Animal Workshop

We had some very exciting visitors in school recently! We were lucky enough to have a mobile animal workshop which all the children in Early Years were able to enjoy.

The close encounters the children enjoyed with tree frogs, rabbits, giant snails, a skunk, some snakes and many other creatures provided the stimulus for some amazing talk opportunities. We were thrilled to hear the children really building up their vocabulary and talking animatedly about what they had seen, touched and experienced.

Later there was a lot of animal based role play going on and the children particularly enjoyed finding stories about some of the animals they had seen!

As well as being a fun experience the two educators who brought the mobile zoo with them were also able to talk to the children about the dierent animals, where they came from, what they ate and any important inormation or example we learned that we needed wet hands to handle the tree frog and the lady sprayed our hands with water before we stroked her!

Handwriting

Handwriting or letter formation, as it is also called is a tricky business. Not only do children have to master gaining dexterity in their fingers, as well as being able to hold a pencil in the right position they also have to learn to form their letters correctly too. As adults we take this skill for granted, but children have a lot to learn in a short space of time. 

Although some children will adapt to this seamlessly, forgetting a time where they were ever unable to express themselves through writing, other children have all the ideas in their head but when transferring it to paper they are unable to make any sense of it. This unfortunately tends to put many children off writing, which is such a shame. 

If you identify these difficulties with your little person, there are ways you can help them to progress with their handwriting, without even having to persuade your child to pick up a pencil at all! Therefore, when they do eventually grasp the confidence to express their ideas in writing, you will see a marked improvement in their letter formation just by trying a few fun activities with them.

Messy Play

If you have had chance to read any of Mrs Hand’s super posts on messy play yet, you will have realised what huge fans the children and adults are of it here at Hazelmere! Not only does it improve children’s dexterity by encouraging them to exercise their hands and finger tips but it also gives them opportunities to practise their letters by tracing them out in the messy play. Shaving foam is particularly excellent for this (often costing no more than 50p for an economy can from any supermarket) By squirting some onto a large tray getting children to practise writing letters using their fingers, helps them to understand where the letter starts, goes and finishes with the ability to quickly erase any mistakes brings the fun back into forming letters. Add a sprinkle of glitter on the shaving foam to make it extra magical too! For loads of other messy play ideas look further down the blog for Mrs Hand’s messy play Mondays or click on the messy play label in the side bar!

Magic Finger Writing

When showing children how to form letters by writing on paper, I often find that my hand conceals exact process of what they need to see to learn how to write the letter. Therefore, by practising forming the letter by using our ‘magic fingers’ in the air, children can again, see where the letter starts, goes and finishes as well as attempting it themselves too. To make things extra exciting, you could always use a wand or sword to enhance the ‘magic’ of the writing. Alistair Bryce-Clegg’s blog, ‘ABC Does’ gives an excellent example of Jedi writing for any budding Star Wars fan!

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills are activities which specifically target children’s dexterity and help to strengthen their hands and fingers, leading on to letter formation. Although in the Early Years we have daily sessions to practise our fine motor skills, there are things which you can do with your child at home to help them practise this. Everyday things such as:

·         Pulling up and down zips,

·         Doing up and opening buttons,

·         Using scissors to cut paper, card and materials,

·         Squeezing bottles,

·         Screwing and unscrewing caps,

·         Tying shoelaces

Just to name a few! Although these activities may seem strange ideas to help your child write their letters, not only will they put the fun back into handwriting but also get them ‘ready’ to put pencil to paper. 

As always we would love to see any examples of you and your child practising their letter formation at home! Please upload them on to Tapestry!

Have Fun!

Mrs Scott

Messy Play Monday - A Little Science Experimentation

I wanted to share some photos and info from a recent messy play \ science activity we did in Nursery. For children in the Early Years science is heavily focused on activities which encourage children to observe, ask questions and speculate, and which inspire their inbuilt sense of wonder!

This can be outside looking at the world around them, noticing patterns, changes and the features of objects. It can be exploring the forces that act on objects for example noticing that the cars roll quicker and further down a steep ramp or, as in this case, it can be exploring different materials and what happens when you combine them.

Before the children arrived we set up a selection of bowls and containers each with some bicarbonate of soda mixed with something else. The pale orange bowl at the top of the picture has jelly crystals mixed with the bicarbonate of soda, the green one is mixed with shaving foam, the dark blue, yellow and red are food colouring and the pale blue one is hair gel.

The children used pipettes to drop vinegar into the different bicarbonate of soda mixtures. These photos show both the chemical reaction and the reaction of the children as they mixed the two. The young man in the blue apron was particularly fascinated by it all and we developed the activity further talking about why it fizzed when the liquid was added. He worked out that it wasn't water because it smelled different and once he knew it was vinegar he wanted to know why we were using vinegar. This led to a brilliant opportunity to support him in devising his own experiment and with support he came up with the idea to try adding water to see if that made bubbles and fizzing too! Of course it didn't and he said "it doesn't work, can I have the vinegar again please!"

 The activity was great for encouraging the children to talk to each other about what they were doing and what was happening. I was also pleased to see that even those who aren't naturally drawn to messy play were stopping by to peep over the shoulders of those who were and having a good look!

 
 By the end we had a vibrant mass of colourful powder and liquid left over and tipped it all into the tray. A lovely additional bonus of this activity was all the interesting colours that were made as the different mixtures combined. A fantastic moment where children were crowding round and noticing that where the yellow and blue mixtures combined we were left with amazing shades of green!

Messy Play Monday - Jelly

We mixed up some different coloured pots of Jelly and left them over night to set. In the morning we tipped these out into our white messy tray (the white one does a great job of making everything look appealing and colourful!)

Also in the tray were other messy play substances with slightly different textures including some of our favourite 15p hair gel.

Lots of our children are really into sea creatures so to add extra interest we used the messy play as a base for some small world play and added the sea creatures.

Having observed the children it was clear that a lot of their play with the sea creatures involved the age old theme of the baddies chasing the goodies. Needless to say this continued and true to form the game involved the Orca eating this seal!

After the initial excitement had died down and there were fewer children at the table I was able to stand nearby and listen in as one of my girls made up a very elaborate storyline about the sea creatures, it remains one of my favourite things to pretend I am busy doing something nearby and really tune in to what they are saying and doing when playing alone or with friends. Had I charged in and imposed myself on this game it may very well have limited what she was doing but because I stepped back and took an observers role I was able to gain a lot of insight about her imaginative play and language skills.

Number Confidence

We often say as adults, “I’m rubbish at maths” or “I can’t do numbers”.  However, what is so refreshing about children is that they almost never say this!

Building confidence with number, space, shape and measure is an easy thing to do with our budding mathematicians because we have so many resources around us ready at our finger tips. Children are also more likely to engage in maths work that is interactive and relevant, rather than sitting at table writing sums. 

Here are a few things you could try with your child at home and are by no means exclusive. If you have any examples of how you help your child with numbers at home, we would love to see them on Tapestry. 

• ·         Board games are a great way of counting as well as having fun. Snakes and Ladders, Happy Families, Dominos, Connect Four and Bingo all involve counting.
• ·         Challenge your child to a shape hunt around the house
• ·         Time: Encourage your child to time themselves. How long will it taken them to finish a puzzle? Can they clean their teeth for two minutes?
• ·         Tea Parties: Share out raisins to your teddies equally. Make teddy a bed. Which box is going to be big enough? How many boxes will you need?  
• ·         Cooking: Let your child weigh out the ingredients with help.  Guess how many pasta shapes will fit into a spoonful. Set a timer for cooking. Share out smarties equally onto cakes.
• ·         Shopping: Let your child count how many pieces of fruit you want in a bag. Challenge your child to count the money out ready for the till.
• ·         Housework: Putting socks into pairs, tidying away toys into size order, writing out the numbers for a shopping list, counting out knives and forks when you set the table.
• ·         Walking to and from school: Counting the number of red cars on the way home, then blue, then green. Road signs are also a great way to learn about shapes, circles, triangles, hexagons. Look for the numbers on buses and licence plates. Which number comes before and which after. Looking at odd and even door numbers
• ·         Lastly Espresso and Purple Mash (log on in the front of the reading diaries) have some great maths activities and games you may enjoy playing together.

Have fun!