Thursday 22 May 2014

Wet Thursdays


Not to be put off by the dreadful weather forecast we put on our wells and braved the park, relying on a late colourful parachute to brighten things up!


We had a lovely time catching the frisbee, chasing balls, chasing each other, admiring the flowers and even den building with our large parachute. 



All the children had a great time and to make it even more successful, it didn't rain that much in the end!

Thursday 15 May 2014

Beach Play


Embracing this beautiful Devon weather we are very lucky to have been out to the beach for the morning.


 Whilst the children enjoy a fun day out there is so much learning potential at the beach ranging from social play and comparing the sizes of the stones through to experimenting with trajectories by throwing stones into the water and mark making in the sand, it ticks all the boxes!



We also had fun painting a few beach pebbles this afternoon where some got messier than others!

Wednesday 14 May 2014

Aquarium Sensory Play



After a recent visit to the aquarium where the children were fascinated with the sharks I decided to create a sensory tray based on the things we had seen.






Using food colouring I coloured some rice a blue and green colour and added in a few shells and some aquatic animals. The children thought this was great, immediately trying to identify their favourite animals before turning to the feel and texture of the rice.


 It was fun to scoop up the rice with the shells and we talked about the sounds the rice made when it dropped back into the tray. 



As ever, the older children were desperate to join in on their return from school and between them created an 'underwater tea party' comprising rice cakes from which they fed all the sea creatures!

Thursday 1 May 2014

Cardboard Colour Sorting


With three two year olds here today this was an ideal time to try this simple colour sorting activity. We painted some egg cartons and some toilet rolls in a variety of colours and waited for them to dry. I then presented them to the children together with some coloured pom poms and, after an initial play, some giant tweezers. 


 The children were fascinated with trying to match the colours to the various objects and enjoyed the challenge of being asked to locate certain colours. It was lovely to see how the boys took this activity to demonstrate their own interests with one taking out the pom poms and lining them up, another completely fascinated with catching his finger with the giant tweezers and another determined to place all the pom poms in the correct space. 


This activity was great, not just for colour awareness but also for development of fine motor skills and for basic counting and sorting.