Win £100 to spend of equipment for school

Spotty Green Frog are running a writing/drawing competition for schools and are offering prizes of:

• £100 for your school to spend at www.SpottyGreenFrog.co.uk plus a prize for you if you win a category.
• £25 for your school to spend at www.SpottyGreenFrog.co.uk plus a prize for you if you are runner up in a category.
• Best illustrations and best handwriting – a surprise!

The categories are:

• Nursery – Louis the Frog – picture only!

• Reception – Year 1 – Louis the Frog has an Adventure

• Years 2 – 3 – Louis the Frog Plays a Joke

• Years 4 – 6 – Louis the Frog – a Mystery Story

Louis the frog is the logo character of the company. 

Work can be submitted from home or school.

Spotty Green Frog offer a wide range of products for primary schools and children at home. This includes gardening and cooking equipment specially designed for children as well as many other educational toys and resources including for indoor play, outdoor activities and resources.

Take a look at there website to see what your children could win - competition details and entry form can be obtained from here

And if you do win let me know as I'd love one of my visitors to win!

Time to think of seeds.

If you plan to buy seeds from one of the many seed companies then you need to start thinking of what you want to buy now - that is if you haven't already.

You may want to involve the children and also add a real life project to your curriculum.

Depending on the age of the children these are just some ideas:

Integrate into the ICT curriculum

1. Children to browse the seed catalogues online (there are direct links to some on my website here) You may decide to give them some particular seeds or varieties to search for on the Internet (Gives practice of using links and icons and also searching using key words etc)
2. Search for seeds that fulfil a particular criteria e.g. can be sown in a given month
3. Compare different varieties of seed for a particular type of plant and try to decide which would be best for growing, within the school calendar - you don't want a harvest in August, varieties that are easy to grow or produce reliable crops, if space is an issue then varieties that don't grow too large. 

Link to the maths and ICT curriculum -

1. Compare the prices of seeds offered by various seed companies - many give the number of seeds in each packet so the children could use a spreadsheet to work out the cost per 10/100 seeds etc. For younger children this could be set up for them so they only input data and older children can set up their own spreadsheet. Price per pack/formula to cost price on 1 seed/ formula to cost 10/100 seeds etc.)
2. Use a spreadsheet to cost buying seeds from different companies - not forgetting delivery charges - you could set different pairs or groups of children the task of researching a particular seed company

If you can think of other ideas then please add them by posting a comment.

Help in choosing varieties and types of plants that are suitable for growing with children and in particular in a school environment is given on my website click here