Teach Primary Issue 18.2

Take a leap into the leap year and enjoy the fact that ‘an extra day means extra play’ with these fun cross-curricular activities for the classroom and playground. Find out about ‘leaplings’ and learn the rhyme that helps you remember the days in each month. Try some number games too, using the four times table, and measure the lengths of leaps to see who can jump the furthest. You can even hold a party on or around the 29th and pack it with as much leap day-themed fun as possible. And why not make some food for everyone to tuck into while they celebrate? 1 | WORDS AND RHYMES People who have their birthday on leap day are called ‘leaplings’. There are over four million leaplings in the world. Are there any in your school or community? When it’s not a leap year, leaplings can choose to celebrate their birthdays on 29th February or 1st March. One of the most well-known traditions of a leap year is that women are ‘allowed’ to propose to men, unlike the usual convention. Can the children invent some new (and perhaps rather more modern) ideas for things that are allowed on 29th February only? Make a list of their suggestions and organise a class vote to choose the favourite. Use this traditional rhyme to help children learn the number of days in each month. Practise saying it with the children until they can remember it by heart. Thirty days have September, April, June, and November, All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, And that has twenty-eight days clear, And twenty-nine in each leap year. 2 | MISSING NUMBERS Start by talking about the fact that this year, 2024, is a leap year because it can be divided by four. Try counting in fours, forwards and backwards, chant the four times table, and ask the children to make groups of four. Do some leap year counting. Provide number lines for children to complete START HERE MAIN LESSON WHAT THEY’LL LEARN l What a leap year is l Why the leap year was created l How many days there are in each month l Counting forwards and backwards in fours l How to organise a party English, Maths, History, PE Introduce the term ‘leap year’. Begin by asking the class if anyone knows what it means. Can anyone guess? Recite the months of the year with the children, and ask if they know which month it is today. Show the children a calendar and ask them to point out different months on it. What is different about this February compared to the other months in the year? Can they tell you how many days there are in February? Explain that this year there will be an extra day, or leap day. Invite children to think about how they would like to celebrate the extra day. What would they like to do? How could they make it into a special day? Jump to it! Let’s learn about leap years Help children to discover the facts and fiction around 2024’s extra day, with this intriguing lesson plan from Judith Harries KS1 LESSON PLAN @ judeharries 72 | www.teachwire.net