A trip to the seaside for Foundation and KS1

Well I hope Father’s Day went well for those of you who celebrated it. In the end my six-year-old went for the ‘cup of tea in bed plus a set of BBQ tools’ present option. The tools were then used to cook breakfast over a camp fire on the beach. She promised to catch us a lobster to go with our bacon butties but needless to say it didn’t materialise. You can’t have everything I suppose.

 

Beach huts ( Type beach huts into the KnowledgeBox Quick find to find this image)

 Staying with the seaside theme, and as we are now in the last few weeks before the holidays, I thought it might be useful to point out some of the resources on KnowledgeBox that will help you to teach about the seaside

 

BBC Active's Find Out About the Seaside

The NEW BBC Active Find Out About The Seaside module has everything you need to take a historical and geographical approach to this topic. There are clips from both the BBC’s Barnaby Bear and Magic Grandad series plus activities and games to develop knowledge and skills. A really useful cross-curricular resource.

If you don’t have Find Out About The Seaside on your KnowledgeBox and would like to find out more about this module, please call 0800 567 8032 or email enquiries@uk.knowledgebox.com.

 

At the seaside: Interactive Photo Album

Use the on-screen tools to interact with the photos in the At the seaside: Interactive Photo Album ( Type  At the seaside into Quick find) and have lots of discussions about what it’s like at the seaside, what you can see and what people do. Don’t forget that if you go to the module in the Contents panel, all of the photos are individually available for you to download . You can use them on your whiteboard, for displays, games, activity sheets or whatever you like.

You’ll find even more photos if you type coast or seaside into Quick find.

Talking book; Minnie's Kite ( from Essential Literacy KS1)

Type Minnies Kite Talking Book into Quick find and use this resource from the Essential Literacy KS1 module to develop literacy skills around a seaside theme. You can read or listen to the story, identify text features using interactive tools and explore the illustrations with an electronic magnifying glass – ideal for your whiteboard.

There’s a variety of resources in the Geography KS1 Question path: Going to the seaside ( Type Going to the seaside into Quick find)  including photos, pictures, web-links and print activities. You may find the Going to the seaside: Seaside map, Travelling to the seaside, What can you see: Seaside print activities particularly useful.

And finally…
Don’t forget to take a look at the Weblinks KS1 module where you’ll find links to lots of really useful web-sites.

I’ve just heard the forecast and the temperature is going to reach 31 degrees in London this week so a virtual or real trip to the seaside is a must. Have a good trip!

Catharine

Producer

How’s it ‘g-r-oing’?

Coming along nicely ...

20 days after sowing my seeds and my seedlings are now now between about 3cm and 6cm high … all this sun has done some good!

Of course, this is one of the many lessons you can teach about how plants grow, and what they need to become strong and healthy.

Cross-curricular opportunities

There are some fantastic resources in KnowledgeBox that can help you with a topic on ‘Growing plants’. Have a look at the animations in ScienceBox. (Type ’plant animation’ into Quick find.)

Watch the animation of a bean growing. Stop at pertinent points and ask the children to name the parts of each plant. When you’ve watched the animation there are worksheets for the children to complete: labelling the parts of the plant, and a cut-and-stick activity, to see if the children are able to order the stages of a plant’s life cycle.

You could link this beautifully with your literacy work on Traditional Tales as well.  There’s a great animation on Jack and the Beanstalk. (Type ‘Jack’ into Quick find.)

And, if you’ve got BBCA Primary French is Fun 1, then there’s a re-telling of the traditional tale in French! After each frame of the story, stop and ask your children to choose the right word.

 … Finally

Why not hold a plant record-breaker competition?

Who can find the largest, smallest, oldest, funniest, smelliest plants.  They could do some independent research on the internet. They could design and make a leaflet or poster for display in the classroom.

Father’s Day crafts, cards and things to do.

Father's Day ( www.flickr.com/photos/lifeinaflashbyshaeree/)

With Father’s Day fast approaching, my six-year old and I have been chatting about what she’s going to give or do for her Dad on Sunday. She hit the jackpot last year with a neon green 99p ‘Anyone can be a Father, but it takes someone special to be a Dad’ key ring.  Tacky but he loved it!

We decided to do a quick poll of the Dads in the playground to get some ideas for this year and here’s what they came up with:

1. A long lie in followed by breakfast in bed with the newspaper
2. Have my car washed and cleaned
3. A card and a hug
4. My favourite sweets/cakes
5. Do something with the family
6. A trip to the Grand Prix!

So bearing that list in mind, here are some ideas for things to do with your class ready for Father’s Day:

Write a Father’s Day Poem

What Dad wouldn’t love a poem specially written for them? Acrostic ‘Daddy’ poems are effective and can be used on the front or inside of homemade cards.

Make a card

There are lots of ideas for card making out on the web.

Try the Shirt and tie card or the Dad, my love for you goes on and on’ card .

Dad rocks paperweight

Every Dad needs a paperweight ( don’t they?) and this one will be fun to make.

Dad-size cookie

An easy recipe for a Dad-size chocolate chip oatmeal cookie – looks delicious.

Father’s Day Gift Token

Father's Day Gift token - from the KnowledgeBox Father's Day Question path

Use the token from the KnowledgeBox Father’s Day Question path, to give Dad that lie in and breakfast in bed. The Question path contains information about the origins of Father’s Day as well as lots of photos and pictures for you to download.

My Dad is special because…

Use this Activity Village printable to make a list of reasons why Dad is special – something for every Dad to treasure. 

Father’s Day joke book

Have great fun putting together a joke book for Dads and don’t  forget to include classics like:

Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
Myth.
Myth who?
Myth you, too!

Lots more jokes on  this site.

And finally…

 For those children with several thousand pounds to spend on their Dads there are still tickets available for the Italian Grand Prix in September

Happy Father’s Day.

Catharine
Producer

3 for the price of 2 on BBC Active modules!

BBC Active Whiteboard Active ― now even better value! 

Here at BBC Active, we choose some of the key topics and themes in the Primary curriculum ― those for which Primary Teachers really need top- quality teaching and learning resources.

We then hand pick the most engaging, interesting, age-appropriate and educationally relevant BBC footage available, and package these clips together with teacher notes, suggested questions, interactive activities and a set of easy-to-use whiteboard tools.  

The result ― Whiteboard Active!

Special Offer: 3 for the price of 2 on all Whiteboard Active modules

From now until 10th July  2009, if you buy any 3 BBC Active modules worth from £99 to £150 each for your KnowledgeBox, you’ll get the cheapest absolutely FREE ― giving you a saving of as much as £125!

This exclusive offer includes the NEW Foundation/KS1 Find Out About modules as well as 19 modules for  Key stage 2.

NEW Foundation and KS1 Find Out About titles:

Find Out About Ourselves

Find Out About Ourselves (Age 3―5)

Find Out About Homes (Age 3―5)

Find Out About Problem Solving ― with El Nombre (Age 4―5)

 

Find Out About The Seaside

Find Out About The Seaside ― with Barnaby Bear and Magic Grandad (Age 5―7)

Find Out About Famous Men, Women and Children (Age 5―7)

Find Out About Science ― with resources for all of the QCA units (Age 5―7)

 KS2 modules

With 19 titles to choose from including the BETT award nominated Climate Change and the best-selling Life in Tudor Times, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for.

Click here for the full list of  Foundation, Key stage 1 and 2 titles included in this offer.

Life in Tudor Times

So if you want to bring your whiteboard teaching alive as soon as you get back in September, now’s the time to buy!

And remember – this offer only lasts until 10th July 2009.

Call us today!

Just call 0800 587 8032 or email enquiries@uk.knowledgebox.com to find out more about the titles available, or to benefit from this great offer. And hurry, this special offer is only available until July 10^th 2009!

Best wishes

The BBC Active Team

Anne Frank’s birthday

Why not tell your class about Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager whose family hid from the Nazis for more than 2 years during World War II before being found? Had she not died in a concentration camp when she was only 15, Anne might be celebrating her 80th birthday on June 12th.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiseb/

Anne wrote a diary about her experiences, which was kept safe by Miep Gies, one of the people who helped to hide the Frank family. In February this year Miep Gies celebrated her 100th birthday. You can read extracts from Anne’s diary here.

You can find resources about World War II by choosing Question Paths History KS2 from the contents menu and looking in the folder WWII: The Blitz and Evacuation. The Night Shelter animation describes the experiences of a boy in England who has to leave his home and family. The supporting print activity asks children to write a diary entry from the boy’s point of view.

For more information about life in Britain during the war, try the interactive activity Talking Book: Turn That Light Out! in the same folder.

You’ll also find a video, letters recounting evacuees’ experiences and related writing tasks in the module Writing letters in role, in Essential Literacy KS2, Year 3, Non-fiction.

Ask your class whether they can think of any other diarists who have recorded important or frightening events. The module Thinking and writing in role: Diaries in Essential Literacy KS2, Year 6, Non-fiction contains activities about Samuel Pepys’s diary. Discuss the reasons Pepys and Anne Frank might have had for writing down what happened.

Your planet needs you! – Friday June 5th is World Environment Day

Earth from space ( NASA)

If there’s one thing that annoys me in life,  it’s when I hear people say that they don’t bother recycling as they think that doing their little bit won’t make any difference to global warming and climate change.

The good thing is that that attitude seems to be quite rare these days . If my local Sainsbury’s is anything to go by, where most people now use their bags for life and very few trolleys are leaving the shop full of throw-away plastic carriers, many people are doing their bit.

World Environment Day is a great opportunity to think about how we can all help to preserve our planet for future generations.

 

Go to the ‘Easily Green your daily routine’ page to get lots of ideas for easy, everyday things we can all do.

Some of my favourites are:

• When you are feeling at your laziest, don’t throw clean clothes in the hamper to avoid hanging them up! Wear jeans more than once…
• Do you have a morning hot drink routine? Using a washable mug is an environmentally-friendly alternative to non-biodegradable styrofoam or plastic cups.
• Use towels for drying your face and hands instead of tissues that are used and thrown away. Also, hang your towels to dry so that they can be reused several times. You are after all clean when you use them

  What could be easier!

Why not go through the list with the children in your class and see which ones thay already do and which ones they are going to try and do from now on.  Lots of opportunities here to link in with the Eco-schools  and Sustainable schools programmes.

And if you need resources for some in depth learning about global warming and climate change, look no further than the BBC Active: Climate Change module on KnowledgeBox. Here you’ll find all of the videos, activities and teaching ideas you’ll need to tackle this tricky concept in a Key stage 2 classroom.

Whiteboard Active; Climate Change ( From BBC Active)

If you don’t have BBC Active Climate Change on your KnowledgeBox and would like to find out more about this module, please call 0800 567 8032 or email enquiries@uk.knowledgebox.com.

So I hope you have a successful World Environment Day in your classroom. 

I’m off to have a cup of tea in a china mug, hang up my clothes and to hang the wet towels on the line

Catharine

Producer

Bloomin’ marvellous

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allenhsu/

It’s not too late to plant your sunflower seeds!  If you get your skates on, then you should just about get your blooms before the end of term. They’re so easy to sow and look after – great for the budding gardeners in your class.

I planted some this weekend, and I’ll keep you up to date with their progress. I’d like to hear how yours are coming along, too. Why not keep us up to date through the blog? Send me your photos as well, and I’ll load them up for us all to marvel at.

Here’s some quick tips!

A packet of seed will provide enough seeds for everyone in your class. Fill your small pots with compost and sow one seed in each pot. Water it well and then cover each pot in cligfilm.  This will help it to germinate quickly.  As soon as you see a shoot, you can remove the clingfilm.  Leave the pots on a sunny windowsill, or in a warm sheltered spot outside.

In a couple of weeks you will start to see small shoots. Keep the pots well watered and make sure they get lots of sun.

When they get to about 30cm you will need to transplant your sunflowers to a garden bed or a bigger pot.  Also, stake them up with bamboo canes so they grow tall and strong.

Happy growing!

Sarah, KnowledgeBox Publisher

Half term already?

Where does the year go?

For those of you who are thinking about next term, June 24th is the 500th Anniversary of Henry VIII’s coronation. This is a great opportunity to look at  The Tudors.  There’s lots of activities planned around the country to commemorate the event, and a number of special exhibitions – could be an opportunity for a school trip.  There’s a list of special exhibitions at the bottom of the post.

So what’s in KnowledgeBox that can help you out with the topic? Have a look at the fantastic BBCA module on Life in Tudor Times.  Built around BBC video clips, the units cover Henry’s six wives, daily life in Tudor England, town and country, and looks at all the famous Tudor people who really made an impact.

If you don’t have the module, please call our inside sales team on 0800 567 8032 or email enquiries@uk.knowledgebox.com.

Here’s a selection of exhibitions that are on at the moment. These are all in the south, but if there’s anything happening in your local area, please post the links up here.

http://www.bl.uk/henry

http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerofLondon/stories/palacehighlights/HenryVIIIDressedtoKill/Introduction.aspx

http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/stories/palacehighlights/HenryVIIIheadsandhearts/Introduction.aspx

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/event-root/henry-viii-remembered.php

http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/WhatsOn/HenryVIIIsCoronationWeekend.aspx

Have a good holiday.  See you next term.

Sarah

KnowledgeBox Publisher

Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole on International Nurses Day: May 12th

International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on May 12^th, Florence Nightingale’s birthday. It’s a great opportunity to tell the children in your class about both Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and the important role nurses play in our world today.

How KnowledgeBox can help:

Type Florence Question path into Quick Find

Use this animation to tell Florence’s life story and to explain her important role in the development of modern nursing. The animation is part of a KnowledgeBox Question path. It contains lots of  other useful resources including photos and pictures you can  use in your whiteboard presentations, as well as print activities for the children to use away from the computer.

Follow this up with work on Mary Seacole and you could have a very interesting unit of study.

Type Mary Question path into Quick find

Use the KnowledgeBox Mary Seacole animation to find out about Mary Seacole’s life and the resources in the Question path for follow up activities. 

BBC Active’s new ‘Find Out About Famous Men, Women and Children‘ has a whole unit of resources about Mary Seacole. Here you’ll find dramatised video clips about her life plus drag and drop sequencing and labelling activities  – all ideal for your whiteboard.

BBC Active's Famous Men Women and Children

 

If you don’t have BBC Active Find Out About Famous Men Women and Children on your KnowledgeBox and would like to find out more about this module, please call 0800 567 8032 or email enquiries@uk.knowledgebox.com.

Similarities and differences

Once they’ve found out about Florence and Mary, ask the children to identify the similarities  between the two life stories:

• How were the women treated when they wanted to help soldiers fighting in the Crimea?
• Why were they treated this way?
• Why were they treated so differently?
•  Do they think this would happen today?
• Why is Florence more famous than Mary?

Nursing today

You could then move on to looking at nursing today. How is nursing today similar and different to how it was two hundred years ago? Ask the children to think about the uniform, hospital conditions, treatment and care. Arrange for a nurse to visit your classroom and to sit in the ‘hot seat’ to answer questions from the children.

Out on the web

For Florence Nightingale:

• This onscreen book from the BBC retells Florence’s life story. A short Quiz is also available.
• Interesting pictures and original source documents are used to answer the question’ Why do we remember her?’ on this Florence Nightingale website from the Learning Curve.
• Photos of Florence’s stuffed pet owl, her nursing apron and many more fascinating objects on this Florence Nightingale Museum site.

For Mary Seacole:

• This onscreen book from the BBC retells Mary’s life story of. A short Quiz is also available.
• Detailed information, about Mary Seacole’s life plus the only known photographic portrait of Mary can be found on this site.
• You can play interactive games about herbal medicine and  listen to Mary retelling her life story on this site from the Yorkshire Museums and Libraries service.

And finally…

For those of you keen on trivia:

• Florence was born in Florence, Italy while her well off mother and father took a two year honeymoon travelling around Europe.
• A portrait of Mary Seacole was found at a car boot sale and is now housed in the National Portrait Gallery

Do you know of other useful resources for teaching about Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole? We’d love to hear from you.

Catharine
Producer

Happy 445th Birthday Shakespeare!

As 23^rd April is traditionally celebrated as Shakespeare’s birthday and 2009 is his 445th, I thought I’d take this opportunity to highlight some of the great Shakespeare resources on KnowledgeBox and to point you in the direction of some interesting resources out on the web.

Shakespeare on KnowledgeBox

If you type Shakespeare into the KnowledgeBox Quick find, as many as 30 resources will be returned. Here are some of my favourites:

Shakespeare Video from Essential Literacy

• Shakespeare video: This video provides a good introduction by providing information about Shakespeare himself, his plays and Tudor times. You might also want to use the Text resources: Background information: Shakespeare and his plays and Quotations from Shakespeare for more detailed information.
• Video footage of the Globe is included in Unit 7: Biography and autobiography from Star Reader Year 6 and the text in this unit includes an excellent biography of Shakespeare. If you don’t have Star Reader on your KnowledgeBox and would like to find out more about this module, please call 0800 567 8032 or email enquiries@uk.knowledgebox.com 

Hamlet Animation from Essential Literacy

• Hamlet animations:  I particularly like the two animated extracts from Hamlet. These can really help to bring Shakespeare alive in your classroom. There are lots of Print activities that go with these so look out for them in results when you do your Quick find search.

Quiz from Esential Literacy

• The Shakespeare Quiz can be great fun to do on your whiteboard. Use it at the beginning of this unit of work and then again at the end so your pupils can really see how much they’ve learnt.

Out on the web

• Fascinating primary sources can be found on this Learning Curve site, including Shakespeare’s will and information about his taxes.
• Go to Shakespeare 4 Kidz for some really useful synopses, print activities and interactive quizzes for a number of plays including Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and more.
• This site allows you to read or print out the complete works of Shakespeare.
• Find out how Shakespeare’s birthday is celebrated in Stratford.
• Watch this video and find out about the recent discovery of Shakespeare’s first theatre, made by archaeologists in London.

And finally…

Is it really Shakespeare’s birthday on 23rd April?  Read this Guardian article and decide for yourself!

Catharine
Producer