Chinese New Year 2019

We aim to incorporate other cultural celebrations within the setting wherever we can in an age appropriate way. 

This year we have covered many areas of learning to celebrate Chinese New Year. This year is the year of the pig so the children engaged in a pig counting activity. They rolled the dice and counted out the correct number of pigs, placing them on a tray. This also promoted turn taking.  

For literacy and fine motor skills the children looked at the various animals that have represented each Chinese new year including rabbit and dragon. They identified the letter sounds from the picture cards and set about creating the animals using the small coloured shapes. 

Using chopsticks and coloured sand the children attempted to recreate Chinese letters as well as numbers. Some simply used the chopsticks to make swirling patterns in the sand. 

The children also got to express themselves in various ways through listening to Chinese music. They used musical instruments and danced with the dragon whilst waving coloured scarves to the music.  The children have definitely enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year!

Highway Rat

On of my little ones loves the Highway Rat book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Malden Forest run a trail associated with the book so we thought it was time to take full advantage of the surrounding environment and plan a day trip. 

We had an amazing day out. The children loved finding the various checkpoints along the trail, discussing with their friends excitedly when they spotted a sign. Whilst doing this they talked about the story but also were so observant of the Autumn woodland. 

We talked about the colours of the flowers and leaves that they could see, spotted wild mushrooms and used their developing writing skills to complete an Autumn Checklist. Our youngest, not yet mobile, was able to explore the forest floor using her sense. 

We used counting skills to talk about the number of cones we could collect and birds we could spot. We discussed how the squirrels were gathering nuts ready for the winter. 

The children then enjoyed the play area and having a social picnic together. This learning was taken back to the home environment where the boys used available props to dress up as the Highway rat and to finish the day we read the story once more - what a fun day of learning that was! 

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.