Wednesday 18 November 2015

Literacy Sensory Play



We gently incorporate letters and sounds into every day life to develop the children's awareness of the purpose of letters and gradually gain awareness of the sounds that each letter makes. The children love open ended sensory play so through introducing the bright coloured magnetic letters amongst the beans and animals the children naturally began to incorporate them into their play without adult prompting. 

Initially the children began to look for the letters that their name began with with one little boy particularly proud to locate the M for the start of his name, something that he is only just becoming aware of. The other children began to pick out familiar sounds as well as starting to put the letters together to form their full names. 

Throughout the play the children also used their fingers to draw patterns through the beans as well as using their fingers to place the beans within the pots provided, all the time developing the fine motor skills that will help them when they begin to write. The children talked constantly amongst themselves, making up stories about the animals and pretending it was raining as hard as  it had been in the park that morning! They even began to create names for the animals using the letters provided. 

Thursday 12 November 2015

Diwali 2015

Diwali marks the Hindu New Year and is a 3 day festival. It can also be known as the festival of lights as Hindus light up their houses with Diwali clay lamps know as diyas. At Diwali, Hindus draw bright Rangoli patterns to encourage the goddess Lakshmi to enter their homes.  Having looked at some pictures of the Diwali celebrations we through it would be a nice idea to create our own rangoli patterns. 


We decided to make the haters with the natural materials we had in the house. We made some play dough and gathered up some beans, lentils and chickpeas. We then looked at some simple patterns to give the children some ideas. 

Using their fine motor skills the children picked out the objects they wanted for their pattern and began to create this on the dough they had rolled out. We ended up with a huge variety of patterns and the year 2 boys (aged 6) particularly enjoyed this activity.

Wednesday 11 November 2015

Armistice Day



The children in my care learn a great deal from participating in the world around them and as they are currently 3 to 4 years old I thought they would understand the basics of Armistice Day. We started by watching a short film on the computer that explained why we wear poppies and the children all recognised the importance of the number 11.

We then created some pictures of the poppies that the children noted they had seen lots of people wearing and talked about how these poppies showed people were remembering the soldiers. They used their  finger prints to create their own field of poppies and, once the pictures were dry, used green markers to draw on the stalks of their poppies. Our eldest (8 years old) wrote out a poem on her picture. 


On November 11th we talked about the purpose of the 2 minute silence and I turned on the television so that the boys could see people around the country preparing for this. At 11am the boys participated in the 2 minute silence with the rest of the country.

Thursday 5 November 2015

Bonfire Night 2015


The children were very excited about the possibility of seeing some fireworks this evening so we sat and talked a little about fire safety and never picking anything from the ground in case it was hot. We then set about creating some pictures of the things we might see.


The children made firework pictures, choosing the colours they wanted and then using straws taped together as stamps. They stamped around and swished it several times to depict the matters of fireworks within the sky. The gold glitter paint gave a lovely sparkle to the pictures. Our one year old thought this was fantastic and really got into the stamping motion!


We also used our hands to make some bonfire pictures - a lovely sensory activity for all the children. To add to the sensory experience we stuck on logs made from samples of material differing in textures.