Butterfly Phonics

For the past few weeks we have been attending a phonics session with another local childminder. I have been super impressed by the boys interest in the session as well as the aspects of learning covered within the hour and the huge range of amazing resources that Hazel brings each week.

The session starts by looking at two or three sounds of the phonetic alphabet, helping the boys recognise but more importantly attempt to sound the sounds as well as learning the accompanying actions. The session is very gentle and adapted to each child's needs so for the quieter ones they can watch and learn whilst others prefer to join in the more musical aspect when we sing the sounds.

Following this a session on fine motor skills is incorporated. This varies each week and so far we have had colours and turning cogs through to farmyard animals and using tweezers for picking up vegetables and fruit to tie in with the harvest festival.

A final part of the session focusses on counting and awareness of numbers This week's activity was farmyard bingo. Other activities have included rolling a dice and removing the resulting number of autumn leaves from the tree.

The session finishes with some singing and dancing followed by some quiet relaxing reflection time although the boys often fund this highly amusing! This is a great session that enhances their literacy and communication, understanding the world through the relevance of the topics and their numeracy. Additionally the chance to be expressive is offered through music and dance as well as meeting and socialising with different children. We love this session and will definitely attend again.

Fun with Autumn Leaves

Autumn creates so many learning opportunities and we love being out and about at this time of year. The leaves falling off the trees provide opportunity to talk about changing seasons whilst the leaves themselves provide opportunity to talk about colour. 

The children enjoyed several mornings at both Saltram and the wildlife area at Devonport Park playing in the leaves, on the play equipment and looking for the various insects that live in such habitats. 

After collecting a variety of leaves (the children love the responsibility of carrying their own bag too collect leaves) we took some home to create some Autumn art through a range of sticking and glitter shaking.  

World Book Day 2017

In order to celebrate world book day this year we had a 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' themed session courtesy of one of our fellow childminders.  

We read the book with the children who all took turns at lifting the flaps and discussing, where able, what they could see underneath. We talked about aspects of the story that hey liked and what they thought would happen next.

In order to engage the children further, various sizes of teddy bears were provided together with various sizes of chair. We used this to encourage the children to develop understanding of the language for size, shape and general numeracy although the presence of the bears also encouraged children's ability to share and engage in imaginative play. One of the youngest was particularly drawn to a large teddy bear the same size as himself!

Also provided was some sensory play based on various sizes of bowls and spoons. The children tested out their shopping and mixing skills and, with many children present, were encouraged to take turns and share.