Children's Mental Health Week 

 

We have lots of fun learning opportunities planned for this week, with more of a focus on the arts and music.  We recognise that this is a challenging time for families.  We (Mrs Alderson and Mrs Ashcroft) are sending individual video messages to children to help everyone to feel special and remembered.  If your child would like to send a message back we will of course respond as quickly as we can.

Keep in touch, we are here to support you with your child's development which of course includes their social and emotional development.

Julia Donaldson Stories Week 1

Over the next two weeks we are linking lots of our learning to some of the wonderful stories written by the author Julia Donaldson.  She is a creative lady who enjoys making songs to go with the characters and events in some of her stories.  

Rhyme Time

We sing a nursery rhyme every day in nursery, repeating the same rhyme every day.  This week our rhyme is: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive...

Drop Everything and Read

Learning about the world through stories and developing a love of books is promoted through our daily shared reading sessions.

We hope children enjoy watching and listening to our daily stories.  Children can of course watch the videos again and again and use the stories to inspire play and creative tasks.

Being Imaginative and Expressing Ourselves!

Being creative and making choices about the resources we use are important to our wellbeing and development.  Making choices encourages independence and reflective thinking. The learning opportunities below may inspire greater creativity!  

See the Yoga challenge with Cosmic Kids in the ' Physically Active Learning' section at the bottom of this page.  Have fun keeping fit, healthy and warm!

Making Meaningful Marks

Learning ideas:

Draw pictures of the characters you read about in stories.  Can you find a picture of a character you like and have a go at copying it?  Look carefully at the colours the illustrator has used and the shapes and features they have drawn.  

Making sense of number.

Play games which encourage counting and count objects during play and whilst doing helpful jobs at home.

-Collect natural treasure as you go on a walk.  You could take a bag to collect your treasure, or fasten it to a stick. (See photo below)

Remember to wash your hands after touching natural objects.

Count how many items of treasure you have collected.  Could someone else in your family collect treasure too?  Who has collected more?  Did you collect the same things?  What is different?  What is the same?

Number names and numerals are just words and marks.  Helping children by exploring quantities through play, supports secure understanding of number values.

Being creative with shapes

Explore shapes and patterns.  Where can you see patterns and shapes in the stories were are reading this week?

Can you create a fish of your own to go with Tiddler, or a shell to share for the characters in Sharing a Shell?  Think about your pattern before you start.  You might like to choose a stripy pattern, a dotty pattern, zig zags, swirls, stars...

Think about the size of the patterns you see and the things you create.  Can you talk about big, huge, small, tiny patterns?

 

 

Physically Active Learning

 

Challenges which involve 'fiddly fingers' (moving small objects carefully) help to support children's fine motor control. This helps the development of early writing skills.

Moving in time to music and copying movements supports the development of children’s gross motor skills, spatial awareness and coordination skills.

-Drawing in the frost; making meaningful marks, drawing faces, animals, patterns, writing letters.

-Make a paper snowflake (see the link below for instructions is required); support your child to make the snips in the paper.