By Kirsty James
How To: Host Your Own Super Learning day
Thu 4 Jun 2020
We’re quite a way into home learning now and let’s just say that our initial enthusiasm is wavering.
My 12-year-old wants to spend all his time watching Anime or reading Manga and my 9-year-old is an ambitious baker and crafter. Unsurprisingly neither of these activities are featuring highly on the tasks sent home by their teachers so we were reaching an impasse.
We needed a day off timetable.
My daughter’s school sometimes hosts a ‘Super Learning Day’ – all day they participate in different activities all centred on a single theme. We decided we could round off our own Super Learning Day with a family film. What’s not to like?
I threw lots of themes into a hat and asked my son to pick one (quite a tense moment). JAPAN – phew!
Before I go into how we all got on with our Japan Super Learning Day, it’s time for my top tips.
My Top Tips
Tip 1
Make sure to choose your theme a few days ahead and prepare your activities in advance.
Tip 2
Set aside plenty of time on the day for all the activities you’ve planned. Trust me, you’ll be a lot busier than you think!
Tip 3
Think through potential themes carefully. I thought Christmas was a great choice but was pretty relieved when I didn’t have to get the Christmas decorations out.
Tip 4
Don’t feel pressured to buy anything special. Get creative by making, repurposing and reusing things that you already have.
Tip 5
Probably the most important one – enjoy yourself!
As I handed out some tasks to prepare for the big day, I could already see that they were really looking forward to it.
My youngest dashed off to get started on a PowerPoint presentation for us all and my eldest went back to his sketch book with a smile on his face (a big win)! During the week before it was lovely to see the children working together on their presentation or discussing potential activities we could do.
We kicked off our Japan Super Learning Day with their presentation to provide some background. Then we looked at the language and learned a few words (それは素晴らしかったです). We did some Manga style stories, had a go at writing our own Haiku poems and enjoyed trying out origami. We even tried different Japanese foods, with Sushi for lunch and a delicious Katsu curry for dinner.
We ended our day with the beautiful Studio Ghibli film When Marnie Was There. We watched the Japanese version with subtitles (to make sure we got reading in the day), I even managed to get my hands on some Japanese snacks – a film night essential.
The whole thing was a huge success and was definitely one of the more memorable lockdown days that we’ve had some far. Give it a go – and let us know how your family get on!