Writing Opportunities

In Reception we have been learning the sounds which are linked to the letters of the alphabet for some time now. Although we encourage children to use these sounds to build words for their writing, it is also important that our little ones understand the importance of learning to write and the purpose can bring.

There are many different ways you can help your child at home with their writing and the first thing is to make sure they watch you writing yourself. In an age of computers and phones, it’s too easy to type a quick list on your laptop or text a reminder to someone you live with (I, myself am very guilty of this) but children need to see the important people in their lives finding writing important too.

Different ideas you can demonstrate writing various ways with your child are:

·        Lists

·        Cards

·        Letters

·        Books

·        Invitations

·        Recipes

·        Stories

The list is endless and the more you practise these different ways of writing, the better they become.

Also encourage your child to write with different things in various places. Pens, pencils, paints, chalk, on paper, on card, the pavement. This adds to the fun of writing and children will be more excited to practise.

Are there any more ways you can practise together that I haven’t mentioned? 

We would love to see some examples of you practicing writing with your child on Tapestry.

Happy Writing!

Wet Weather

The wet weather has never stopped the children in Reception wanting to use our outdoor area and this week and last has been no exception. The children have started to explore colour mixing and we decided to use the puddles as our palette. We added powder paint to change the colour of the puddles and the children predicted what colour the water would turn when we mixed the paints together.

 

Recently Mr Webb fixed some water butts to the drain pipes to try and improve the amount of flooding we have in the outdoor area. With the water butts filling up fast, the children were very helpful in emptying them regularly.

Lastly the water has been very useful for making potions! The boys decided to add mud to the water every time they cast a spell, resulting in a very muddy bowl!

Sometimes the best thing to do after it has been raining, is just to jump in muddy puddles!

From Mark Maker To Writer

Last week the teachers from all the Early Years classes were lucky enough to attend a really inspiring training course focusing on how to best support children on their journey from being a mark maker to a writer.

The course was led by Alistair Bryce Clegg who is a former Early Years teacher and Headteacher who now travels the country offering training and workshops.

We all came back enthusiastic and inspired. It was great to know that so many of the things we discussed during the course are things we already do at Hazelmere but as always there were plenty of new ideas to try especially to help engage some of the less eager writers in our classes.

We already have some time focusing on fine motor skills but we are looking forward to introducing a regular "Funky Fingers" slot alongside "Dough Gym." These sessions aim to improve both strength and dexterity and are planned to target the specific needs of the children involved so that they are working the right muscles for their stage of development.

I am sire there will be lots of exciting new activities and developments and after an unforgettable demonstration of "Jedi Writing" I suspect that might find it's way into the Reception approach to handwriting as well!

Space Activities in Nursery

Some of the children have shown a real interest in space and we decided to follow these interests and spend some time exploring this theme.

We used old bottles, packets, tubes and boxes to make rockets. The children tried lots of new ways to work on models joining pieces together using tape, glue sticks and wet glue as well as cutting pieces to change their shape or size.

When the models were finished they chose different colours to paint their rockets.

As a school we are celebrating our 50th anniversary and we wanted the corridors to reflect the events of the past 50 years. Knowing how interested the children were in space I asked if we could be involved in the display area covering the 1960s so we could link our space activities to the 1969 moon landing.

If our display was going to feature rockets on their way to the moon it seemed fairly important that we also have a moon to land on! Mr Webb helped us by cutting out a piece of MDF which we used to make our moon. The children used rolled up newspaper and masking tape to make craters on the moon. Rolling the paper was tricky but they soon got the hang of it.


Once the paper craters were stuck on the moon we covered it all in Mod Roc. Tia said "They are like bandages for when you hurt your finger!" We dipped the plater infused bandages in water and spread them on covering the surface of our moon. Finally we added white and grey paint to the moon surface.



In the garden the children enjoyed chalking rockets onto the pavement. Some of them lay down and asked Miss Marven to "draw a space suit on them" We took photos of this and printed them out on the colour copier to make astronauts on our moon.

Nicole and Charlie spent a long time making aliens out of some construction pieces. "These aliens live on the moon" said Nicole. Other children came to join them and soon we had a whole herd of aliens (I'm not really sure what you call a group of aliens!!)

The children had been using their imagination to come up with lots of interesting ideas but we thought it would be really exciting to watch footage of a rocket launch. Logan noticed that "the numbers go counting backwards" and we all joined in with 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0!

When we watched the footage of a space walk Tiffany laughed and said "They are bouncing!" In our role play children enjoyed dressing up ni the astronaut costume and bouncing around.

For our messy play we enjoyed lots of different activities including slime and glimmer sand. The slime had a really interesting texture, Alfie said it felt "cold and sticky and like a banana."

Using the shapes we were able to make rocket pictures by placing the shapes in different arrangements, Ruby added the moon and said "The moon is a yellow circle"

Our display looks really exciting. Last week some visitors came to look round our school and lots of them commented on how interesting and exciting the displays were. We are very proud of our space display as it shows people some of the fun things we do in Nursery.

Birthdays Week in Reception

This week we have been exploring birthdays. Children have been learning about how everyone has a birthday and which month they were born in. We have also looked at what might happen on our birthdays and the children were very keen to practise some of these traditions in the classroom.

Our Role Play Area has been turned into a birthday party, where children have been blowing out candles, singing songs and opening presents.

 
 One of the children talked about how when we have a birthday, we sometimes have special food and a special breakfast. Eggs were the children's favourite birthday breakfast food!

Children also felt that cakes were another important birthday food and this has become the main theme of our playdough activities.

 

Children have been grasping the concept that numbers represent a quantity, so one activity they took part in was filling the gift bags with the correct amount of sweets.

We wrapped presents which was a brilliant way to practise our fine motor skills.

Last but not at all the least, we made a birthday display where children could look to see which month they were born in. We learned a new skill of collaging, which children have been very eager to practise during their play.

If your children have talked about the birthday activities at home, please put their comments on the blog or Tapestry!

Messy Play Monday - Firework Fun

 Well this week is fireworks night and I wanted to share some firework messy play.

One of my favourite activities was an awesome suggestion from Miss Marven; creating fireworks sound effects in our messy tray by using popping candy with the water tray! This adds a different sensory element and really changes things up a little for the children encouraging them to listen and focus in on sounds they can hear which links in well with our Letters and Sounds phase 1 activities in Nursery.

This next idea is great for developing strength and dexterity and encouraging mark making. It is also the messy play that is not actually messy! Take a pot of supermarket own brand hair gel (I used one from Tesco which cost 15p but of course most supermarkets have their own branded goods which are equally good value)

Mix a little black paint into the gel in the pot then tip the whole lot into a zip lock bag (find these either in stationery shops or freezer bag aisle!) Zip the bag and tape it shut.

Lay some shiny or glittery paper underneath the bag and stick your bag to the table over the shiny paper (use masking tape or blu tac)

Smooth the gel out in the bag and you have a dark night sky. Now encourage your child to draw fireworks in the sky with their fingers. As they "draw" the paint and gel will be pushed aside and they will reveal the shiny glittery colours on the paper underneath. (The photo below didn't quite capture the glittery colours but you can get the general idea!)

In our Reception classes the children enjoyed a firework themed messy play which combined washing up liquid in a black tray which was then sprinkled with glitter.The glitter sticks to the washing up liquid and the children were able to create beautiful swirling patterns while developing some wonderful firework vocabulary using words like Explode, Whizz, Bang, Boom, Crash and Scream!

Messy Play Monday: Pumpkin Play!

It's that time of year when shops are filled with spooky costumes and pumpkins. Many of the children have shown an interest in all things Halloween so we have tapped into that this week with some pumpkin messy play!

The children used tweezers to try to extract the seeds and stringy insides from the pumpkin, not only was this great fun but the tweezer use improves muscle strength in the hands and their dexterity and there was lots of interesting and unusual language involved as they talked about what they were doing.

Messy play is a great time to help develop children's vocabulary. We do this by listening to what they are saying and modelling new language so when a child says "This feels funny" we can help give them words to describe the textures by including those words in our conversation for example introducing words such as smooth, slimy, hard etc...

Storytelling

This week we celebrated our learning by inviting our parents to assembly. Our current topic is ‘Autumn’ and the children have been exploring the season through the book, ‘The Leaf Man’ by Lois Elhert. As well as showing off our own Leaf Man pictures and singing a leaf song, children were able to retell the story using actions. Storytelling is a great way to develop literacy skills, by learning about different types of books and eventually it will lead on to inspire children to tell/write their own stories.

If you would like to do some storytelling with your child at home, the following tips may help.

• Read through the story together. Talk about what happens.
• Choose some actions for parts of the story. Simple actions are best remembered.
• You could draw a story map. This may include little pictures or actions, drawn on to a piece of paper so that it is easier to see what is coming up, rather than having to flick through the book. We have included a picture of our Leaf Man story map to give you some ideas.

Have a lovely time together! The aim is to build confidence. Books can be daunting if you can’t read the words. This way, your child can retell a much loved story without having to recognise every word on the page.

If you would like to share any storytelling with you and your child at home, we would be delighted to see it on Tapestry!

Messy Play Monday: Shaving Foam

This week I am posting about using shaving foam in Messy Play. This is one of the easiest messy play activities to recreate at home and actually has very little clean up involved afterwards!

We use shaving foam in our messy play for the following activities:

Sensory exploration
Like many other messy play activities the sensory experience of exploring shaving foam can provoke lots of language among small children as they begin to try to describe the textures they feel.

Mark making
As toddlers children notice there is sometimes a connection between their movements and marks that they make, for example noticing that if they wipe their finger through spilled weetabix it leaves a trail. As they get older they begin to deliberately make marks for example enjoying walking through a puddle or some mud and then looking at the tracks their footprints make or seeing their footprints in the sandpit.

When we use shaving foam as a messy play activity we are encouraging children to experiment with mark making. Once the foam is spread out it is easy for children to make lines, marks and patterns in the foam. Even more important is the ease with which they can erase those marks as this means that even children who are not confident enough to engage in more permanent mark making such as drawing on paper can take small steps by making these very temporary marks in the shaving foam.

As they grow in confidence we see children using shaving foam as a canvas for pictures and writing which begins to be intentional representations of objects, people or symbols which they are familiar with.

To recreate this activitiy...

You will need:

• A can of shaving foam. At school we use supermarket own brand shaving foam, it is cheap (currently 26p in my supermarket) and does exactly what we need it to do.
• Some sort of tray or surface to use the foam in. As you can see we generally use a black tray as the marks show up well against the white foam. 

From a parents perspective this is a great minimal mess activity, the foam wipes up easily and washes out of clothing without a problem and small amounts of it just "melt" away to nothing.

Early Reading

We have been feeling very grown up in Reception lately as we are now taking home reading books to share with our important adults! The children have loved selecting their own books and feel more inspired to read if they have had a choice of what book to take home.

We have met our Oxford Reading Tree family, Mum, Dad, Chip, Biff, Kipper and Floppy. Not only do the children love these characters, parents are enjoying feeling nostalgic as many of them remember reading the books themselves when they were young!

Sharing your child’s reading book with them is one of the most important things you can do at home to help their progress in Literacy. To ensure that you and your child make the most of this special shared reading time together, the following tips might help:

• Talk about the pictures. Look at the front cover. Who/What can they see? What does your child think the book is going to be about?
• What sounds does your child know? Can they see any of the sounds they know in the text? Point to them together and make the sound.
• Sound out each word together by pointing to the letter and making the sound. Can your child hear the word when sounded out?
• When you finish the book, review it together. Was it about what your child thought it was about? Can you make up a different ending together?

But most of all have fun sharing the book together! We would love to hear how you get on.

Happy Reading!

Messy Play Monday: Play Dough

Welcome to another Messy Play Monday! This week I wanted to share some photos of children having lots of fun with play dough.

Play dough is part of a group of resources we describe as "Malleable Materials." This means it can be worked with the hands or tools to shape it. One of the great benefits of allowing children lots of opportunities to explore a variety of malleable materials is that they build strength in the muscles of the hands and fingers.

Often our very youngest children are not yet ready to write but we want to help then build strong muscles in the hands and fingers so that when they are ready they will have the strength and control to control writing materials.

Just as some people train their bodies and muscles in the gym we want the hand and finger muscles to develop well and in fact during their time in the EYFS your child might work in a group at activities known as "Dough Gym" or "Dough Disco!" Both of these involve a workout (usually to music) which gets the hands and fingers working hard in different ways using the dough.

If you want to make play dough at home then here is a simple recipe.

• 1 Cup of Plain Flour
• 1/2 Cup of Salt
• 1 Cup of Water
• 1 tablespoon of Oil (Cooking Oil or Baby Oil)
• 2 teaspoons of Cream of Tarter (you can substitute this for 3 teaspoons of lemon juice)
• 2 or 3 drops of Food Colouring (optional)

1. Put all the ingredients into a microwaveable bowl.
2. Stir together thoroughly and microwave for 1 min 30 seconds
3. Take the bowl out and stir again.
4. Microwave for a further 1 minute.

When it is cooked turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it together - be careful it WILL be HOT!!

When it has cooled and been kneaded together it is ready for your child to play with. You can add dough cutters and rolling pins for extra fun but the most valuable part of this will be the good work out their hands get from squashing, rolling and shaping the dough.

Why not try...

• Adding glitter to the dough
• Making scented dough (add a couple of drops of peppermint essence for minty dough or some coffee granules for coffee dough, curry powder for curry dough etc...)

Have fun!

Messy Play Mondays!

In your welcome brochure for either Nursery or Reception you will have noticed the "Dress For Mess" page. We wanted to take a little time to explain the benefits of Messy Play, some of the different activities which we might provide for the children and the purpose of them.

We will add to the Messy Play Mondays with specific posts about different activities and give you ideas on how you can recreate this type of play at home should you wish to. In spite of the title "Messy Play" it is possible to recreate the activities on a small scale at home and manage the mess so that your child gets all the fun and benefits without completely trashing your home! But in this first post I wanted to talk about why we offer messy play.

Why is this type of experience important?

There are huge benefits to messy play, here are just a few of the benefits from each area of learning:

Personal, Social & Emotional Development (PSED) 
Messy play is open ended with no "right or wrong answers," this encourages children's natural curiosity as well as boosting self esteem and confidence as children enjoy and explore the activity without any feeling of having to complete the task in a set way.

Physical Development
Messy play can help children to build their strength in their hands or fingers (particularly with dough and malleable materials) to develop their hand eye co-ordination when pouring and scooping and to develop their fine motor control for example when making marks in shaving foam or gloop.

Communication and Language
Often the best place to observe children using and developing their communication and language skills is at the messy table. Children tend to find the unusual materials an interesting starting point for conversation and the open ended nature of the play means there are lots of opportunities for children to explain what they are doing and ask questions of others.

Literacy
As mentioned above before children can begin to develop into "writers" they must first become mark makers and develop the physical skills in terms of muscle strength and dexterity which will enable them to go on to successfully form letters.

Maths
Play which involves pouring and scooping material helps children to begin to understand the ideas of full and empty, to compare how much water \ slime \ dough fits in different containers and to use the language linked to size. As they get older there are opportunities to introduce measuring in different ways.

Understanding The World
In messy play there are many opportunities for children to observe and comment on what they see, beginning to ask questions about what happens and to speculate why it might happen.

Expressive Arts and Design
Your child's imagination can really get to work when they are enjoying messy play, they can be creative and really explore a wide range of media and materials.


Hopefully this has been useful in highlighting why we feel messy play is important, the children on the whole LOVE it and there is so much learning that they can get from it.

YES we encourage them to wear an apron and NO we really are not trying to just mess up their school clothes but I hope now with a little insight into why we provide this type of activity you will forgive us on those occasions when they come home a little less neat and tidy than when they arrived at school!

Welcome To Our New Blog!

Last academic year we introduced the Tapestry Online Learning Journal system to provide a user friendly and inspiring way to share with parents the wonderful learning your children do while they are at school. It also helped us to gain an insight into all the interesting and exciting things they get up to when they are not at school! If you need help getting to grips with the Tapestry system please do not hesitate to ask your child's teacher and keep an eye out here for hints and tips.

This year we wanted to continue improving the work we do in partnership with parents and we have decided to launch a blog. 

The main aims of this blog are:

• To share ways you can support your child at home.
• To keep you even more informed of what is going on at school.

If there are any specific areas you would like us to post about do let us know, it is important that the content is useful and relevant.

We are looking forward to a brilliant year in the Early Years Foundation Stage and we hope that this will be a valuable resource over the coming year.