This is the kind of day I'd love to describe as 'typical'. Although if it was, I wouldn't be rushing to blog about it before things go awry and the magic fades.
A prompt 9am start (after a little bickering .. we'll brush over that), kicking off with maths as we always do. K is working on time (Y5 POS) and W on metal methods for subtraction (Y4 POS).
Break time at 10am. K&W head out to swing about like monkeys, I frantically load the dishwasher, wipe down the counters and bleach the sink.
10.30am and K&W come in on the 2nd time of calling (counted as a win) and we open out a huge map of the world. First we've got to work out if the world is actually flat and understand how a map can be flat if the world is round so we unpeel the world (tangerines), keeping the peel in one piece. Mixed success and a lot of peel on the floor but we used the pieces to show tectonic plates so a quick volcano/earthquake diversion (NC LKS2 Geog- volcanoes, earthquakes) and the boys spotted how South America looks like a jigsaw fit to Africa so we touched on how the continents were formed.
Officially today's LOs were identifying some continents, our location, where key world events are happening right now and how proximity to the equator changes climate. (NC LKS2 Geog). It was a fun hour. We've got Aunties in a couple of far flung locations so we started labelling and then K&W did some independent research to find the locations of things that interest them. K had heard about the Dead Sea so he looked it up, found out about why you float in it and then identified Israel on the map. W wanted to find out whether the animals in the film Madagascar were real so we found Madagascar and googled for wildlife.
Our labels are a bit random. W added the 'Cool Animals' tag to Madagascar and a 'We Are Here'. K labelled the Dead Sea and Manx Cats. One label says 'Drugs' and points to Columbia - an overspill from a discussion about drug smuggling at the airport ("Why do they search the bags?" cue a caught-on-the-spot-over-explanation from me about smuggling and street values.) Spot a Pyramids label, where bush babies live and also the postal address of Santa.
Side note teaching on internet searching, choosing reliable sources and using suitable keywords (NC UKS2 ICT - be discerning, evaluate digital content).
After geography we did an online maths session and then had another brain break.
Last lesson of the day was a quick fire grammar presentation - a retention check for adjectives, nouns, adverbs and appropriate connectives (reinforce Y2 POS) and K correctly spotted a preposition.
Now it's lunchtime and we're almost done for the day. We've got a coffee date with friends in a bit (socialisation - tick) and then we'll go to Explore Learning this afternoon for one more bit of Maths/Literacy.
A good day.
