Additional Suggested Activities

Home Learning (COVID-19)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve decided to give you a few ideas of things you can do to help your child to learn.  We decided to base it on a Project Homework format. Please remember that the work is completely optional. Teachers may send you other things to do or they may highlight some of these activities for completion between now and Easter. Our suggestion is that you give your days some routine and maybe dedicate an hour or two to schoolwork. Try to include some reading, some physical activity, some writing and some Gaeilge.

Like Project Homework, you can pick as many of the activities below over the 2 weeks. Every subject is covered below and some require the help of family, some can be done on a computer, but most can be done on your own. Each activity has an explanation so click on it to read more.

We have included some websites you might find useful.

We have gathered some of the suggestions from other schools and we are particularly grateful to Simon Lewis and the staff of Carlow Educate Together School.

Body and Mind

HIIT Homework

Stick on your favourite upbeat playlist and try out these exercises one after the other. To give yourself a bigger challenge, do each circuit twice or three times or more!

OR

Have a family disco – stick on your favourite tunes and bop around the room for 20 minutes!

Get Outside

Try out as many of these exercises outside (keeping social distance!) that you can and tell your teacher which ones you’ve done.

Skype with a Relative

This can be a nice idea if you have a family member who may have to self-isolate or who you may not be able to visit. It’s a way for children to use oral language and it might be a nice kind of game to play to keep boredom away.

Ideas include:

1. Play 20 questions – take turns in thinking of an object and the other person can only ask questions which have a yes or no answer.
2. A-Z – Pick a topic and take turns in naming something beginning with A then B then C and see if you can get to Z Without skipping any letters.
3. The Big Interview – child prepares 10 questions they’d like to know about the relative and then asks them
4. More ideas here: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-vocabulary-games/ 

Irish Times

Even if you can’t speak Irish, there are some great ways to pick up some vocabulary. One really easy activity is to pick a topic, for example: food, household objects, colours, and so on, then write down 20 words associated with that topic in a list. Next go to https://www.focloir.ie/en/ and translate the words. The great thing is that almost every word on the website has an audio recording of it so you can listen to how to pronounce the words! As a family, you could try and learn a few words every day!

For more advanced speakers, how about doing any of the tasks in the grid through Irish? The news is probably the easiest one to do as Gaeilge.

Another idea is to sign up to https://www.duolingo.com/course/ga/en/Learn-Irish to learn some Irish – 5 to 10 minutes a day and who knows how fluent you’ll be when you get back!

The Daily News

This task can be done with any age from Junior Infants to 6th class. It can be done in a number of ways but here is a suggestion for 2 different age groups:

Read a Book with a Parent

Snuggle up on the couch and spend ten minutes reading for no other reason than the joy of reading a book. Of course, there are loads of benefits to reading every day but what a nice time to drop everything for a short time.

Family Tree

Make your family tree with your child. You can do this digitally or by hand and you can go back as far as you want!

BIGGER PROJECTS

These instructions are for these projects:

• The History of my Family                An extension of the Family Tree Project – tell us about your family               
• My Holiday                                Tell us or draw a picture about your last holiday

Here are some ways you can produce it for your teacher

1. Write it!                 Make your project on paper and bring it to school. (No bigger than A3 please!)
2. Build it!                Using whatever materials you want, build and make your project
3. Make a Book!                Using whatever materials you want, build and make your project
4. Video it!                 Grab a phone and hit record

A Sketch A Day

If you have a copybook or sketchpad, this would be useful but you don’t really need anything except paper and a pencil. Your job is to create one sketch a day for the duration of the project. The only catch is you have to pick a theme. Choose from:

• Healthy Foods
• Happy Things
• Things that need batteries
• Famous People
• Objects that are usually red

Learn a musical instrument

Do you have a musical instrument at home? If not, it’s not too expensive to get yourself a tin whistle, recorder or even a ukulele. It’s never been easier to learn with loads of apps and websites to bring you along the way.

Tin Whistle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdUH1QZvEm8

Piano / Keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJOfTzSYW-9q2WSmGH1CNjmP3–2qaXN5 

Ukulele: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bTE5fbxDsc 

Puppet Show

Making a puppet show can be a fun way to spend some time and there’s lots of different ways to do it now.

1. Make a sock puppet – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-mfUBQE3_s 
2. Make finger puppets – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eq370x_lvo 
3. Make an online Puppet Show – Puppet Pals App

The main thing is to write the scripts and record them! If you have a puppet show stage, great; if not, use a table to hide underneath! 

Cool Patterns

Patterns are everywhere – some of them simple like the sequence of a traffic light and some of them are really difficult like the swirls on a snail’s shell. Your job is to make a pattern using any medium you want. You could knit a scarf in 2 different colours or you could build a tower using Lego with different patterned levels. You could even write a long sequence of numbers that follow a pattern. Be inventive and try and think of something someone else might not do.