cars and you can get your kids to practise their number recognition and basic sums using this VERY fun car park game. Have a look and see.

• Collecting Rain- This science and numeracy activity can be a great opportunity for children to practise their measuring skills and number recognition when working out how much rain water they have collected.

• Leaves- Collect leaves, create leaf prints using paint and also measure and create a graph of the lengths of different leaves! Lovely outdoor, crafty and numeracy activity!

Science

• Making Lava Lamps! I think my kids would make these every day if they could! It’s my favourite of all experiments and ridiculously easy to do. Lovely and sensory too.

• Volcanoes– Have a watch of how to make a volcano that fizzes and produces ‘lava’ using an egg box! Major parenting points gained from this one!

• Taking Fingerprints and Solving Crimes– We had SO much fun doing this. Really easy to do and extremely exciting for children. For added literacy practise, you can get children to write about the ‘crime’!

• Chocolate Powder Craters-  A fun, chocolatey, experiment where children drop marbles (meteors!) into flour and cocoa powder to create craters. Use this to encourage numeracy skills be asking children to measure the craters. They could even create a graph of their results.

• Celery/Kale Dye Experiment– A lovely and simple experiment where you pop kale/celery or even cut flowers into dyed water and wait to see the effects! Children can write predictions and conclusions to practise their writing skills.

• Bird Feeder Houses-  Using household craft materials we’ll show you how to make a simple bird feeding house. The task can be extended to learn about birds and wildlife.

• Marbled Paint Planets– Learn about space whilst creating these beautiful marbled effect planets using shaving foam and food colouring. Messy and fun!

•  Rainbow Science– This one is one of the most popular of our episodes and for good reason, using water and food colouring and a paper towel you can create a beautiful moving rainbow! Have a look!

IT

• Making Stop Motion Video Using Lego  This episode is one of my favourite activities. We planned a stop motion video out by encouraging children to create a storyboard of their story and then they used an app to create a stop motion video of it with lego. Great motivation to get some written work done!

Crafts

• How to Make a Hug– My lovely friend suggested this activity and we really enjoyed it. Making a hug that’s portable to grandparents and friends!

• Toy Parachutes- Create parachutes using household craft materials and have fun watching them safely (sometimes!) transport their toys to the ground!

• Dino Pasta Skeletons  Following on from a previous blog post we created about making skeletons using pasta (read in full here) we’ve now made a video of how to do it here.

• Plastic Cup Space Rockets You could argue this one belongs in the Science section, but its also a fun craft activity. A brilliant opportunity to learn and write about space too.

• String Flying Aeroplanes  Here we show you how to make a really simple aeroplane using paper that can ‘fly’ across a room on string!

• Coronavirus Keepsake– In this episode we show you how we created a keepsake picture to help us remember these difficult times in the future. We also gave the children (and ourselves) questions to answer about our feelings and thoughts about the pandemic and will be putting our written answers in the frame behind this picture so in the future we can look back on this and hopefully learn to appreciate everything we once took for granted.

• Puppet Show- Brilliant fun craft that then doubles up as an imaginative play activity they can play with afterwards! Bonus! See how we did it here.

• Nests– This craft is adorable! The children can make the cutest little pom pom birds that fit in their very own nests. The nests can be made from indoor craft materials or from leaves and twigs from the garden/a walk.