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!