English and Literacy with Ice Eggs

We shall be posting a series of blogs of some of the lesson plans and activity ideas from our LOC Handbook. LOC stands for Learning Outside the Classroom. It contains over 100 lesson plans spanning 9 subjects areas. Click here to learn more.

The tail end of winter is providing overnight frosts this week with temperatures falling to well below freezing. It's a great opportunity to use the cold weather to create ice activities with your children. In this post, and one to follow, we shall be offering lesson plans and activities to use ice in a creative and interesting way. We hope that you find them useful and enjoyable.

Activity Title: Subject: Age Group:	Ice Eggs English and Literacy KS 2
Overview of the Activity For pupils to use their imaginations to lead a creative writing activity.		Main Activity Prep another member of staff in advance to come into your classroom 5 – 10 minutes after your lesson has begun to explain that they have seen something “quite odd” in the school grounds and wonder if the pupils know anything about it. Take the pupils to ‘the nest’ (armed with paper and pencils) and ask them to walk quietly over to them. Ask the pupils to describe the objects. What shape are they, what are they made of, what else is that kind of shape? This should lead pupils to the idea that they are eggs – especially of positioned within a makeshift nest. You can ask further questions such as where the eggs may have come from, where the parents are and what they think might hatch from them? Let the pupils feel the eggs and describe what they are feeling. Have them look around the outdoor area to see where the ‘creature’ might set up home once it has hatched. Either remaining outside or back in the classroom have the pupils create sentences leading to short stories about where the eggs came from, what the ‘creatures’ will look like and where they will live in the school. Have them identify which of their words are nouns, adjectives and verbs. Plenary Gather the group together to share thoughts about the lesson and the ice egg stories. Have some read aloud. Discuss the best words used and their meaning. Display photographs of the eggs on a display to act as a reminder of what was found.
Equipment Required Water (and food colouring for making coloured eggs), balloons, clipboards, pencils, paper.
Learning Objectives ·         To use nouns, verbs and adjectives in descriptive text to add interest. ·         To broaden pupils’ vocabulary through creative writing. ·         To understand the meaning/concepts of new words. ·         To learn about naturally occurring things in nature. Set Up Spend time before the activity creating your ice eggs by filling balloons with water and ensuring that they are roughly egg shaped. Leave them for at least a day to ensure that they are completely frozen. You can do this outside overnight in winter if possible. Place the eggs in a location in the grounds where the class can gather but they will not be found prematurely. Spend time recapping on previous lessons about nouns, verbs and adjectives. Pupils should be able to clearly explain the features of each and where they should be used in a sentence. Ensure that they are dressed appropriately for working outside.
Extension Activities Invite an expert visitor to talk about one of the items found e.g. a conservationist, biologist or even a palaeontologist. Use books and IT to find out more about the objects. Pupils could use cameras to record their ideas to enable them to be shared with other groups. You could make up a linking story produced by the whole group. The process could be applied to any number of objects (either imaginary or real) in the outdoors.

Make the most of the freezing weather!

We shall be posting a series of blogs of some of the lesson plans and activity ideas from our LOC Handbook. LOC stands for Learning Outside the Classroom. It contains over 100 lesson plans spanning 9 subjects areas.

The tail end of winter is providing overnight frosts this week with temperatures falling to well below freezing. It's a great opportunity to use the cold weather to create ice activities with your children. In this post, and one to follow, we shall be offering lesson plans and activities to use ice in a creative and interesting way. We hope that you find them useful and enjoyable.
 

Activity Title: Subject: Age Group:	Ice Art Art and Design Early Years/KS 1
Overview of the Activity Using creative techniques to explore freezing and melting water.		Main Activity Collect a large selection of natural and recycled materials from the outdoors such as pebbles, leaves, twigs, bark, shells, drink cans, plastic containers, etc. Place a large shallow tray or dish on the ground or a low table where pupils can develop their art installation. Have the pupils arrange the materials on the tray or in the dish. It doesn’t matter if they hang over the side. Fill the container with water and leave outside overnight on a night when it’s likely to freeze. Before you leave it place the plastic tube in one corner (at least 7 cms from each edge). Once the water has frozen this will create a hole in the ice sheet from which to hang the ‘sculpture’. Return to the container the next day to see what has happened. Talk about the ice, allow pupils to touch their ‘sculptures’ and describe what it feels like and what the frozen objects inside look like. The final act is to hang the sculptures from a tree or post outside using rope threaded through the hole that has been created with the plastic tube in the corner. Observe the sculpture during the day, does it melt or stay the same, do bits fall off? Take pictures to be shown to parents and other members of the school. Plenary Talk about how water melts and freezes and think about other ways in which you could use ice to create sculptures. Encourage the pupils to use different language to describe the textures and visual effects of the sculptures. Extend the discussion on to where we might find ice and what we might use it for.
Equipment Required Large shallow trays, jugs of water, selection of natural materials, short lengths of plastic tube (2-4 cms), string or rope.
Learning Objectives ·         To understand that water freezes in very cold temperatures. ·         To learn about and understand the changing of the seasons. ·         To create textures and develop language to describe them. ·         To work collaboratively in small groups. Set Up Spend time discussing the weather in the lead up to the activity and encourage pupils to watch a weather forecast at home and to decide when would be the best time to conduct the activity. Look at the standing water outside in puddles and ponds. Also look at videos and pictures of snow and ice scenes.
Extension Activities Use a variety of different shaped containers. Add food colouring or paint to the water before freezing. Encourage pupils to visit the sculptures during the day to estimate how long the freezing/melting takes. Find ways to catch the melting water and recycle it so it can be re-used. There are many other ice art sculptures that you can create such as: Using ice cubes to build an igloo for a small animal or fictional character. Try using balloons with water in to create ‘ice baubles’. Try creating ice windows from thin sections of water in the bottom of shallow trays etc. etc.

Adventures in Archaeology at Your School

 

We shall be posting a series of blogs of some of the lesson plans and activity ideas from our LOC Handbook. LOC stands for Learning Outside the Classroom. It contains over 100 lesson plans spanning 9 subjects areas.

Archaeology is a topic that can be used to teach a variety of subjects. As well as history, it also covers a range of curriculum areas for KS2; including Art and Design, English, Maths and Personal and Social studies.

It is relatively easy to set up and progress a range of excavation activities from table top sand trays to more challenging outdoor digs. Use of unused flower beds or even sandpits can reduce set up time and costs. The range of artefacts can start small and build over time with children bringing in a range of things from home.We hope the lesson plan and activities below are useful. 

We welcome your thoughts and feedback and hope you can add to the discussion with further ideas.

Activity Title: Adventures in Archaeology

Subject: History 

 

Age Group: KS 1 or 2

Overview of the Activity

Create a mini excavation site in your school for pupils to search for, find, study and record the artefacts hidden within it. 

 

Learning Objectives

• To learn about research methods, data recording, handling and interpretation. 
• To take part in an extended chronological study to learn about significant turning points in British history and their impact on the school and local area.
• To experience working as part of a team to create something unique.

Equipment Required

Large trays or dustbins (for starter activity), string and pegs, mallets, access to historical books, records, publications and on-line resources, digging and cleaning tools (watering cans, trowels, brushes), white boards, pens, paper, pencils, clipboards, recording sheets, rulers and weighing scales (for measuring artefacts).
 

Set Up

Identify an area in the school grounds that can be used for the dig. A small patch of unused soil or grass that you can clear the turf from and dig and rake over. The alternative is to build a large box or wooden frame from wood that you can move to a site outdoors and add soil and artefacts to. For young pupils, or as a practice session before you move to the main dig site, you can create simple table top digs in the classroom using trays filled with sand or light soil. Here pupils can practice how to clean and record artefacts that they find.

 

Main Activity

Spend time looking at pictures and short films of dig sites and the tools and techniques used. 

 

1. Prepare Your Practice Pit

Fill a large plastic box or small dustbin with soil or sand to a depth of about 40 cm. Place on sheets of newspaper and bury a number of objects at different depths within it. You can layer with different soil types to make it more realistic. 

2. Get Digging

Then, in small groups, start pupils digging. Encourage them to excavate their container by removing a 5 cm layer at a time and carefully working down so as to avoid damage to any artefacts. Lift out the items, carefully clear them of excess soil (using old paint/tooth brushes) and place on a ‘finds tray’. Finally write down the facts about the items on a recording sheet (below). 

3. Display the Finds

Good archaeologists will carefully examine, record and display their items having studied and researched interesting facts about them. Get the pupils to do this and make up labels or fact sheets that can be placed on the display next to each item.

Now pupils will be ready for a larger challenge so you can create a larger dig site using a plot of grass (with turf removed), an unused soil bed or a large sandpit if you have one. Create a perimeter around the site and ensure that pupils do not walk onto any unexcavated part of it. Create a grid system using string (60 – 80 cm squares) so that individuals or pairs can excavate a small area each. Again bury your items and recreate the dig activity above. Ideas for great items to bury are:

Shells	Bones (bleached)	Spoons, forks
Pottery fragments	Flints	Old stones/bricks
Old clothing/shoes	Carved wood items	Try creating artificial items
Old bottles (intact)	Jewellery

You can extend the displaying of the finds into a ‘mini natural history museum’ to have a semi-permanent display with detailed labelling to show parents, other students some time later.

 

Plenary

Ask what they enjoyed about the activity.

Ask about what skills they need to use in order to be successful.

Ask what they have learned about each of the artefacts found.

Ask what next with their archaeology. 

Extension Activities

Visit a real dig site and talk to the archaeologists about their work and what they are finding.

Try carrying out a real excavation in a part of the school site that you think might contain historical items. Take a more scientific approach by using a plumb line, removing the root mat and digging in layers and squares. 

Ask for real historical items to be brought to school by parents, historical societies or local farmers and extend the research process into local history, anthropology, human geography, etc.

 

Artefact Recording Sheet
Archaeologists’ Names:
Date:	Of Burial:	Of Discovery:
What is your artefact made from?
What colours(s) is/are your artefact(s)?
Is your artefact in one piece?
How long is your artefact?
How wide is your artefact?
How tall is your artefact?
Describe how your artefact feels in your hands?
What do you think your artefact is?
What do you think your artefact was used for?
Draw your artefact and label any key features.

School Outdoor Learning provide resources, training and solutions to enable schools to fully engage with and utilise their outdoor environments.