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Saturday 4 July 2020

Lockdown Life: Stampy's Home School!

While the rest of the country is going into the next phase of opening up, Leicester has taken a step back into more severe Lockdown once more.  (Thanks to Covid-19 we've now had 65 days of home schooling, one week to go until the supposed start of the summer holidays...)  To cheer ourselves up, we decided that part of Seb's home schooling this week (he does 'school' every morning) would involve Stampy's Wonder Quest series.


If you have a KS2 kid this really works, since the topics are things they'd be covering at school.  Hooray!

Wonder Quest is an edutainment children's web series from Disney's Maker Studios, created by Stampy (Joseph Garrett).  There are two series of it, which aired in 2015/2016.  It's set in Minecraft, and Stampy is in his usual Stampy Cat form.  Stampy and the Wizard Keen have to go on adventures to stop the evil wizard Heinous and the evil inventor Rama.  It's a fun series to watch!  It has loads of other YouTubers guesting in it, like StaceyPlays, iBallisticSquid, EvanTube and AmyLee, who are all in their usual Minecraft skins.  

It's funny, well made, and educational!  Yes, it really is.  As part of their adventures Stampy and the Wizard Keen have to do science and maths and stuff to solve problems!  Most of the things we had from Seb's school were English and Maths, so it's good to have some fun science to think about too.  It's pretty much at his level as well.  The thing we did yesterday was something he was supposed to learn at school but hadn't because he's been at home.  

As well as the longer story-driven episodes made in Minecraft, there are short more focused educational shows called 'I Wonder', which concentrate on the 'learning bit' of the longer episode.  These are animated rather than being Minecraft-style, so Stampy is like an actual anthropomorphised cat!  Seb's been watching Wonder Quest anyway, because he wants to, but I've taken some of these 'I Wonder' clips and used them in Sebbie School.

We did four topics this week.  

Topic One: Solids, Liquids and Gases


We watched this (though why are they boiling tea in the kettle?!) and then did a sorting activity I found online.  (Basically put the items into the solid/liquid/gas categories.)

Solids, liquids and gases sorting activity

Topic Two: The Solar System


Having watched this, and learnt about the sizes of planets and the order they go in, we wrote our own mnemonic to remember the order.  And completed another printable activity I found online.

Our mnemonic was: My Very Energetic Mermaid Just Swims Under Narwhals.  (At least, at some points that was what it was, it kept changing to even more stupid things...)

The planets in order

And yes, I know he spelt Jupiter "Jwoopita", he did that on purpose because he thought it was funny...

Topic Three: Parts of a Plant


With this one we did a bit of flower dissection, which was fun - I helpfully had an African Violet plant in the kitchen that had come out in lots of flowers.  We also labelled a couple of things I found online, and stuck the bits of dissected plant onto one of them.  

I know he definitely would have been learning about plants if he'd been at school, so at least he hasn't missed out on this vital information regarding anthers, sepals and stamens.  ;-)

Parts of a plant

Topic Four: Water Cycle


I would have loved to try the experiment in this one - perhaps we'll try it if we get a sunny day next week.  For some reason Seb found it oddly difficult to remember the bits of the water cycle.  Perhaps if I make him spin his weather dial thingummy on a regular basis he'll actually remember it...

The water cycle

That's all we've done so far, then.  We might do some more.  I'd highly recommend both Wonder Quest and the accompanying 'I Wonder' shows.

Kids definitely learn better if they like and respect the person teaching them.  Going back to these Wonder Quest shows and seeing that YouTubers like Stampy place value on kids learning stuff is fantastic.  Seb enjoys them and the teaching is clear.  The whole show is really well thought out.  So thanks, Stampy!  Thanks for demonstrating to Seb that learning is important.  Thanks for placing value on educating kids.  I appreciate it.  :-D

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