Dry Drayton Church of England (C) Primary School
For useful websites for you and your family from CCC and the Early Help Team
Virtual Tours
Some of the best museum, zoo and art gallery tours for children are available online.
Many museums, art galleries and zoos across the world have set up virtual tours - ideal for all ages. Here are just a few ideas – there are many more:
Virtual Zoo Trips
You can visit some of the world’s best zoos, for free, right from your own home.
There are educational resources such as worksheets, tasks and craft ideas, perfect for keeping the kids busy. Whether you’ve got a budding zoologist at home, or simply want to have ‘Penguin Cam’ on in the background, discover three of the best virtual school trips to the zoo.
San Diego Zoo live cams
From the live Baboon Cam to Polar Bear Cams, the San Diego Zoo has something for everyone with a passion for wildlife.
Their dedicated educational site contains pre-recorded videos of the animals alongside extensive craft tutorials, downloadable colouring sheets and recipes. See the Live Cams here; pre-recorded videos here; and activities for younger kids here.
Chester Zoo Learning Resources
Bring Chester Zoo straight to your kitchen table thanks to these fun learning resources. Filterable by educational stage, subject and topic, there’s something for every age to be getting along with if you're all stuck inside.
Create and play with downloadable masks: For tiny tots aged three to five, there are downloadable animal masks, perfect for colouring in and wearing on a Facetime call to family and friends.
Read and write with animal fact files: For kids aged seven and over, take a look at these animal fact files. Ask them to pick out facts about each animal and write a paragraph to explain more about the specific species.
On top of lots of live videos already on Chester Zoo's Facebook page, they'll be hosting all-day live virtual tours featuring the kids' favourite animals, so they can enjoy a whole day of animal antics.
Check out the red pandas, Rothschild's giraffes, Asian elephants, and butterflies, before catching up with sun bears, the Sumatran tigers, the Humboldt penguins and the aquarium.
Feeding Time at Cincinnati Zoo
Visit the Cincinnati Zoo Facebook page for plenty of educational videos featuring the zookeepers, explaining all about the animals.
Home Safaris at 7pm: Each day at 7pm (UK time), the zoo will livestream a home safari to help make the time at home fun and educational.
The home safaris will be streamed on Facebook Live, but if you don’t have social media or would prefer to watch them at a different time, they are posted to the Cincinnati Zoo website the next day.
Not only do these home safaris feature videos, they also include craft ideas that can be completed indoors or in the garden.
The Fiona Show: With over 3.2million followers, baby hippo Fiona is one of Cincinnati Zoo’s most famous residents. Born six weeks premature, the Fiona Show follows her life over 12 episodes allowing the kids to see her remarkable story. And you can watch them all here on the zoo's Facebook page.
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Look Think Do: resources to help you stay creative and connected at home.
We are missing welcoming visitors of all ages to learn, create and enjoy themselves in the museum. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be sharing lots of different ways for you to connect with the collections, be inspired, create, respond and relax.
Look Think Do is a brand new set of activities designed as a starting point for looking, talking and doing together. They have been created with families learning together and teachers planning remote learning in mind, but we hope people of all ages with enjoy the opportunity to spend some time with some of our collection favourites – from ancient Egypt to Impressionist painting.
New entries are added on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout April and May 2020, with extra activities and virtual stories for families with under 5s on the first Saturday of the month.
Contact education@fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk with questions and suggestions about how to stay connected with the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Thanks for these great ideas J
RSPB
Create a multi-storey hotel that's full of all sorts of natural materials, providing hidey-holes for creatures galore.
Safe hideaways can be hard for wildlife to find in some gardens, and what better use for all your garden waste and odds and ends?
Build your bug hotel (also known as a wildlife hotel or stack) well and it could shelter anything from hedgehogs to toads, solitary bees to bumblebees, and ladybirds to woodlice.
The Wildlife Trust
Build your own bug mansion and attract a multitude of creepy crawlies to your garden.
An average garden accommodates more than 2,000 different species of insect! Very few of these creatures cause significant damage to our prized plants, and there are many more insects that actually help us to control the ones that do! By providing the right habitats, we can greatly increase the number of ‘beneficial’ insects in the garden.
One way to increase the comfort of your patch for insects is to build them a bug mansion.
Woodland Trust
10 nature activities for kids. We hope these ideas help you enjoy your time together while your children are at home.
For more inspiration, take a look at our series of activity blogs to discover more crafts and ways to explore nature at home – details on the website.
You can also check out our Tree Tools for Schools website. It's home to all of our educational materials for schools - from wildlife ID sheets to interactive puzzles and quizzes. So you'll find plenty of ways to keep your children engaged and active.
Moving More while at Home
During this testing time, we remain committed to ensuring disabled people can be and stay active. Our team is here to support your organisation in whatever way we can.
There are many ways to continue enjoying an active lifestyle. This includes adapting activities so everyone in the household, disabled and non-disabled, can take part together.
Looking after your Mental Health
This situation affects us all – some cope very well, while others find themselves feeling low, anxious or depressed. Looking after yourself and your family is important – please ask for help if you need it. I have attached a list of organisations you can contact for help and support. This is just a short list, there are many other organisations you can contact – if you would like more information about them please get in touch.
Parent Zone: Video Chatting: A Guide for Parents/Carers
Hands up if you’ve used Zoom, FaceTime, Houseparty, Skype or WhatsApp to stay in touch with family and friends since COVID-19 restrictions began? That’ll be most of us then, and the same is probably true of our children.
Video chat is a great way for young people to feel close to their friends during this unsettling time, so long as they’re having a positive experience when using it. Here’s how to help children of different ages get the most from their video chatting experiences.
Advice for parents of primary school-aged children
Advice for parents of secondary school-aged children