We are excited to share a FREE set of activities to welcome children to school on their very first day! Using the fantastic book ‘Hey Duggee First Day at Squirrel Club’, we have developed a follow up activity and keepsake certificate that can be personalised and taken home. ( Book available on Amazon ) Download Includes: Lesson ideas sheet with lots of fun ideas for the first day of school and links to additional resources. A hide and seek activity game. Print off the images of the characters and hide around the classroom. A tick sheet is included for the children. First day of school certificate. A double sided document, in either A4 or postcard size, which can be personalised and printed for each child. A first day of school badge image which can be printed as stickers using Avery labels. Duggee is a great character to use at the very start of the year as most children will already be familiar with him. This familiarity creates a link for children with their new classroom and teacher. A topic that they can all talk about. Our hide and seek activity, uses the characters featured in the story and encourages children to explore their new classroom. This can be a particularly good activity for more timid children. Stickers and certificates to take home make a special reward for children. We are ExcitEd! Follow us on Facebook for more ideas and freebies.

We are ExcitEd to share a fabulous literacy lesson for KS1. Focusing on developing children’s knowledge and correct use of sentences and creating a class book linked to the Usborne touchy feely book ‘That’s Not My Dragon.’ This approximately 1hr stand-alone lesson, has been planned for children working in Year 1 and using the National Curriculum. Although, it would also be suitable for year 2 classes in need of support with accurate sentence writing. TAF statements have been used to differentiate this lesson for children working towards, at the expected level or at greater depth. This download includes: A detailed lesson plan with links to the National Curriculum. A PowerPoint presentation to support the lesson. Printable sentence building cards for use in the main part of the lesson. A printable book page template / Worksheets - differentiated Support Materials - Differentiated word banks and sentence builder cards. Printable dragon colouring images. The objective of this lesson is for all children to write accurate sentences about their own dragons. Most children will then extend their simple sentences with ‘and’ and some will create compound sentences using ‘but’ and ‘so’. The main teaching of the lesson starts with an adult led reading of ‘That’s Not My Dragon’ with the reveal of the teacher’s dragon at the end of the book. This acts as a hook for the lesson. During the lesson, the rules for sentence writing are reviewed and then children are asked to help physically create sentences about the teacher’s dragon using sentence building cards. (Included). To accompany and enhance the lesson a PowerPoint presentation is included. All visuals have dyslexia friendly styling, with a clear and simple format. The lesson plan has also been broken down alongside each corresponding PPT slide in the notes to support lesson delivery. To create your class book, a page template is included. 2 versions, each with a dragon image to colour, but one version with a sentence starter already included and the other without the sentence starter and more space for children to write. Alternatively, separate dragon colouring images are also included if you wish for children’s writing and colouring to be done separately. In their independent work, children working towards the expected standard are supported with a word bank and sentence building cards, similar to the class activity. Support materials are also included for children working at the expected level or at greater depth. These are appropriately differentiated to include a wider range of vocabulary and conjunctions and can be used at your discretion We have found this to be a fun lesson with a fantastic outcome that children often like to revisit when in the class library. We are ExcitEd! Follow us on Facebook for more ideas and freebies. This resource was updated following teacher feedback.