Autumn Term
AUTUMN – Dinosaur Planet (History)
Watch out everyone – the dinosaurs are on the prowl. They’re rampaging across the dusty earth, swishing their enormous tails and baring their fearsome teeth. Let’s explore the Dinosaur Planet. Imagine you’re a palaeontologist (that’s a scientist who studies bones and fossils). Dig deep and discover dazzling dinosaur facts. Create a dinosaur museum and invite visitors to see your awesome dinosaur artefacts. You could even do a dinosaur dance or produce some prehistoric percussion. Which is your favourite dinosaur? The Tyrannosaurus, the Brachiosaurus or the Micropachycephalosaurus? Doyouthinkhesawus? Yes, he did. Run!
Stomp, crash, roar! Watch out – there are dinosaurs about! Yes, that’s right, we’re travelling back in time to the age of the dinosaurs.
This term, we’ll study museum collections, look closely at ancient fossils and study reptiles to understand how dinosaurs may have lived and eventually died out. We’ll learn about the great fossil hunter, Mary Anning, and follow in her footsteps, studying dinosaur teeth and bones to find out what dinosaurs liked to eat. Learning dinosaur names, creating puzzling riddles, writing fantastic fact files and creating exciting dinosaur stories are some of the other activities we’ll be involved in this half term. We’ll also use our artistic skills to make model dinosaurs and to design dinosaur landscapes.
At the end of our project, we’ll hold a dinosaur party where we’ll invent some dinosaur games to play and entertain with our wonderful dinosaur music, jokes and facts.
Help your child prepare for their project
Dinosaurs are fascinating! Why not visit the library, choose some dinosaur books and practise reading and writing dinosaur names together? Alternatively, research amazing dinosaur facts together online. You could also make a mini Jurassic Park from cardboard boxes and craft materials to make model dinosaurs feel at home!
Dinosaur Planet Topic Homework Ideas
Spring Term
SPRING –Street Detectives (Geography)
This way or that way? Where should we go? Up to the local shops or down to the playing fields? Let’s learn about our local community, looking at houses old and new and finding out how our streets have changed since our mums and dads were young. Perhaps your granny or grandpa went to your school or maybe they worked in the baker’s shop? Make maps and plans of the streets around us, planning our routes. What can you see? What can we find? Whereabouts do you live? Do you know your address? Find out how to write instructions, directions, adverts and learn rhymes all about our community from different times. When the Lord Mayor writes and asks us to help make our street a better place, it’s time to get your thinking caps on and paintbrushes at the ready. Ready to roll, Street Detectives? Get your clipboards and cameras – it’s time to start investigating.
Grab a magnifying glass, put on your deerstalker and change your name to Sherlock because we’re going to become street detectives!
This half term, we’ll follow a route around our local streets and take pictures of the buildings, businesses and plants we can see. Talking to residents about the area will help us understand how the local community could be improved. We’ll learn nursery rhymes, write poetry and create persuasive adverts. Looking at photographs will help us to spot any similarities and differences between the houses and shops of today and the past. We’ll find out about the history of our school and talk to former pupils about their experiences. We’ll also study and draw maps, create a model of a local building, draw portraits of the people we have met and look at the work of urban artists.
At the end of our project, we’ll design posters to advertise a ‘Big spring clean’ around school before cleaning and tidying the school grounds.
Help your child prepare for their project
Become street detectives and explore your local community. Why not visit a local museum to see what the local area was like in days gone by? You could also look up at the roofs of local buildings to spot interesting carvings and chimney shapes. Alternatively, read the book A Street Through Time by Steve Noon together to see how one street has changed over thousands of years.
Summer Term
SUMMER – Moon Zoom
CRASH! What’s that in the playground? Let’s go outside and take a look. Stand back everyone – it looks like a UFO has crash landed. Find out who might have landed by exploring the craft and investigating scattered scientific specimens. Create a ‘Welcome to Earth’ box for an alien explorer. What can you put in it to help explain what life is like on our planet? Would you like to be an astronaut? You’ll need a pretty sturdy spacecraft if you do. Start off small by making an air-propelled rocket. How far can you make it travel? Find out the names of the planets. There’s Mercury, Neptune, Mars and – do you know any others? I’ve forgotten the rest. Then, an alien is found. Can you help get him home? It’s got the experts in a right kerfuffle. Professor Pong doesn’t know what to do. Are you ready for take off Year 1? Hold tight. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… LIFT OFF!
The countdown has begun. Are you ready for blast off?
This half term, we’ll travel through space to learn about the Solar System. We’ll investigate an alien crash site, write an incident report and try to find the aliens who have landed. Where could they be? We’ll make models of the Solar System and design spaceships, space buggies and space-related toys. Books and photographs will help us to learn about the first lunar landing and the astronauts who venture into space. Floor robots will be programmed to move around an alien landscape, and we will compose space sounds and dances. We’ll also explore satellite images, investigate rockets and use ICT to communicate our ideas and present our work.
At the end of our project, we’ll read our exciting science-fiction stories aloud, sing space-themed songs and create an exhibition of our space models. It will be out of this world!
Help your child prepare for their project
There’s so much to learn about space! Why not stay up late and look at the stars? A stargazing app could help you identify well-known constellations. You could also visit the local library and find some exciting space stories and information books to share. Alternatively, create extraordinary aliens using modelling clay or a drawing app.