Tuesday 19 December 2017

Making Christmas Gifts 2017


The children take great pride in taking things home that they have made themselves as well as enjoying giving gifts to their parents. For that reason we focussed on a variety of different things that the children could take home from art and craft projects through to baked goods. 



For cards and decorations the children used their increasing dexterity to stick tissue paper to objects, spread glue and pick up small gems to decorate their items with. They used their language and understanding of the world to ask for different coloured paper and gems. We had some interesting reactions to glue on fingers with some definitely less bothered than others.   



The children were so excited to be making gingerbread shapes and all washed their hands in preparation. They took it in turns to weigh, pour, mix and roll as well as selecting cutters to finally cut out their shapes. They waited eagerly while the gingerbread cooked and were keen to tell their parents about the presents that they had made them for Christmas. 

Wednesday 6 December 2017

Christmas Tree Dough

Play dough is a firm favourite here and adding a Christmas theme to our tough ensured the children were keen to come and play. Children were provided with dough and rolling pins together with Christmas tree shaped cutters enabling them to cut out their own trees. 



Through providing jars of stars and gems the children were soon in the mood for tree decorating. Even with the same base materials the different ages and creative skills of the children resulted in a wide variety of finished products. 



This activity enabled children to practice their fine motor pincer grip together with lots of pushing and pinching skills as they worked together to decorate their trees in their own creative ways. 

Thursday 9 November 2017

Understanding Community

Understanding the community within which they live is import for developing children in order for them to make sense of their identity and relate to the world around them. Over the past week we have looked at age related activities that enable children to understand both Armistice Day and Bonfire Night. 

In preparation for Armistice Day the children initially watched a short CBeebies film about the relevance of the poppy. We talked about the war, the poppies and the 2 minutes silence. Having watched how poppies are made in the factory we thought it would be fun to create our own. Using egg cartons the children used red paint to make poppies and then stuck lolly sticks on for the stems. 


Plymouth Hoe currently has a display consisting of a wave of poppies cascading up the naval memorial and we though it would be nice for the children to see and relate to the poppies they had made. We were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny day for our visit. 


Also this week one of the children was telling us about the firework display they had seen. We talked a bit about the colours and shapes of the fireworks she had seen together with the shapes and sounds they made. The children decided they would like to create some pictures of fireworks so we called upon one of our favourite art methods for bonfire night of combining glue and glitter on black paper. 


The children absolutely love choosing colours and shaking the glitter pots although glitter can be found for weeks after the art work has dried!

Wednesday 18 October 2017

Autum Play Dough 2017

Play dough is a great resource that encourages open ended play while, through its malleable nature, allows children to develop their hand and wrist muscles in preparation for writing. It encourages exploration when combined with other objects and often forms the basis for mathematical development through promoting counting and discussions about shapes and sizes. 


For that reason play dough is a much loved resource here and the children thought it was great when presented with Autumn coloured play dough together with some of the Autumn objects we collected from out and about. 



The children are encouraged to share a wide range of tools and often, after starting individually, begin to work together to create structures of invent stories. One child decided to sort out all the conkers and push them into the dough and, with encouragement, began to count the objects. 


I was impressed with the wide range of colourful results and, as ever, our school age children couldn't resist coming and joining in.