Home School Resources For Primary Age Children
Whether you’ve decided that home education is what is best for you and your family or you’ve suddenly found yourself an ill-prepared teacher to your children thanks to COVID-19 school closures, we can help. High schools are setting pretty comprehensive work for older students. Primary schools are also sending work home or setting it online but there is a lot more flexibility around how parents can home educate their primary school children. This means looking for home school resources for primary age children that will suit your children’s needs.
Most schools use apps and websites such as Rockstar Math, SumDog and Purple Mash, to name a few. If those work for you, brilliant. If like some of us at AYNE you are quickly realising that not all children work the same way, having extra resources to choose from could really help. Here are some of our own favourite resources, both online, and off.
Math Work Resources
There are hundreds of apps and websites to help you support your primary age children with their sums. One of our favourites is Komodo Math – be aware that this is not a free site. It is a subscription site with lessons planned to suit your child’s needs and goals. It is currently £9.99 a month for one child and there is a discount for adding other children on. This is a no-frills way for 5 years to 14 years old to work on their maths basics. The interface is user-friendly, no flashy or distracting bells and whistles. There is a free trial so it’s worth checking out.
Some children simply work better on paper than they do on digital devices. It might be that you just don’t have enough laptops and tablets to go around. One of our team bought some of the Carol Vorderman Ten Minute Maths workbooks and has been really happy with the results, as have her children. You can use the 10-minute timer included with these books or if that causes too much stress, just don’t.
Any workbooks that cover the right level of work can be used or you could make up your own worksheets.
English/Literacy/Spelling Tasks
One of our favourite tools to encourage writing practice, spelling and more is the Popple 365 site. This is a free resource. Simply visit the site, pick today’s day on the calendar and your child will have a story prompt to get them started. Scroll down for more ways to enhance their writing.
Top tip: If your child has been set spelling work ask them to use the words in their Pobble work. This works particularly well at the end of the week once they’ve already been practising the spellings for a few days.
For younger children, there are some great apps and website which support early reading, phonics lessons and more. See what your school recommends.
Science Resources For Home Learning
You will be hard-pressed to find a better science resource than on the Stem Learning website here: https://www.stem.org.uk – Choose from a variety of topics for all ages and find great lessons that you can share with the kids, all for free.
If you are looking for experiments to do form home, YouTube is a clear winner. There are so many activities to be enjoyed.
Other Great Home School Resources For Primary Age Children
To help children keep on top of current affairs and world news in a way that is easy to digest and age-appropriate look up Newsround. Watch the short videos and then enjoy talking about what was discussed. New videos go live every day.
BBC Bitesize offers fabulous learning resources for ages 3 years to learners who are 16 years and over. Covering all core subjects and much more, BBC Bitesize offers easy to digest learning and revision which makes lesson planning easier for parents and carers and work that is interesting and fun for the children.
*Look out for Bitesize Daily which launched on April 20th and offers learning opportunities for all via BBCiPlayer and the Red Button on-screen, as well as daily work that is already online.
What home school resources have you come across that you would be happy to recommend to others? Of course, the schools have sent homework and have their own resource suggestions but sometimes it pays to mix things up a little and alter their home learning to fit their new home school situation.
Author: Nicki Cawood
(No rights to image – rights to Element5 Digital via unsplash).
