ARE YOU HOMESCHOOLING YOUR CHILDREN? TIRED OF WONDERING WHAT TO TEACH YOUR LITTLE ONES AT HOME? WHY DON’T YOU FOLLOW THIS WONDERFUL THEME ON “HEALTHY LIVING”

THIS POST GIVES YOU A THOROUGH OUTLINE ON WHAT TO TEACH EACH WEEK IN ALL AREAS OF LEARNING FOR 4-5 YEAR OLDS!

Healthy Living is a fabulous theme which covers learning about the body, sports and exercise, cleanliness and hygiene and most importantly healthy eating (always a popular one for parents generally). We spent a whole month going through these areas of learning in the most creative and exciting way to get our children really thinking about their bodies, teeth, sports and eating! As usual I want to share the theme overview plan as it gives an idea of what the months learning is all about.

WEEK 1: Our bodies

We started the theme by looking at our bodies. Following on from last years learning on the body, the children were now ready to look more at bones, muscles and even organs. This required a whole week’s of learning so we decided to make a pull out life size body book. We started using large ikea roll of paper (you could use the other side of old wall paper or even left over wrapping paper). Ammarah lay down on top of it while I drew her body outline. The next day, we looked at organs and talked about most of the body’s organs, what they are for and where we find them in our body. The day after we looked at our bones and joints and why our bone are so important. On the final day we talked more about our muscles and why we need them. All in all it was lovely working towards a final project by the end of the week which my girls adore because they can keep them as a book!

LITERACY:

Working through our phase 3 sounds we were looking at sound /ar/ this week. We have been working towards writing sentences or captions by the end of the week. Check out our Tuesday Teaching Tips video on How to write a sentence here. The younger children who have worked through their alphabet phonemes are now working on blending their sounds – more on that can be found on our teaching tips video here.

NUMERACY: 

This week in Numeracy we focused on time. Night and day, days of the week and even months of the year.

ARABIC & ISLAMIC STUDIES:

To tie in with our learning on time we started by looking at the 5 prayers of the day. By the end we combined it with our maths session on time the following week to make our own prayer time posters.

WEEK 2: Sports & Exercise

This week was all about keeping our bodies healthy through exercise and sports. We talked a lot about the heart and lungs too, bringing in what we learnt from last week. We set up some indoor games which required hand-eye coordination: including throwing and catching, beanbag throwing, stepping and jumping, bowling with skittles, mini golf and even football!

We ended the week with a lovely sports day! You could do this by teaming up with other mamas or even with your children’s friends or cousins! We had a picnic and handed out medals for all those who took part – because everyone’s a winner! Some of the games during sports day included, potato and egg race, sack race, running race and even a 3 legged race. I would suggest children get a little familiar with these races before the actual day! We continued with exercising at home by watching the awesome videos by Cosmic Kids Yoga on Youtube. The Yoga sessions include awesome storytelling with exercise and lots of stretching – keeps them fully focused and entertained!

LITERACY:

This week in literacy we focused on the sound /or/. Look at our fab sentence work! More on teaching sentence writing can be found here.

NUMERACY + ISLAMIC STUDIES:

We looked at telling the time this week. We played “What’s the time Mr. Wolf?” and added hands to our clocks for our Salaah times chart.

WEEK 3: Keeping Ourselves Clean!

This week was an important week for our young children as we looked further at brushing our teeth, washing our hands well and having baths. We began the week with an awesome science experiment about our teeth. We hardboiled 2 eggs. Once they were cool we showed the children how we are going to leave 1 egg in a cup of coke and 1 egg in a cup of water. After approximately half an hour, the egg that was sitting in coke changed to a light brown colour! It was fascinating to see that drinking too much coke or having too much sugar could do to our teeth. We asked the children what could help us remove the brown colour from the egg. They helped us brush that egg until it was white-ish again using an old tooth brush and toothpaste! Later in the week we made tooth brush holders using tissue roll and even clay.

LITERACY:

In literacy we looked at the sound /ow/ this week. The children followed up with these sentences introducing them to question marks too and applying our tricky word learning in our sentences. More on teaching tricky words can be found on the blog here.

NUMERACY:

This week we recapped adding in numeracy using numbers beyond 10. We used practical methods throughout the week understanding how addition number sentences are written, followed by understanding doubling numbers.

ARABIC & ISLAMIC STUDIES:

We tied in the concept of wudhu or ablution into our week on hygiene and cleanliness. The children had a lovely session of water play and turn taking, helping each other through the steps of the ritual ablution/wudhu!

WEEK 4: Healthy Eating

This was our final week on healthy living. We looked at where food comes from, which food is healthy and good for us to eat. We even looked at how we can eat a whole plant. My girls also enjoyed making fruit art and play dough pretend food. It’s a great time to start growing your own vegetables or take the children to a greenhouse/nursery or farm showing them where our food actually comes from.

LITERACY:

We looked at the sound /oi/ this week and practised more sentence writing. More on teaching your child how to write a sentence can be found here.

NUMERACY:

In numeracy we looked at halving numbers using the ladybird method. We shared out the spots on each wing to find out half of the number – by counting out the spots on one wing!

And there you have it, a whole months worth of learning weaved in through one major theme – Healthy Living.

WILL YOU BE FOLLOWING THIS THEME WITH YOUR LITTLE ONES ANYTIME SOON OR HAVE YOU DONE SOMETHING SIMILAR?

LET US KNOW HOW YOU GET ON BY COMMENTING BELOW!