This week we have been looking at colours associated with different emotions and this book fits perfectly with our theme!

The Color Monster is very confused and needs help in sorting his mixed-up emotions. Luckily, his friend is there to help. Watch the story and see if you can identify which feeling the last colour represents.

The answer will be revealed at the bottom of this post.

In the story, the grey monster represents fear. Everyone feels afraid or worried at time to time but it important to talk about your worries so that they don’t get out of hand.

Create your own worry monster and imagine feeding the monster all of your worries.

The pink colour monster represents the feeling of LOVE.

Cornflour Slime

This is a great activity to introduce your kids to the concepts of solids and liquids.The mixture doesn’t behave as we’d expect, which prompts lots of curious questions.

Click here to access the full experiment.

Here are a few more maths games you can play with your child at home. Today, we are focusing on place value and times tables.

Secret numbers

Write the numbers 0 to 20 on a sheet of paper. Ask your child secretly to choose a number on the paper. Then ask him or her some questions to find out what the secret number is e.g.
Is it less than 10?
Is it between 10 and 20?
Does it have a 5 in it?
He or she may answer only yes or no. Once you have guessed the number, it is your turn to choose a number. Your child asks the questions.
For an easier game, use numbers up to 10. For a harder game use only 5 questions, or use bigger numbers.

Practice counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. 

Game 1: Scavenger hunt

Choose a times table that you would like to focus on.  Write the multiples on a piece of paper and hide them around your house or garden. Then ask you child to find all of the numbers and put them in the correct order.

To make this trickier you could hide the number sentences as well. Once everything has been found, the child has to match up the number sentences with the answers.

Game 2: Times tale hopscotch

Draw out a 12 square hopscotch. Pick a times table to practise and write the multiplies on the squares. Get your child to hop to the square that they’ve thrown a stone into shouting out the multiples as they go.

Another variation of this game: Write the number sentences on the squares and children shout out the answers as they hop along.

Pippety loves collecting things in his pocket that he can use to cause mischief with. Can you remember what he used to help him trick the troll and the toad? You may need to reread the story to remind yourself.

What else do you think Pippety might have in his pocket? Make a list of your ideas on this sheet and don’t worry, you can be as creative as you like!

Here are a few of my ideas: 

• An old whoopee cushion
• Six wriggling worms
• The curly tip of a rat’s whisker.

NOTE: Keep your ideas safe as you will need them later on in the week.