As part of our 'Under the sea' topic this week we will be focusing on the story of "The Fish Who Could Wish'' written by John Bush and illustrated by Korky Paul. Parents/carers I have highlighted the key vocabulary in purple that you should encourage your child to use and have put questions you should ask them in bold.

Before starting the video/opening the book look at the front cover, here is picture of it below:

Point out the author, who is the author? What does an author do? Look at the illustration, tell your child who the illustrator is. What does an illustrator do?  What can you see on the front cover? What do you think the story is about? What do you think will happen? 

Here is a link to the story: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWb7KBT7KyA

Questions for parents/carers to ask about the story:

What could the fish do that was special?
What happened when he wished he could ski? Why?
Why do you think he wished he could fly?
What did the fish wish for when the sharks came?
How did he teach the sharks a lesson?
What did the fish wish to wear?
What did the fish never wish for?
Why couldn't the fish wish for anything at the end of the story?
Do you think the fish should have wished to be like the other fishes? Why?/ Why not?
Which of the fish's wishes was the best? Why?
What would you wish for? Why?

Key vocabulary: author, illustration, illustrator, front cover, character, event, beginning, middle, end, setting, wish, Spanish guitar, castle, wise, ski

In the  story the fish makes wishes that come true. You are going to write a story about making a wish. Building on the previous work you have done on story writing it's your turn to come up with your own ideas for a story. Each day write a section of the story as follows:

Day 1: Write an introduction to your story including the main character and setting. It could start with 'Once upon a time'  or 'One sunny day' etc. Who is the main character? Can you describe them? Where is your story set? What is the place like?

Day 2: Add an event to your story. Will something happen to help your character make a wish? Will they meet someone who grants wishes? Will they find an object that grants wishes? Think of a wish your character could ask for.

Day 3: Add some conflict to the story. To make the story more interesting the character should have a problem or something bad or unusual could happen. Maybe something they wish for could go wrong. What could happen to your character? What problem could they have?

Day 4: End the story. Will the character overcome their problem/situation? If so how? Perhaps your character will use a wish to solve the problem. Will it be a happy or sad ending? 

Depending on how challenging your child finds it to write choose whether they write one simple sentence each day, write a longer sentence (use 'and') or write more than one sentence. You can find more information about how to help you child with writing by referring to the 'How to write a sentence' information sheet in your "Home Learning" envelope. 

Key vocabulary: letter, word, sentence, Fred Fingers, gap/space, full stop, describe, character, setting, place, event, conflict, problem, beginning, middle, end

Based on the reading activity for this week 'A Fish' draw a picture and label the features of a fish remembering to add in the features you've read about and any other features you know or find out about.

Key vocabulary: letter, word, Fred Fingers, label, features, vocabulary from reading activity

Fish in the ocean live in salt water. Here you are going to find out what happens when you put small objects in different types of water including salt water.
 

You will need:
Small plastic jewels (If you don’t have jewels, don’t worry. You can use raw eggs, buttons, small grapes or other small plastic objects.)
3/4 clear cups full of water
Salt
Sugar
Baking Soda (if you have it)
*Feel free to test other substances like washing soda, sand, etc. It’s always fun to experiment to see what happens!

Method:
Dissolve 2 tablespoons of salt in one cup, 2 tablespoons of sugar in another cup, and 2 tablespoons of baking soda in a third cup. Make sure you leave one cup as plain, fresh water. (This will show your child what will happen to the object in ordinary water.)

*You may need to add more salt/sugar/baking soda to the water, depending on what kind of jewels or food you are using in this experiment. Add enough that you can see some extra powder on the bottom of the cup. The salt water and baking soda water should make the jewels float.

Put each glass of water on a piece of paper labelled with whichever substance you added to the water.

Ask your child to predict what might happen when they drop the jewels into each cup. Will the jewels sink or float? Why? What will happen to the jewel in salt water? Why?
Put the first jewel in the plain water first so they can see what would generally happen to an object put in water.

Drop the jewels into each cup to find if your child's predictions were correct.

Afterwards reflect on the results:  Did you guess correctly? Why?/Why not? Why did the jewel float in the salt water?  What might happen if you had more/less salt in the water? Does having sugar in the water change what happens to the jewel? Why?/ Why not?

How it works (parents/carers explain what it says below to your child):
When you add salt to water it makes the water more dense. This means it gets heavier. Many objects that sink in fresh water will float in salt water.

Objects float in baking soda water because baking soda is a kind of salt. It dissolves or melts in water to make the water more dense, just like table salt does. However, baking soda has another property, when baking soda dissolves in water some of it reacts. If you look carefully you will see tiny bubbles rising from the bottom of the cup. Over time the tiny bubbles attached to the plastic jewels should carry the jewels to the top of the cup.

Key vocabulary: experiment, predict, dense, heavy, salt water, rise, float, sink, bubbles, dissolve, change, result

In the story, the fish wishes for a castle. Draw a plan of a castle you will make using Lego or whatever construction bricks you have. What does your castle need? How will you get into your castle? What would make your castle extra special? Why? Make the castle following your plan carefully. 

Afterwards reflect on your castle. Does your castle look like the one you planned? Why?/ Why not? Why did you change that part? Is there anything you could add to improve it? 

Take a photograph of your castle and bring it into school with your plan so you can show us how similar they are.

Key vocabulary: model, plan, build, construct, tall, taller, short, shorter, big, bigger, small, smaller, improve, adapt, reflect, same, different, similar

Our story has rhyming words in it like 'blue'  and 'true'  or 'delight' and 'night'. Words that rhyme sound the same at the end. See if you can come up with a list of words that rhyme. Here are a few words you could use. How many words can you find that rhyme with these words:

          cat            dog             king            box           light            hen

Favourite wish

The fish makes lots of wishes in the story. Which one is your favourite? Why? Create a painting, drawing or a collage of your favourite wish?

Possible questions to ask: Why do you think he made that wish? Would you make that wish? Why? What other wish could he make if he had one more wish to make?

Guess My Wish game

The whole family can play this game. Cut out 4-5 fish from recycled card such as cereal or shoe boxes and everyone writes a wish on one fish. Decorate it then put all the fish in a hat/box/bag and shake it up. Each family member takes a turn at taking a fish out of the bag, reads the wish and then has 1 minute to guess whose wish it is. If they guess correctly, they keep the wish, if not then the fish goes back into the bag for someone else to have a turn. You can make this more challenging by asking 2 or 3 questions about the wish before you take a guess and the other family members can only answer yes or no to the questions. You can also change the amount of time they have to guess the answer.

You're a Star

You're a star at doing lots of amazing things such as helping your parents/carers tidy up, practising your phonic words or playing nicely with others. On a piece of paper, come up with 3 "Stars", that you are good at then think about a wish that you want to work on (a goal) or get better at. What kind of wish will it be?

See the document below as an example:

Under the Sea Ice Art

Freeze some water in a large tray such as a roasting/baking tray or even a flat lid. Once frozen, paint an underwater picture on the ice. If you don't have paints then add few drops of food colouring into a very small pot of water. Then place a piece of paper on top of the picture and press down gently, rubbing all over. Leave the paper to dry then wipe off the remaining paint off the ice and you can paint another picture. Once the paper is dry, decorate it or draw more sea creatures using crayons, pencils or pens.

Possible questions to ask: How does the ice feel? Is it slippery? Sticky? What happens to the ice as you paint? Why? Does it get harder to paint as the ice melts? What happens to the paint when the ice melts? Are the colours still bright? Why?

Sea World

This activity is made using food but you can replace them using other things. You will need yellow or green jelly, blue food colouring, porridge, shell pasta shapes, a large tray like container such as a baking/roasting tray, a large tub, a box (lined with cling film) or even a small paddling pool.

First make the jelly, add a few drops of blue food colouring to turn it blue-green. In the tray, place the porridge around to create the beach. (You can use pebbles, beads, buttons or rice instead.) Then mush up the jelly, add more water to it to make it runny. Add some pasta shells or real shells. (You can also make your own shells from cut out recycled materials.) Then add the sea creatures and plants such as fish, crabs, turtles, seaweed, rocks. If you don't have any sea creatures, make some using recycled plastic bottles, egg cartons, yogurt pots, cups. Below are some pictures to show you how to create the Sea World with or without the food. Remember you can use your toys to make the sea creatures too!

Songs

Counting Fish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc0geOxHFYU&vl=en

Old Macdonald had an ocean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUp5N3KUDQ0

The words are in the document below to this song.