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You will find affiliate links in this post. I have only written about things we’ve tried and actually recommend. If you buy something through these affiliate links I may earn a small commission and no cost to you – if that happens, thank you very much :-) 1.       What colour is that horse? Find out the names of the colour of horses. For example, what colour is appaloosa, bay or piebald? Then, if possible, go for a walk/drive/train/bike/bus ride and go looking for some horses – record what colours you find?   2.       Identify the different parts of a horse. Whereabouts are the hocks, fetlocks and withers?   3.       Design your own show jumps or cross country jumps. You could make them from paper straws or wooden dowls . When I was 13, I made some wooden show jumps for my guinea pigs. Turns out they were surprisingly agile creatures and seemed to really enjoy scampering along my course!! Alternatively set up your own jumping course in the garden or park and see if you can make it round all clear.   4.       Horses are measured in ‘hands’; see how tall you would be if you were a horse – how many hands high are you?. A hand is 4 inches so to see how many ‘hands high’ (hh) you are, take your height (in inches) and divide by 4.   The height of a horse is measured from the ground up to their withers. So a horse measuring 16hh would be 64inches tall. A hand can be divided into 4 parts, each part being 1inch. So a horse that is 67inches tall would be 16.3hh.   5.       Learn how to draw a horse. Draw 50 horses  is a great book that gives you a step by step breakdown making it easier to draw some brilliant horses.   6.       Have you noticed that riders often wear a colourful silk on their riding hat. Design and draw your own colourful silk in your favourite colours.   7.       Watch a video  on how horses have their shoes put on. 8.       Look up how many breeds of horses there are and how different types are used all over the world for example Irish draughts, Andalusian, Marwari and Arabian horses.   9.       Watch a dressage routine  on YouTube and then choreograph your own routine to do whilst pretending to ride a horse.   10.    When horses are competing in show jumping or eventing they often have their manes plaited. Take a long piece of carboard, punch holes along one edge and tie a piece of string to each hole. Learn to plait either lots of little plaits or one long continuous plait. Your Horse magazine has a tutorial on plaiting manes here .

You will find affiliate links in this post. If you buy something through these affiliate links I may earn a small commission at no cost to you – if that happens, thank you very much :-) 1.       Arm yourself with a pocket microscope   and take a closer look at the sand. Discover the different shapes and sizes of the grains and check out this article  to learn more about sand composition. 2.       Collect driftwood, shells, pretty pebbles and sea glass and use it to create something beautiful at home. Take a look at my pin board here for inspiration. 3.       Have a good look around and find a big rock of any shape and decorate it with seaweed, smaller stones or shells to make beach animals. 4.       Check out this great oceanography nature study from Harbor & Sprout. It covers sea shell creatures, seaweed, tidal pools and sea turtles. 5.       Take a bag and do a beach clean-up, and if you’re in Cornwall then keep a look out for Lego that is still being found after a container of it fell in the sea in 1997. Nearly 5 million pieces of Lego were lost including octopi and dragons along with flippers and seaweed. Read about it in Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea  or in this news article . 6.       Find a stick or pointy stone and draw seaside related words or pictures in the sand. Play games like hangman, Tic-Tac-Toe or Pictionary. 7.       Keep handy a rock pool guide  and explore what delights the rock pools have to offer. Don't forget to peek under rocks near the tide line too; that's where we find the most crabs. 8.       Pack some water blasters , establish a home base and have a water fight. Use large rocks for cover or build a sand wall! Who can get back to home base without getting hit?! 9.       Take a giant beach ball with you and have a blast playing beach football or volleyball. You'll probably need to draw a pretty large pitch in the sand as it will definitely not be an ordinary beach ball game!! 10.    Finally, don’t forget to build a good old fashioned sandcastle. Add a moat and decorate it with shells and pebbles. Perhaps have a competition to see who can build the most castle’y castle! Check out English Heritage's guide to building sandcastles for some great tips.

You will find affiliate links in this post. I have only written about things we’ve tried and actually recommend. If you buy something through these affiliate links I may earn a small commission at no cost to you – if that happens, thank you very much :-) MEL science generously sent us one for their science kits to give a try. I’d seen the adverts and read how popular these science kits are so I was very excited when we received a kit in the post. We have just completed our first set, the ‘Spectrum Goggles’ and I am happy to say we all enjoyed it 😊 If you’ve not come across MEL Science, it is a science subscription box for ages 5+. Each month you get a new kit to explore and play with; choosing from STEM, Physics or Chemistry. Just opening the box to discover all the little bits inside was fun and impatient little fingers were desperate to pull everything out. I just managed to get a photo before everything got pulled out. Inside the box was everything we needed to make some wooden glasses with different coloured lenses and mirror lenses. There weren’t any separate instructions so we opened the book. It jumped straight in with a story, the characters of which are on a mission. Shortly the spectrum goggles are needed to solve a puzzle and instructions are given for their construction. The instructions for building the goggles were clear and straightforward. There were a lot of parts to stick or put together and the kids helpfully shared each part out. This particular kit is labelled as 5+ and I only had to step in and help when the protective plastic was tricky to remove from the lenses. It wasn’t long before the glasses were assembled and the kids were fighting over whose turn it was to have a go looking through the coloured lenses! The story in the book continued and the kids had to use the glasses to help in the story. The book also contained several information pages on how we see colour, going into detail about rods and cones, talking about seeing 3D images and how our right and left eyes see different images. Although I read the information out loud most didn’t land as the kids were more interested in experimenting with the different coloured lenses. They were fascinated at how the lenses changed the colour of their Lego. We’ll come back to the science behind seeing colour another time. The last part of the kit was to make mirror lenses; these show what it is like to have a different field of view. The book describes several animals and how their field of view is different from ours. This was also very popular with the kids, again squabbling on who could look around like a chameleon first!! Important notes: The box and its contents all felt high quality and sturdy enough to survive the kids playing with it all. Straightforward and clear instructions. No prep is required in advance, you can literally just open the box and go. Click here to find out more about MEL Science and to get your hands on your own kit to play with. Or check out the Science resource page for more inspiration.

You will find affiliate links in this post. I have only written about things we’ve tried and actually recommend. If you buy something through these affiliate links I may earn a small commission and no cost to you – if that happens, thank you very much :-) 1.      Create a nature assault course. Fashion loose branches into jumps, race around prickly bushes, leap over ditches and tiptoe through patches of daisies without touching one…lose a point if you do step on a daisy! 2.      See what you can discover with a pocket microscope. Be fascinated by what leaves and flowers look like up close and see if you can you find a bug that will sit obligingly still while you take a peek. 3.      Make a quadrat and have fun exploring the changing biodiversity during your walk. Record what you find in the frame. Identify and tally the number of plants and note any other features. Then try this again in a different patch on your walk. We cut frames out of some cardboard recycling and they worked perfectly for the duration of the kids attention! 4.      Have fun hunting on a rainbow or alphabet scavenger hunt. 5.      Collect flowers and leaves to create a beautiful ‘stained glass’ picture. The Artful Parent has a great tutorial here. 6.      Collect pretty flowers and press them. Perhaps they can be used on home made cards or even for the stained glass picture in the previous activity. Pressing flowers can be done by placing them sandwiched on kitchen towel between heavy books or using a flower press. 7.      Fill a vase with flowers! Simply draw a vase onto some paper or card and then make several holes for the flower stems to poke through. Pick some pretty flowers and fill up your vase. We had lots of fun trying this but hadn’t planned how to transport them home. Thankfully they didn’t get too squashed between pages in my notebook and made it home in one piece. We then used some sticky tape on the back to hold the stems in place. 8.      Make a nature globe by placing cut up petals and leaves in a jar of water. Ninos and Nature has a great tutorial here with the added bonus of learning a little Spanish too. 9.      Take a bird book out with you and see how many different birds you can spot. Also check out Merlin Bird ID, an app that you can use to identify bird song. See if you can hear the skylark. 10.   Learn all about bees and see how many different bees you can spot on your walk. There are hundreds of different bees in the UK.

You will find affiliate links in this post. I have only written about things we’ve tried and actually recommend. If you buy something through these affiliate links I may earn a small commission and no cost to you – if that happens, thank you very much :-) It feels like it has been raining forever! The result being, we've stayed indoors more and dug through the board games to see what will cheer us up. It’s also my go to tactic when the kids start to squabble and pick fights with each other! Of course it doesn’t mean they won’t fight over who shuffles the cards or who sets up the board – sigh!! Board games are not only fun but they also help develop a whole bunch of skills like social skills spatial awareness negotiation problem solving logic critical thinking communication maths skills and they’re also just a nice way to connect with each other :-) I've recently learnt about gameschooling where games are used as an intentional learning tool. This is especially great for learners who are less keen on formal learning. I will be delving deeper into this as it will definitely suit one of mine very well! I'll keep you posted on our journey into this but if you want to know more about gameschooling check out this great blog by The Mulberry Journey. Here are some of the games we're playing at the moment: 1.     Uno One firm favourite is Uno. If you’ve never played it before is it a colourful card game where, to win, you need to get rid of all your cards. Except your opponents will try to prevent you doing this at every opportunity. It is a great game to introduce the concept of strategy and we’ve enjoyed watching the kids strategic skills develop over the course of the billion or so games we’ve played!! I do enjoy the game a lot, it’s fun, can be quick, however the kids regularly gang up on me to make me lose! 2. Stomp The Plank Another favourite is Stomp The Plank. To win, your plank must not topple into the sea. As you play the game you may have to add counters to the end of your plank or move the cute elephant playing piece along the plank – each increasing your topple risk. It is a very entertaining game and subtly teaches about balance, tipping points and risk taking. I like this game as the kids can’t pick on me, it’s all down to the luck of the draw - Ha! 3. Monopoly Deal A new one we’ve been playing lately is Monopoly Deal. This is Monopoly turned into a card game. It’s cleverly designed; you still collect properties, add houses and hotels and collect rent. Some strategic skill is required but for us, this game is about coping when the game doesn’t go in your favour. Just like the original board game, it has proven to be emotionally challenging for the kids when something happens and a property is lost or money has to be paid – however, they love it when the game is going in their favour, and they can accumulate a decent pile of Monopoly money!! 4. Kersplatt We were given Kersplatt for Christmas – think Ludo with added playdoh! You make your own playing pieces with the playdoh provided and work your way around the board to get to your home base. If someone draws a Kersplatt card then you are at risk of getting squashed! The player with the Kersplatt card can take their hand, hold it over your beautifully crafted playdoh piece and with a hefty amount of glee flatten your playdoh. Obviously, in an attempt to role model good sportsmanship, I shrug off the squashing with a chuckle and reach for the playdoh to craft a new work of art. However when the tables turn and I, the parent, get to flatten one of the kids pieces they object – where’s the fun, eh?! By the end the board is a devastation of my playdoh and the kids smugly declaring they’ve won!! 5. Pass The Pigs Pass The Pigs. It’s simply, you ‘roll’ the two pigs and score points depending on their landing position. The kids have a lot of laughs over the various positions and combinations of positions. They could just roll the pigs and not bother with the scoring; that is entertainment enough. However, if we do start to write down the score, I have to leave it completely in their hands. If I write down the scores and then, out of habit, say something like “oh what is 15 plus 7”, they immediately cotton on to my opportunistic maths and complain that I’m making them do school - Doh!! Another problem comes when there is debate over how to score a particular roll; this squabble is usually the signal that we need move onto a different game! 6. IQ Puzzler Lastly, IQ Puzzler is fun, challenging, frustrating, infuriating and satisfying! It involves perfectly fitting together a set of individually shaped pieces. You start by laying out the board as per the instruction and then you have to complete the board by figuring out how the remaining pieces fit together. The number of pieces you have to fit will depend on the difficulty level you want to play. This is great for spatial awareness and if they’re in the right mood, this can keep the kids attention for a long time. They even join forces and try to solve it together which gives you that warm fuzzy feeling that happens when siblings get along! Chess is another great game and I was amazed and impressed at how quickly my kids picked up the rules. If you fancy learning or improving your skills then take a look at the resources on the chess page 😊 Drop me a line and tell me your favourite games or perhaps even games you’ve had to lock away for fear of starting a war!!

Hi and welcome :-) My name is Toni and I have built this website to hopefully make it a little easier for home learners to find the resources they need on their home learning adventure. I know what it's like when you're finding a particular system just isn't working for you and you're faced with trawling though social media or google trying to find something different. Well hopefully Prepare To Learn will save you some trawling time!! Head to the Subjects & Interests page to find the resources you need on your learning adventure. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Prepare To Learn. If you'd like to contact me please email me at admin@preparetolearn.com I hope you have fun exploring the website, Make it a great adventure, Toni