Moderate and Hard
Day One
Watch Caterpillar Shoes (above) and discuss the story. Your child may need to watch it again and pause it at different points in order to support your child to answer some of the questions.
At the beginning of the story, what did the caterpillar like to do the most?
Why did the caterpillar wear shoes on his feet?
Why did the caterpillar want to give his shoes away?
Which shoes did the caterpillar give to the woodlouse?
How did the woodlouse feel after he was given his shoes and how do you know?
How does the percussion help us understand how the animals move?
Why do you think the spider was given the slippers?
How did the caterpillar feel after he gave the spider her shoes and how do you know?
What shoes did the grasshopper get and why?
What reasons did the beetle give for liking her new shoes?
What did the snail want to do after receiving his shoe?
Who did the caterpillar give his last shoe to?
What happened to the caterpillar after he gave all his shoes away?
How did the caterpillar feel at the end of the story and how do you know?
How many animals were given shoes in total?
Are there any parts of the film you disliked and why?
Does this story remind you of any other stories you have read or watched?
If they find this last question tricky, read or watch The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Smartest Giant in Town and discuss how they are similar to Caterpillar Shoes.
Day Two
Discuss the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Explain that Caterpillar Shoes is fiction but today we will look at some caterpillar facts. Ask your child to read the facts in the activity below and sort them into the subtitles. Talk to your child about how organising facts into groups with subtitles helps us to understand a non-fiction text.
Day Three
Watch the film again and explain to your child that we are going to work towards writing a report about mini-beasts. We need to practise writing sentences with full stops and capital letters in the right place so that our facts can be understood. Watch the video below and then print the sentences activity. The sentences all have mistakes! Ask your child to correct the sentences by adding full stops and capital letters and correcting where there are capital letters that should not be there. For more of a challenge, you could ask your child to rewrite the sentences so that they are correct.
Day Four
Introduce the idea of a glossary in the back of a non-fiction book. If you have one at home, show your child and discuss how it works. Alternatively, you could open a free online non-fiction from the Oxford Owl website. You will find instructions on how to do this in the 'Online Reading Books' section of the Year One pages. Click HERE to open a book with a glossary in Oxford Owl once you have logged in.
Today, we are going to use a picture dictionary to create our own glossary. HERE is a great online picture dictionary. Talk to your child about how a dictionary works. Show them how you can click on the beginning letter of their chosen word and then look for the picture to find it. For some letters (such as C) the words are organised by their first two letters and you will see this across the top. Encouraging your child to sing the ABC song as they look for each letter often really helps.
Open the document below and use the online picture dictionary to look up the meanings of the words. Ask your child to write a sentence in their own words to explain the meaning of the words to make a glossary.
There are some extra, trickier words at the end if your child would like more of a challenge. These are not in the online picture dictionary so they will need to use a dictionary at home to find these or click HERE for an online dictionary.
Day Five
Click HERE to watch a video about joining sentences. Print the activity below and read the first page to your child. Try to use a really boring voice and emphasise how the sentences all start the same way. Discuss with your child what you could do to make it sound less boring. On the second page you will find an activity. Ask your child to cut out the sentences and joining words (conjunctions) and arrange them so that they make a longer sentence with two parts. They may need prompting to edit the capital letter of the sentence after the conjunction so that it is a lower case letter.
For a challenge, you could ask your child if there are different ways they could organise the sentences so that they still make sense.