Pre-school Play

Painting on wallpaper samples

2012-03-05T21:21:00.000Z

This is just a quick post to share the wallpaper paintings we made today.

We are looking at flowers this month as we build up to creating something special for Mothers Day. Today the children have been painting on some flower wallpaper samples.

First they selected the pattern they wanted to use.

And then got busy adding colour.

Circles seemed to be a favourite on this one.

And here are some of our finished creations.

Gruffalo Story Tray

2012-03-04T21:02:00.000Z

M loves the Gruffalo story at the moment, so this week we were busy making a story tray to encourage the retelling of the story.

We looked at the book and talked about what we would need to include in our tray: gruffalo, trees, stream, owl, logpile house...... We realised we were going to need quite a lot of things! I encouraged M to think about how we could keep track of what we needed to make. Together we came up with the idea of making a list. This provided the opportunity for 'writing' for a purpose.

Once we had worked out what we would need we set about making our tray. I tried to keep it as simple as possible as I didn't want M to become bored before we had finished but it still took us a couple of afternoons to get finished, while the little ones were napping. I had pre-selected an assortment of resources we could possibly use and had planned to allow M to lead. However this is the first time we have done anything like this and the activity turned out to be more adult guided than I would have liked. But hopefully the more practise M has, the more his confidence will develop.

Still I encouraged M to make the resources himself, with a bit of support where needed.

First he drew round the tray so we could line it with card.

Then we got busy making the trees from crepe paper and tubes.

We looked at our list and added a stream and pathway to our tray.

The we created Fox's underground house from an empty food packet....

,,,snakes logpile house from logs. I said to M that he could use the glue gun to stick the logs together. As I explained to him the parts of the gun that would get hot, I looked up to find he had taken about 10 paces back!! He then took a bit of convincing that it would be ok to use and he wouldn't get hurt.

With snake's house made we were just about done. We used the tree from our Christmas sensory tray for owls house and then just needed to find our characters from the story props box.

I read the story encouraging to join in (particularly with the repetitive and spoken parts) and he acted out the story with the figures.

Snake and mouse!

It's a Gruffalo!

Back past snake.

Fox's underground house.

I plan to leave tray out encouraging M to make up his own stories.

Keep it simple : Finger Painting!

2012-03-03T22:04:00.000Z

Sometimes with all the fantastic ideas ~~I want to try~~ shared on the internet, I sometimes forget that little ones need simple exploration activities, will as little direction from me as possible.

So that's what we did this week - finger painting!

I had some mirror card so decided to use that as a base for their painting.

Although the noticed its mirror effect initially, I don't really think it added anything to their paint exploration, although the finished results were quite pretty.

I love how the children each explore the paint in their own way.

L likes to use just one finger and carefully move the paint around. Although by the end several finger had become involved.

K on the other hand, likes to explore with all his fingers...

...using large vigorous movements!

He's also usually the first to get bored and leave the table.

With M being approximately 3 years older than the others, I wanted to make the activity interesting to him too. I gave him a picture of an 'M' and asked him if he could make an M on his paper using the masking tape.

M used the paint in a similar way to L using just one finger. Even though M has experienced a wide variety of messy play and painting, he's still not overly keen on getting his hands dirty!

Now to me at this point M's painting looked pretty much done. In fact it was looking quite pretty with the colours just starting to mix at points on the paper. Now if it were my painting I would have stopped here, but it wasn't my painting....

....and M wanted to carry on exploring the paint (process not product....process not product!!)

This is K's 'almost finished' masterpiece...

And this is L's!

And I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of M's finished work.

A Cardboard Box, Toddlers & Tape

2012-03-03T21:24:00.000Z

We were at a bit of a loose end one afternoon this week. Everyone had woken up from their afternoon nap early and we had about an hour before the school run with nothing planned.

Still that was nothing a cardboard box couldn't sort!

We had a bit of a problem though getting our box to stay upright.

But that didn't both these three who were just as happy to explore it on its side.

However, somewhere around this point someone decided to stand on top of the box, which didn't really work with little ones still going through the box! So we filled the box with cushions so we could explore the top.

I stacked the cushions more up one end so we ended up with a ramp, just great for crawling up...

...and sliding down!

And then getting a bit braver and walking up.

They really loved this!

Even the less brave, who had been happy to watch, couldn't resist having a go!

Then it was the tape on the box that caught their attention.

Just think of that fine motor practise - and child-initiated!

I added more tape to the box and the children sat happily trying to peel it back off.

L was fascinated by its stickiness and sat repeatedly attaching and removing the tape from the box.

While M being that bit older knew he could use the tape to attach objects.

K noticed that the tape rolled.

He struggled to get it to balance so that it would roll, so I introduced a couple of cars.

These caught the children's interest....

...though they weren't content to sit on the floor and roll the cars down the slope, they had to clamber to the top of the slope, car in hand and then release it.

And again!

Surprising how long a plain cardboard box can hold the attention of little ones!

Prepare for school: Climb a Tree

2012-02-29T21:27:00.000Z

I love this poster created by Jeff over at Explorations Early Learning.

As J and M are starting school in September we thought we'd better get over to the forest for some tree climbing!

We started off with a bit of team work.

J and M decided this branch was coming home with us!

They carried it together for a few metres and then changed their minds, it proved to be a bit tricky to explore the forest with a branch in tow.

Off exploring....

....accompanied by lots of 'Gruffalo' talk

(We've been busy making a Gruffalo tray at home which I think may have been the inspiration for this).

These 'log pile houses' set the children off exploring for snakes!

After ~~arguments~~ negotiations about who was the 'king of the castle', M and J decided that there was a king and a queen!

Exploring.....

....and sharing discoveries.

Ah and then we came across this tree - just perfect for climbing!

Without any prompting they were off!

Higher....

...and higher...

When we eventually managed to get them away from the tree, the next thing to catch their attention was a ditch...

...just perfect for running up and down.

J was determined to climb up the left side of the tree trunk rather than taking the easier option.

A quick game of catch!

Then it was on to practising their jumping skills over another ditch.

And this trunk proved just perfect for developing balancing skills.

We really enjoyed our hour and a half stroll through the woods (didn't realise we had been that long!)

Are they ready for school now?

Nooooo they need lots more tree climbing opportunities first:-)

Playdough Roads

2012-02-28T21:41:00.001Z

Cars are pretty popular around here!

The children love running them down the guttering.

To support their interest, I made a road out of playdough for them to drive their cars along.

They soon got the hang on it.

Driving their cars round and round the table, being careful not to crash!

This proved to be a great activity for developing small, controlled hand movements.

Even the younger ones couldn't resist getting involved.

I need to have another go at the outdoor playdough recipe though, our turned out a bit sticky.

DIY Instruments / Sound-makers

2012-02-27T20:46:00.000Z

I look after a little one who is fascinated by the sounds he can make from objects. He has pretty much exhausted our supply of instruments and doesn't really bother with them that much (apart from emptying the basket over the floor!), but his interest in sounds is still evident through his exploration of everyday objects, which he bangs and shakes. So I thought I would have a go at making him some more sound-makers to explore.

I made 'ping' drums from balloons and tin cans. I decided to call them this as the children prefer pinging the balloons as opposed to banging them.

For this one I used a hot glue gun to glue wooden curtain rings to a cardboard tube and painted with acrylic paint. The sound is made by running a stick over the rings.

I also added a couple of bells. The smaller is 2 bells attached to a curtain ring with an elastic band, the larger has bells attached to an empty sticky tape roll with garden wire.

Here on the left is a button shaker, buttons attached by string to a cardboard tube. I made this because the children love the larger button shaker on the music wall in the garden. I also used a small tube and tape to make a tape drum, I got this idea from Alec over at Childs Play Music.

In this tube I put 3 bells - the tube has to be moved quite slowly to achieve a sound.

A guitar of sorts! I used an old gift box for this one, removing the celophane panel from the lid box and cutting small grooves in the base for the elastic bands to sit in.

Someone gave me the idea for sound jars on my Facebook page. I filled each jar with a different object to make different sounds (bell suspended on an elastic band, conker, bird seed, small hooks, metal ball bearings) and plan to make another 5 jars with the same objects in to create a 'matching game' (couldn't find the 5th jar when I took the picture - spotted it in one of the photos later though, under the sofa!)

I gave the basket to K to explore.

Pings drums were his favourite!

He also discovered they could be banged together to make a sound.....

...and sucked!

The sound jars were pretty popular too.....

He found the 'ping' technique didn't work for the tape drum.

The sound-makers proved to be multi-functional, they can be stacked.....

...and grouped together!

This week I also got approx. a 2 metre long dowel from Homebase and cut it into pieces (sanding the ends) to make rhythm sticks to go with our Boogiemites CD.

Now I just need to get cracking on the other half of the sound jars:-)

Links to EYFS:

Cappuccino's and Cakes in the Outdoor Kitchen.

2012-02-17T08:50:00.002Z

I introduced an additional item to the outdoor kitchen this week that took play to a whole new level.

If only I could say it had all been planned!

The kitchen area is always busy. Sometimes I think I could shut off the rest of the garden and the children would be content to play here all day!

Lots of 'cooking' was observed, mainly using leaves, water and...

...wood pellets!

We found these work really well in the kitchen area. A couple of week ago I'd swept the spilt wood pellets into a pile and forgotten about them until the following week. Of course it rained and we discovered that the wood pellets had turned back to like a powder. This proved to be just perfect for cooking! The children discovered if they added water the wood pellets still absorbed it and they got a mixture that closely resembled a crumble mix.

This week the dissolved wood pellets were sugar for 'cups of tea'!

My own children were home as its half term. I generally find they are never content with what is available and always want something extra!

This week it was coffee that was requested! Luckily I still had a jar from when we were cooking back in the summer.

As I was searching for it in the garage I came across something else which I thought would be perfect for making cups of coffee. Well I say 'came across it' more like it fell off the shelf at me! I really need to sort the garage.

And what was it - shaving foam! Perfect for frothy coffees!

On the way back I grabbed some soya mince for chocolate sprinkles and some foil confetti - just incase rainbow sprinkles were required!

And that's when coffee making went into overdrive!

Rainbow sprinkles were definitely the preferred option.

Yum!

Not so 'yum' once it was decided to mix the shaving foam into the coffee!

The following day the children headed straight for the kitchen again.

I have this problem in the kitchen too - you search and search for something and then find it is right in front of you! (the kettle)

Hmmm think it's going to be 'cups of coffee' again today!

Well they were happy making coffee for a bit, but then my daughter requested a mixing bowl.

And it appeared cakes were going to be on the menu today.

Those wood pellets are just so versatile!

Looks almost good enough to eat.

Although the children were each involved in their own play and weren't really communicating with each other, I noticed that 'cake making' was also going on in the corner.

Into the oven!

And on to the next one!

At this point the shaving foam from yesterday was remembered:-)

Yummy - just right to go with a cappucino!

This was such an appealing activity that even my 9 year old son couldn't resist getting involved

(no photos though - cool 9 year olds do not 'play' in the outdoor kitchen!)

It was fascinating to watch the toddlers pottering around the kitchen area.

Imitating the actions of the older children.

And investigating what was going on.

I didn't get photos of all the children's explorations here as I was too busy watching what they were doing, but basically K systematically places his hand in each cup and wiggles his fingers around before moving on to the next cup. (possibly exploring and comparing the temperature / feel etc of the water). He then accidentally knocks one of the cups over. L, noticing this then empties the cup she is holding. K noticing L emptying the cup then joins in.

Between them they systematically empty every cup and container on the table!

It will be interesting to see how the little ones play next week, with all the new ideas the older children have introduced.
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Sewing Hearts

2012-02-16T20:21:00.000Z

Pretend it's still Valentines Day!

I've been desperately trying to finish my Uni assignment so have got behind on everything else.

Still this activity doesn't have to be just for Valentines Day:-)

As you can see from the pictures we've been busy sewing this week.

I cut out some heart templates and hole-punched holes around the edge. I then added beads, left-over heart sequins from our sensory tub, plastic needles and some of that ribbon used to decorate presents when wrapped. (You can tell I never use it for that as I don't even know what it's called!) I got these reduced after Christmas and knew they would come in handy for something.

We found lots of opportunity to practise and develop our small motor skills during this activity. Snipping...

...threading...

Wow! M surprised me by managing to do this on his own! Looks like we will be using real needles next time :-)

Then threading our ribbon in and out of the holes.

I tried not to direct the children's play too much. I only made a couple of suggestions, one being that they could go across the heart if they wanted.

It really didn't matter if they didn't pull the string tight every time. This is something they will learn with practise and anyway I think it made the hearts look quite pretty.

About half-way through the activity I did suggest the children might like to use the beads. I think they were so focused on their sewing that they hadn't noticed or didn't realise they could use them.

This is my daughters. Yes she does still have her pj's on and no it's not particularly early, just the school holidays!

Here are some of their finished hearts.

Next week I plan to leave the resources out again, but this time not provide the pre-cut hole-punched templates. Instead I think I will provide plain pieces of card as well as different hole-punches to see what the children do!

Links to EYFS:

Process not Product Chocolate Making

2012-02-13T21:53:00.000Z

This is just a quick post to share how our chocolate making went today (really need to get my assignment finished!).

Everything went pretty much to plan. The children wrapped their chocolate pieces in a layer of foil....

...then a second layer ...

Making sure the foil was nice and tight around the chocolate before popping them in their cups of 'hand hot' water.

While the chocolate was melting, they were busy making the molds for our chocolates, pressing shapes into playdough....

...and then lining with foil, so the chocolates didn't taste of playdough!

Then they carefully un-wrapped one layer of foil, snipped the corner of the second...

...and squeezed the chocolate into their molds. I then put the chocolates into the fridge to set.

In all honesty these weren't the prettiest chocolates, but the children had been involved in the whole process and making them in this way provided lots of opportunities for learning. The children learnt that objects can change their state (solid to liquid to solid), that the foil 'protected' the chocolate from both getting wet and tasting of playdough and that the way we made molds for Plaster of Paris in the summer could be transferred and used with other materials.

Marble Rolling Hearts - Part 2

2012-02-12T20:54:00.000Z

Remember our marble-rolled hearts from my last post?

Well as they dried on the side, I thought they looked pretty good, but they didn't quite looked finished. They needed livening up - a bit of sparkle - ah! a bit of glitter :-)

I thought we could use string dipped in glue and then glittered to brighten them up.

With one of my little ones heading off to school in 6 months time, we are working alot on our small motor skills.

M soon got the hang of dipping his string attached to a clothes peg into the glue and making sure it was really covered.

Then dragging it across his heart to create glue trails.

And adding that bit of sparkle by sprinkling glitter on!

Oooh quite pretty!

But then I had another idea. I thought if we left the string on the hearts this would provide lots more opportunities to develop our small motor skills as we would have to....

...cut the string....

...squeeze the clothes peg to get it to hold the string.....

...carefully place it on the heart and then squeeze the clothes peg again to release the string...

Then sprinkle on the glitter.

Oooh now that's pretty too!

Here are some of our finished hearts :-)

I think they are definitely finished this time!

Marble Rolling Hearts - Part 1

2012-02-11T21:11:00.000Z

This week we've been experimenting with rolling objects.

We used heart templates with it being Valentine's Day and an assortment of objects to experiment with.

First we selected what object we wanted to use.

Then used a syringe to add paint to the tin.

(I sneaked in a finger muscle strengthening activity there!)

And rolled.

Add a bit more paint (this turned out to be M's favourite part of the activity!)

We found it quite tricky to get the marble to roll through the paint.

M thought two marbles might make it a bit easier.

Hmmm no, it proved just as tricky getting two marbles to roll through the paint as one.

So next we tried lots of little marbles.

Now they got the template covered in no time! I drew M's attention to the lines that he had made in the paint by rolling the marbles and asked him if he could get the lines to go from the top to the bottom.

After a bit of thought he worked out how to do it!

Then we tried the fir cones.

We found they made a different pattern from the marbles, but M wasn't overly impressed.

Trying to make purple!

As I said earlier in the post, M's favourite part was adding paint to the tray with the syringe, so it was becoming quite thick in the tray. So I had the idea that maybe we could try mark-making in the paint.

We found if we rolled the marbles around we could start our mark-making all over again!

Here are our finished hearts!

Check out part 2 of this post to see what we did with them next.

Making Chocolates

2012-02-10T21:04:00.001Z

One of the children I look after attends pre-school in the morning and spends the afternoon with me. When I collected her this week she came out clutching a little chocolate prettily wrapped in celophane. 'Ooooh' I exclaimed, 'did you make that at pre-school?' 'No' she replied, 'the pre-school lady gave it to me'. Whhhaaat!! What was the point in that? What had she learnt by being given a chocolate to give to her mummy? Why hadn't she been involved in making the chocolate? What a missed opportunity for learning. Still it wasn't too late, I could still do a chocolate making activity with her that her pre-school should have done!

Without much time left before Valentine's Day, I had planned to go with the way we've made chocolates in the past - break the chocolate into a bowl, melt it over boiling water, spoon into molds (while giving lots of warnings about the bowl being hot!). However as I was looking for chocolate today in Asda, I had another idea! In the bakery aisle I noticed they were selling chocolate for decorating cakes in a handy foil sachet that you just drop into hot water to melt, snip the corner and pour. What a brilliant idea! That would make the whole chocolate making process so much easier. Oooh but then I had an even better idea, I'm sure we could make our own foil sachets for melting chocolate. I had a go today and it worked!

Here's what I used:

Bar of Cadbury's chocolate (or any chocolate!)

Aluminium Foil

Play dough

Cup of hand hot water

Shape or object to imprint into dough

And here's what I did:

Break off a couple of chunks of chocolate and wrap in foil. Make sure this layer is nice and tight around the chocolate.

Wrap the chocolate in a second layer of foil.

Then drop the wrapped chocolate into a cup of 'hand hot' water. It needs to stay in here for approximately 10 minutes until melted.

While the chocolate is melting, roll the playdough into a ball a bit bigger than the object you plan to imprint.

Then imprint into the dough. I was in a bit of a rush so just used a silicone ice cube tray.

Line you imprint with foil (you don't want your chocolate tasking of playdough!)

This bit might be a bit tricky for the little ones but I'll let you know how they get on on Monday.

Then you need to take your melted chocolate out of the water, remove the first layer of foil and snip the corner of the second.

Squeeze the chocolate into the mold.

Then put into the fridge to set.

Once the chocolate has set you can remove them from the foil.

Can't wait to do this on Monday!

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Super Smooth Salt Dough Hearts

2012-02-07T14:42:00.000Z

I couldn't resist having a go at the recipe for smooth salt dough I found over at MommyLabs at Christmas. The key ingredient to get smooth salt dough seems to be liquid starch. After a bit of experimenting the following recipe seems to work:

2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of salt

1tbsp oil

Approx 1/2 - 1 cup of water

3 tsp cream of tartar

Approx 50ml liquid starch

Food colouring

Put the flour, salt, oil, and cream of tartar in a bowl and mix together. Add the food colouring. The dough seems to lighten as it dries so you may want to go for a slightly darker colour. Gradually add the water, enough so you end up with a dough that holds together. Then add the liquid starch. The key to getting it super smooth seems to be the amount of time you spend working the liquid starch into the dough. As you work it, you can feel it becoming smoother.

As it is coming up to Valentine's Day we used heart cutters and beads to decorate our dough.

Strengthening those finger muscles by working the dough.

Practising using tools and equipment for a particular purpose.

Again it takes strength in arms and fingers to be able to be able to cut a shape from the dough.

And then using our imagination and creativity as we decorate our heart.

The small beads and gems required very controlled movements.

We used the beads from some necklaces that I got cheap after Christmas.

Working on number 2.

The square gems in the middle are presents apparently!

Carefully moving our finished hearts onto the bakign sheet to dry out.

As they are decorated, the salt dough hearts can't go in the over. You just need a warm spot somewhere so they can dry out.

Our finished hearts!

As I said the key to getting super smooth dough is to spend time working the liquid starch into the dough. I did a trial run last weekend and the dough came out perfect. This week I don't think I spent quite as much time on the dough and consequently these didn't come out quite as smooth. A bit of experimenting since made me realise that I should have spent a bit longer working the dough.

But I still think these are very pretty!

I am putting out red playdough, heart cutters and beads for futher exploration this week:-)

Links to EYFS:
CLL: Handwriting
CLL: Writing
CD: Exploring Media and Materials

Cheerio Bird Feeders

2012-02-05T20:17:00.000Z

This is just a quick post to share the cheerio bird feeders we made this week. We threaded the cheerios onto pipecleaners and wooden craft sticks.

This activity is great for small motor development and concentration!

It took quite a while to fill up the pipecleaners.

As we were threading we watched the birds that are starting to come to the coconut bird feeders we made a few weeks back. It's taken about four weeks for the birds to start coming to our garden.

Once the pipecleaners were filled we bent the pipecleaners into different shapes and hung them in the tree. Hopefully the birds will come this week!

Super Simple Toddler Valentine Hearts

2012-02-05T19:06:00.001Z

I made these cute hearts with the little ones this week (aged 13-18 months). I've been doing some activities with the older pre-schoolers and was a bit conscious of not having done anything with the little ones. But I didn't want to do anything to0 structured because of their age and wanted them to enjoy and explore during the activity, so settled on these foil hearts.

I taped a sheet of foil to the table for each child and provided red, white and pink paint

(didn't have white and pink paint pot lids though!)

Then I left them to make marks with the brushes and explore the paint.

They developed their hand-eye coordination trying to fit the brushes back in the pot....

...and were confident to explore with their fingers as well as the brushes.

I swapped the paints around so they got to add each colour to their paper. Forgot to say that I added pva glue to the paint to help it stick to the foil and not flake off when dry.

Once they had tired of painting (about 5 minutes later!), I left the foil paintings to dry and then wrapped them around some hearts I had cut from stiff cardboard.

I didn't worry about getting the foil too smooth around the cardboard hearts as I think this added to their effect.

They actually look alot better than they do in the pictures!

Links to EYFS:
PSED: Dispositions and Attitudes
CLL: Writing
CLL: Handwriting
PD: Using Equipment and Materials
CD: Exploring Media and Materials

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Valentines Sensory Tub

2012-02-03T22:00:00.004Z

This isn't really a Valentine's sensory tub. It's a sorting / one to one correspondence / small motor development activity cunningly disguised as a Valentine's sensory tub! At least that was my plan when I put the tub together, only M had other ideas.

It started off pretty much as I had planned, posting the pink and red laminated paper hearts into the post box. We pretended these were letters and talked about who we might be sending them to and why.

Exploring and discovering.....

Filling using the medicine spoons .......

...and pouring.

Only when it came to the one to one correspondence part, M had other ideas. Instead of my idea of placing one object in each ice cube compartment, M decided that these would make perfect cake cases and he set about carefully pouring the rice or 'cake mixture' into each compartment.

Then he used the heart confetti and buttons to add decorations to his cakes.

Using the tweezers to transfer the 'cake decorations' onto the 'cakes'.

We soon ran out of ice cube trays and had to move on to the other containers. As M played I introduced new vocabulary and concepts such as 'overflowing' and M tried hard to incorporate these new ideas into his play. For example, he later used the word 'overflowing' as he played but didn't quite get the pronounciation right. Still that didn't matter as he used it in the right context.

With our ice cube trays all filled, J moved on to using the heart nesting boxes. Now at this point this wasn't a cake it was custard....

...although at some point during play it did change into a cake!

Now the next bit is my favourite part. M placed one of the petals into the clear container and announced he was making me a cup of tea (this I assume was the tea bag) such imagination!

Of course a cup of tea needed a couple of spoonfuls of sugar!

F was also keen to be involved in the play. It was the clear container and hearts that caught his attention.

He practised and developed his pincer grasp as he repeatedly attempted to pick up the hearts from the table and place them in the container ....and then remove them.

He then progressed to the post box. F is only just one, but that didn't stop him persevering until he managed to fit the buttons and hearts into the tiny post box slot.

I think this is why it is important to never assume an activity is too difficult for a child. It's amazing how focused they can become when they want to achieve something.

F then set about trying to discover how the post box opened. Here he appears to be drawing on previous play experiences and transferring his knowledge. He knows that once he has posted objects into another object there is usually a way of opening the container to retrieve the objects. With a bit of help he found it!

I was fascinated by the creativity and imagination M displayed during this activity and F surprised me with his level of concentration and determination. M didn't participate in the activity in the way that I had planned, but his ideas were far better than mine! Watching the children play with this and seeing how engaged they were reminded me why I love my job:-)

Links to EYFS:

PSED: Disposition and Attitudes

CLL: Language for Communication

CLL: Language for Thinking

CLL: Handwriting

PSRN: Shapes, Spaces and Measures

PD: Using Equipment and Materials

CD: Being Creative

CD: Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play

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Child-initiated Ice Play!

2012-02-02T22:02:00.005Z

For me there is nothing better than when the children discover something themselves that really catches their attention. And this week exactly that happened when they discovered ice in the garden!

Yes, even though it was cold we were still outside!

They discovered ice in the saucepans. This got them thinking as the water didn't behave quite as they expected it would. The water in the little saucepan wasn't fully frozen so they found they could still stir it....

..but the ice in the big saucepan was frozen solid, just waiting to be smashed! J discovered the potential of ice to be smashed all on his own!

And he quite enjoyed it!

But then he found he could pick up the water, something that was normally very tricky to do.

The boys transferred the ice between the saucepans. This gave them the opportunity to experience and feel just how cold it was.

K explored by dipping his fingers into the water, you could tell it was colder than he expected by the look on his face.

J was really focused as he set about breaking the ice. Great hand-eye coordination required as well as those pieces got smaller!

I was happy to stand back during this activity and just watch the children exploring. The only time I did intervene was when I pointed J in the direction of more ice.

J carefully transferred the ice back to the kitchen area.

Positioning and then.....

...smashing of course. Smashing ice is definitely fun!

Stirring

Comparing the difference between stirring just ice and ice in water.

L came over for a look when the other two lost interest in the activity.

Picking the ice up to have a good look and then transferring...

...and mixing.

Of course her interest reignited J's interest - he's not one to miss out!

His exploration had progressed to pouring the ice between the saucepans.

With a gentle reminder that this highly sought after ice needed to be shared.

The following day the children headed straight for the ice when we went outside and discovered this - the spoon frozen into the ice. This got J thinking as normally spoons could be easily removed from water.

Still the ice breaking skills he developed yesterday soon had the problem sorted.

Another spoon in need of removing from the ice. It was fascinating to watch the younger children trying to work out why they couldn't get to the spoon.

J knew just how to get it out though!

The activity provided the opportunity to introduce new words to the children and challenged their thinking about water.

Links to EYFS:

KUW: Exploration and Investigation

KUW: Place

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Nursery Rhymes - 2 Little Dicky Birds

2012-02-02T20:59:00.000Z

I've always sung nursery rhymes with the children in my care, but I've often wondered if they have any idea what we are singing about! So I thought as I introduce new nursery rhymes to the children, I would set up a little play scene to help them understand what they are singing about. As we've been looking at birds recently for the Big Garden Birdwatch, we started with 2 Little Dicky Birds.

J loved it. He spent most of the week moving the birds around, sometimes singing the rhyme and sometimes just playing with them.

Link to EYFS:

CLL:

Chinese Lanterns

2012-01-29T21:41:00.000Z

This week we were busy painting Chinese Lanterns.

I placed the lanterns over a tube fixed to the table with playdough to make them a bit easier to paint.

At first J focused on painting the top. Thinking about this afterwards, I wonder it this is because this is the part of the lantern that most closely resembles a sheet of paper, their normal painting suface.

For others, getting the paint brush in and out of the pot was far more interesting than painting!

Still working on the top!

Experimenting!

Car Track Painting

2012-01-29T21:21:00.000Z

An oldie but a goodie:-)

I decided to do this activity because K is totally obsessed with cars and wheels and thought I could use this interest to introduce mark-making.

I used double sided tape to tape the paint plates to the table. With little ones around if it can be moved it will be moved!

Not really much to explain with this activity, just dip and roll!

Saying that L was fascinated with the marks made by the cars.

We added a slope to make it a bit more interesting.

K was interested in the slope but less so in the paint!

I think this might have been as popular if it was just a 'car rolling down a slope' activity :-)

Benefits of doing this outside - you don't have to worry when little ones head away from the table with painted cars in their hands!

Re-organising our outdoor area.

2012-01-29T15:36:00.000Z

Anyone who is following my blog may have noticed that I have become rather obsessed lately with getting the little ones outdoors! (I am holding Keirna over at Learning for Life personally responsible for this change in my approach to outdoor play and her linky party that I set myself the challenge of posting to every week :-)). Anyway this had led me to looking at our outdoor area and having a bit of a change about. One of the reasons for this is that the children I am currently looking after are much younger than those I had this time last year .What was appropriate for the older children isn't working for the little ones, such as the outdoor kitchen tucked away down the side of the house. I need to make sure the little ones aren't tempted to eat their creations! Also, although we go outside we are usually drawn back inside by snack /story time so I wanted to find some way of offering this outside.

So I've moved the kitchen to the end of the garden (our garden is not that big!) where I can easily see it. I've put it beside a sensory tray as hopefully this will supply ingredients for mixing.

The patch of dirt to the left I am hoping to grow beans and peas in during the summer, again providing ingredients for the kitchen.

The loose parts which were hidden down the end of the garden have been moved closer to the house where the children can more easily access them. This storage cupboard now contains logs and tree cookies, bark, stones, shells, ropes and pegs, guttering and carpet tiles, as well as some of our other toys such as dinosaurs, fish, insects, brushes, water toys etc. I've now also got round to labelling all the drawers so that the children know where to look!

Some of the bigger loose parts are stored beside the house where the children can easily access them alongside all the wheeled toys.

I've moved the wood off-cuts into another storage chest. As with the other storage cupboard it's just a case of opening it up so the children can use it, I don't need to move anything about.

Balls, plastic building blocks and other outdoor toys are also all easily accessible to the children.

But I have now created a reading or book area. I've wanted to create an outdoor reading area for quite a while but couldn't find any outdoor seating that was reasonably priced. In the end I opted for using the cushions for the swing seat inside cushion storage bags (had this brain wave after spotting them in Ikea) As the bag are designed to be waterproof I don't need to worry about dragging the cushions inside each day. The don't look particularly pretty but they do they job! I hadn't thought of using the tree stumps for seating (yep, I don't know why this hadn't occurred to me either) until I was trying wedge the leaf into the centre of one to get it to stand upright. After looking around for months for seating, it had been staring me in the face all the time! I ended up attaching the leaf to the fence with cable ties in the end, after it refused to stay upright. The leaf I got from a car boot sale for £1. I had been tempted to buy it a couple of days before in Ikea for £8 and couldn't believe my luck when I saw it at the car boot.

Chilling out with a book.

On Wednesday we spent the whole morning in the garden and had snack and a story in our book area:-)

I've also added a tray that is going to be for small world play - currently housing dinosaurs! (Everything has a lid so I don't have to worry about bringing it inside!

Bet you didn't know dinosaurs could climb nets!

I found that by adding the net linked the tree to the small world tray for the children and they incorporated it into their play.

I've also added a mark-making box by our mark-making boards (click to see!)

I managed to find some little clip-boards that were just the right size for the children.

Oh and we still have our ball tube which they love!

And our music wall (click to see!)

Our water wall (click to see!) I have put away temporarily until the weather warms up a bit, as the children were tending to tip the water down the front of themselves and even our wet-weather gear didn't manage to prevent them getting soaking.

We also have a brand new water tray for lots of water fun!

Playing in the rain!

2012-01-29T07:58:00.000Z

I can honestly say this is probably the first time we have been outside to play when it is raining - well it's definitely the first time we've been to play in the garden when it's raining! I'm not saying we don't go out when it is raining, obviously we have to go on the school run regardless of the weather and the children have the opportunity then to splash in the puddles. But I suppose what I am trying to say is we've never intentionally gone out to play. Usually we'd be stood at the window talking about why we can't go out and the conversations that come from the children (well those that can talk) is that they have come to accept it as part of life, both at home and here, that we don't go out to play when it's raining. Well they were in for a bit of a shock today!

I did get some very confused looks from J and comments such as 'its raining......get wet' (said with a scrunched up face!) and at first he didn't look overly impressed about going out in the rain. But he quickly realised that playing in the rain meant he got to jump and splash in puddles (can't believe I didn't get any good photos).

L was quick to notice the water everywhere! Thinking about it this is probably the first time she has got to really experience it and discover what it feels like. I know she has come across water before (bath, water play, washing hands etc) but how do you know that rain is water unless you actually get down and touch and explore it. I'm not trying to make the children's parents look or feel bad because I can honestly say myself that when my own children were this age I wouldn't have dreamt of purposefully taking them out to play in the rain!

Yep, this rain / water stuff gets everywhere!

Yay, I resisted the urge to tell J to get down because the stumps would be slippery or to warn him to be careful:-) I did tell him though that the rain would make the stumps slippery - it always helps to be prepared!

J discovered if he stood under the shelter of the leaf he didn't get wet!

Apparently there wasn't quite enough water and more was requested for the boats! As they played one child accidentally removed the stopper so that water emptied out. But J thought this was great as it made the puddles deeper!

Saving the ducks from the shark (yes I know it's a whale, but it was definitely a shark!)

Because of the rain, we couldn't have all the toys out, but to be honest I don't think the children noticed:-) So will we be going out in the rain in future - definitely!

Links to EYFS:

KUW: Exploration and Investigation

KUW: Place

Squeezy Bottle Painting!

2012-01-24T19:57:00.003Z

They look innocent enough don't they!

I thought about doing this for an activity when I noticed last week that J was still enjoying watching glue drizzle from the glue spreader. So at 6 o clock this morning I was busy trying to get the paint to the right consistency (I like to plan ahead!) I'm not quite rich enough to give J bottles of ready mix paint to squeeze away with, so I lengthened the paint with water and flour. I experimented until I got the consistency right. Too watery and it shot out of the bottle: too thick and I had to squeeze the bottle too hard to get it out! I found powder paint as opposed to ready mix paint seemed to mix better with the flour and water and created an almost perfect consistency (I only had blue powder paint though). I think you can just about see from the pictures that I didn't fill the bottles anywhere near close to the top, but this proved to be plenty of paint.

At first J didn't quite get the hang of this activity. I squeezed some of the paint onto the paper to show J how to use the bottles, but I think he thought that I was squeezing out the paint for him to use and set about exploring it with his fingers...

...and then his hands.

It took a bit of convincing before he realised that he could actually squeeze the paint all over the paper.

But once he got the idea there was no stopping him!

At this point J thinks the blue is empty as he has squeezed all the air out of the bottle and he moves on to the red.

Again once he thinks the red is empty he moves onto the green.

By this point he is clearly enjoying the activity. There is very little language but lots of smiles!

Now he thinks all the bottles are empty, he pauses briefly and then decides there is only one thing for it......

...yep you got it, get your hands stuck in!

I hadn't really planned for this in the activity, particularly as J isn't usually overly keen on getting his hands too messy (usually I have to have wipes ready during painting activities). But I'm happy to go with the flow!

Of course once you've got painted hands, it's only natural to make handprints:-)

These were quite pretty with the mix of colours, but J was far to busy creating as many as possible to notice.

Then it was back to the bottles, which had re-filled with air by this point (notice the big pool of paint towards the top of the picture, J didn't notice it when creating his hands prints and I resisted drawing his attention to it)

He went through all the bottles again in turn.

Ah and then he spotted the big pool of paint!

A bit more blue......

...and give it a mix with two hands this time! Now judging by J's facial expressions this felt rather nice! (the flour does give it a lovely feel)

More red (hmmm beginning to get that pre-school brown colour!)

This time J swooshed his hands backwards and forwards in the paint.

During the swooshing he seemed to notice the lines made by his fingers....

.....and he was quick to pick up on this and experimented with drawing in the paint.

Then it was back to squeezing the last bits of paint out of the bottles. By this point squeezing the bottles was proving increasingly tricky, what with all the paint, but that didn't stop J trying.

Now I mentioned J doesn't usually like his hands to be too messy and it was around this point that he kept pausing, looking at his hands and saying 'I've finished'. Which was fine. I replied 'Ok you've finished?' To which I got a 'no'. The messy hands were obviously not quite enough to draw him away from the activity!

I loved watching him working on this part. He is trying to get the paint to meet around the bottle (between his hands). He keeps having to take them back down towards the bottom of the paper to scoop more paint with his hands, each time he does this his hands get a little bit closer!

Apart from initially supplying the bottles and showing J how to use them, everything else in this activity has come from J. In was great to watch him explore the paint in so many different ways without having to prompt or encourage him:-)

Links to EYFS:

Shapes!

2012-01-21T08:38:00.001Z

For the last few weeks we have been looking at shapes during our play.

Activities such as this shape puzzle have been available to the children throughout. J completed this puzzle repeatedly without difficulty, but obviously I couldn't be sure whether it was the shape or colour difference he was noticing.

Even the 'just' one year olds were keen to have a go at the puzzle.

We've also been doing shape printing activities in the garden. There is little adult direction in this activity, apart from initially showing J how to print shapes with the resources provided.

Apart from that he is free to explore the resources as he wishes. I admit there are limited exploration opportunities in this activity apart from shape printing, but craft and paint resources are available to the children all the time if they wish to explore them in another way.

J became fascinated with printing the same shape over and over again, moving its position very slightly each time.

We also incorporated shapes into our play dough.

Again all the normal playdough resources are available to the children in the storage drawers behind if shapes aren't catching their interest.

I find watching whether the children are interested in the activity I provide as a good indication of whether to proceed with future activities I may have planned on the same theme. If they are not interested, they are not going to learn as effectively and its likely they will not be as willing to participate in future activities. so I really have to consider whether it is worthwhile continuing, or if there is a more apparent interest coming from the child, which my time could be used more effectively supporting.

At this time, J quite happily made shape 'cakes' with the dough. Only needing a bit of help to roll out the dough.

He used his full force to push the shape cutter into the dough....

...and then carefully and precisely lifted the dough shape.

Great opportunities here for strengthening finger and arm muscles as well as coordinating actions.

Alongside this, as explained in an earlier post, we also gave our cardboard sensory tray a make-over to support our shape activities. I think this helped J explore the properties of shapes in a practical sense. He found some were much easier to work with, while other proved to be tricky to get the pot and spoons in and out of.

As part of this activity I encouraged J to pour his pellets through the shapes that I named, supporting his recognition and identification of shapes.

Then the week before last we started our shape collage. These were heavily inspired by the Child Art Retrospective blog where the children create some amazing pieces of work. What I particularly picked up from this blog, is that a piece of work is not finished after it has been worked on once. The children are encouraged and supported to return to a piece of work over several weeks and add to it. I also noticed the wide variety of materials the children used to create their pieces of art on.

Now I am definitely no artist and I don't think I could create anything near as good as some of their pieces or support the children in creating anything as good, but I picked up some ideas that I could use to make our activities a bit more interesting. Because of J's age (and my ability, or lack of!) ours were going to be quite simple. Rather than paper, we used wall paper samples as the base for our collages.

I then gave J a tray of assorted shapes to create his collage with. In this activity, from the aspect of learning more about shapes, communication between J and myself was vitally important. We named the shapes he picked up, talked about their properties (sides / corners etc) as he glued and made references to objects in the everyday world (wheels / circles etc).

Without this flow of conversation, this would have been more an activity to support physical development and would have done little to support J's awareness and knowledge of shapes.

Although there was adult direction, there was still time for free exploration,

It became apparent from his actions during the activity that J was still fascinated with watching glue drizzle onto the paper (I have an activity in mind to support this interest next week:-))

Refilling the glue pot was also very popular - now think of the hand-eye coordination and control of arm movements required to do this!

This week we reused our shape collages and used them as the base for our shape printing.

I limited the colours available as I wanted their attention to be focused on the shapes.

Now this is what I had in mind as something our shape collages would look like when finished. And these are two of J's...

What I didn't notice at the time (only when taking the photographs) is that J hasn't stamped randomly over the paper, but has deliberately stamped over the existing shapes. It was also his choice to stick mainly to printing circles. Interesting that this is the shape he can confidently identify.

Although some activities need adult direction, I try not to limit or restrict the direction a child chooses to take an activity in. Obviously there are limits and boundaries. If we are painting that doesn't mean we can decide to paint the walls or each other, or run completely wild with the paint. The can do that when we do large scale painting outside!

J was keen to paint on card as the younger children had been doing whilst he printed.

But then he chose to print over the top of his painting.

He created some pretty impressive effects (hmmm now why hadn't I thought of doing it like that!)

Links to EYFS:
CLL: Language for Communication
CLL: Handwriting
PSRN: Shapes, Spaces and Measures