Home Learning Year 6

• Keep a diary and record things that are happening in your life.

• Talk to friends or family about their wartime or post-war memories or experiences. Write down or record their responses.

• Make a scrapbook of Second World War images and write captions for each one. Consider how the people in the photographs may be feeling.

• Dress up as an evacuated child. Make a gas mask box and write an evacuee label showing your name, address and school. Ask someone to take a photograph then print it with a sepia effect to make it look authentic!

• Make do and mend! Can you revamp some of your old clothes to make new clothes? Maybe you could ‘upcycle’ some unwanted household items and make them useful in a whole new way! Bring them to school to show your classmates and share your ideas.

• Find out what happened in your local area during the War. Were any children evacuated or did your local area host evacuees?

• Find some wartime recipes and make a typical meal using foods that would have been rationed at the time. Can you work out the nutritional value of the meal?

• Record a wartime radio broadcast. If possible, use an audio editing package to add sound effects, such as air raid sirens or overhead aircraft.

• Dig for Victory! Find out about the types of vegetables people were encouraged to grow during the War and have a go at growing or cooking some! Popular vegetables included potatoes, cabbage and cauliflowers.

• Imagine you are an evacuee: you’re allowed to take just one book with you to your new home. Which one would you take? Conduct a survey amongst family and friends to find out which book they would choose and why. Present your findings to the class.

• Imagine a child has been evacuated to your home. How would you make them feel welcome? How could you support them if they were missing their home or family? Which places in your local area would you like to show them?

What will you choose to do?

Home learning ideas

A Child’s War Copyright © 2017 Cornerstones Education Limited

What will you choose to do?• Create an exercise plan for maintaining a healthy heart.

• Be kind to your heart! Research information and plan ideas for a weekly menu of food that your heart would love. Spinach, porridge, blueberries, salmon and soy protein are all heart-healthy.

• Design and make decorative heart-shaped tokens to give to someone close to your heart.

• Find out about the historical tradition of Valentine’s Day. Why are hearts traditionally used as symbols of love?

• Songwriters are often inspired by the heart. Search for songs about heartbreak or cheer yourself up by making a playlist of songs to make your heart sing!

• Look out for heart shapes around you – in decorative ironwork, embellishments in clothing and jewellery, and even in nature itself. Photograph your findings and make a colourful montage.

• Think about what is meant by ‘heart-stopping’. Write about a ‘heart-stopping’ moment in your life. Describe to another person the bodily sensations experienced, and then capture the moment in words as accurately as you can.

• Find out about some famous heart surgeons. What do you need to study to become a heart surgeon? How long would it take if you started right now? What skills and personality would make you successful in this role?

• Find out about the size and structure of a human heart and compare it to the size, structure and number of hearts in other animals – worms have five!

• Collect red colour charts from a DIY store and compare the shades and names. Mix paint to create a favourite shade of red.

• Find examples of proverbs or idioms relating to the heart, such as ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’ or ‘eat your heart out’. See how many you can find and explain what they mean.

• What does the phrase ‘blood is thicker than water’ mean? Write a short story using this as a title.

• Find out about the different pulse points on the human body, including the side of the neck (carotid), wrist (radial), top of the thigh (femoral) and elbow crease (brachial). Test the different pulse points – which one has the strongest pulse?

• Measure your family’s resting heart rates before putting them through their paces. Ask them to hop, skip, jump and run, measuring their heart rates after each activity. Fill in a table or spreadsheet with everyone’s results before looking for patterns in the data. Who has the slowest heart rate? Which exercise caused the biggest increase in heart rate?

Home learning ideas

Blood Heart Copyright © 2017 Cornerstones Education Limited

• Imagine that Earth has entered another Ice Age. Write a diary-style piece describing the changes and how the human race has adapted to cope.

• Find out what natural resources and raw materials are reaped from the Arctic. What impact does this have on the environment?

• Use a range of snowy images to create a polar collage. Remember to use lots of interesting textures, shapes, colours and patterns.

• Make ‘iced jewels’. Mix powder paints and dyes into water, in an array of colours. Pour into an ice cube tray before freezing overnight. Pop the cubes out and explore your iced jewels. What happens if you sprinkle salt on the cubes?

• Create your own Arctic and Antarctic word search puzzles using all the new words you have learned during the project. Challenge a grown-up to solve it!

• Make a model of your favourite Arctic animal using clay, dough or recycled materials. Take it into school and explain how you made it.

• Create a poster or brochure for a new travel company which arranges visits to the Arctic or Antarctic. Use powerful images and text to tempt customers who want an extra-special trip!

• Design a pair of snow boots for an Arctic explorer. What materials would you use? What features could they have? Let your imagination run wild!

• Imagine a common domestic animal became an inhabitant of the Arctic or Antarctic. How would it have to adapt to survive there? Longer, thicker hair? What else? Rename your common animal with a more exciting ‘polar’ name!

What will you choose to do?

Home learning ideas

Frozen Kingdom Copyright © 2017 Cornerstones Education Limited

• Make a sketchbook to use at home, using as many different types of paper as you can find.

• Visit a local gallery to see what exhibitions are showing, take your sketchbook and make notes about the things you see.

• Find out about other artists from the past by searching for examples in art books loaned from the local library.

• Practise drawing from observation. Choose a range of interesting objects to depict drawing pattern, shape and form.

• Make an abstract sculpture in the style of the Dada artists. Explain your work to an adult and take a digital image so you can share it with others at school.

• Make a collection of natural objects mixing their subtle colours and details in a natural collage. Use a magnifying glass to help you look at the smaller areas of colour and pattern. Items might include flowers, leaves, stones and pebbles, shells and tree bark.

• Collect any old tester paint pots and make a large-scale abstract painting on the back of a roll of old wallpaper! Hint: Don’t do this straight on your walls at home, or your grown-ups will NOT be amused!

What will you choose to do?

Home learning ideas

Gallery Rebels Copyright © 2017 Cornerstones Education Limited

• Find out about health and medicine in Victorian times, including ghastly and deadly diseases like typhoid, smallpox, influenza and cholera. It was pretty grim!

• Research significant Victorian battles such as the famous Battle of Oltenita in 1853, the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879, or Rorke’s Drift in 1879. Produce maps or plans to explain battle strategies.

• Find out about significant women of the Victorian era, such as Mary Seacole, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (the first English woman to qualify as a doctor), Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot (whose real name was Mary Ann Evans) and Mrs Beeton.

• Read some abridged Charles Dickens, such as Oliver Twist and Other Great Dickens Stories by Marcia Williams, or watch film versions of his stories and create your own ‘Junior Guide to the Greatest Novelist of the Victorian Period’. Include with reviews of films and books to appeal to other children and give them a thumbs-up or star rating.

• Make some simple Victorian recipes, such as Apple Charlotte, Banbury cakes and custard patties. Create a recipe book using photos of your creations.

• Find out about Victorian railways using Bradshaw’s Guide (bradshawsguide.org). Read the town descriptions in the original guides and find out how much these places have changed using modern information sources.

• Write a newspaper article about the London matchgirls’ strike of 1888. Find out about the gruesome side effects of phosphorous on the health of the girls in the factory. Create campaign posters to help advertise the strike.

• Find out about life as a child worker in factories and coal mines or as chimney sweeps and scullery maids. Write a ‘Day in the Life of a… ’ diary entry and add illustrations.

• Research the Victorian Empire and create annotated maps showing the extent of British rule. How does this link to today’s Commonwealth? Perhaps choose a single area to focus on, such as Britain in India.

What will you choose to do?

Home learning ideas

Revolution Copyright © 2017 Cornerstones Education Limited

What will you choose to do?• Explain some common computing terms to a friend or family member who might

not have heard of them: firewall, app, e-book, emoticon, phishing, wiki, blog and QWERTY.

• Make a list of all the computerised and robotic devices in your home. Ask a relative or friend to do the same then compare lists. Are there any similarities or differences? Present your findings using ICT.

• Write a biography about a significant figure in the computing world. Check facts by cross-referencing different sources.

• Make a digital presentation about the web and include guidance for online safety.

• Design an internet ‘scavenger hunt’ for your parents or carers of 10 or more things to search for using a computer. Could they do it? Give them a mark out of 10!

• Research and identify useful apps designed to help people improve their spelling or learn their times tables. Present your work as a list of hyperlinks.

• Listen to a podcast and make a note of any key facts and information. Report your findings back to the class. Would you recommend they listen to the next one?

• Survey your friends, family and classmates to find out how much time they spend online, texting or watching TV each day. Present your findings in a chart.

• Do some market research. What are the top five websites used by your family and friends? What do they like and dislike about the websites?

• Learn about different codes, such as the reverse alphabet or Morse code. Experiment by sending short messages to your friends or family members. Can they understand you?

• Write a job advert to recruit a top spy. What skills and experience would they need?

• Write a diary entry using only emoticons! Share your ideas with a friend. How well do the emoticons show what you did and how you felt?

Home learning ideas

Tomorrow’s World Copyright © 2017 Cornerstones Education Limited