Category: Topic

Topic – Romans – Mosaics

Elsa mentioned that she’d enjoyed learning about Romans when she was at school, but told me it was taught a bit quickly for her, so she wanted to go over it again.

I think this is a great opportunity to do a load of crafts (mosaics, make a seal etc) and to go on a couple of field trips (the castle to look at artefacts and a local Roman castle building)

As it turned out our first day ended up changing a little bit as Anna wasn’t at nursery as I’d expected, so we decided to design and create our own mosaics, which both girls enjoyed.

Firstly, we chatted about where Romans would have used mosaics, what they were often made from, and what common pictures were made.

Then both girls designed their own mosaic  on some squared paper.

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They used some cardboard as a base as it is sturdy and squares of different coloured card to make the designs.

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Finished mosaics.  As you can see the designs of the mosaics weren’t exactly as their templates (not the same at all 🙂 ), however, that’s the beauty of it, the ideas evolve as they are creating.

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Diwali

Another subject Elsa asked to do back in the summer was Diwali.  I know she had covered it at school, so I asked her why she wanted to do it again.  She explained she found it interesting. 🙂

I found out it was on 11th November this year so we started the topic the week previous.

I thought it was would be best to find out why Diwali is celebrated so we watched a video and read a story. To make sure Elsa had remembered this, I asked her to filled in some worksheets I’d downloaded from Activity Village and Twinkl, while Anna completed a maze.

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We then made Diya’s out of beads (from Activity Village) and clay.

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We talked about henna patterns and both Elsa and Anna created one on paper then painted it onto their arms with face paints.

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We made lanterns 🙂

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We also discussed Rangoli patterns, where they are used and why and then both girls coloured one in downloaded from Twinkl.

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Finally we made coconut squares.

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An interesting week of learning 🙂

 

 

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Me Hearties

One of the topics Elsa showed an interest in learning about was Pirates.  I’d always thought this was in interesting, if somewhat gruesome topic, however with great age related resources from the library we were able to learn all sorts of information about them including some of the gorier stuff.  We decided again to create a lapbook for this topic. Lapbooks are a fun, colourful and easy way of collating and displaying lots of information.  We downloaded the Pirate lapbook from Homeschool Share and used some parts of it and created our own information mini books as well using the templates which can also be found at Homeschool Share.

First of all, both Elsa and Anna designed bandanas so they could look like a pirate.

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I downloaded a pirate game from Twinkl, which the girls both enjoyed playing A LOT.

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We researched various topics including crew, found information about 3 real pirates, food and drink, learned pirate speak and we made our own pirate flasg.

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We also made a map, which was fun and came out really well.

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We ended this topic by watching the Aardman film The Pirates – In an Adventure with Scientists, which both girls thought was funny (and of course it was totally historically correct 😉 )

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