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!