Week 27^th April 2020

Area of Learning-Language Development

Making marks/writing on different surfaces – Cover a piece of card, cut from a cereal packet, with tinfoil (no need to glue, just fold it over the edges) to create a writing surface.Encourage your child to make marks (dots, lines, scribbles) with different tools – pen, spoon etc. This helps develop their control and awareness of different levels of pressure used when writing.

Don’t forget to enjoy this week’s story – “The Wide Mouthed Frog” video on Facebook!

Area of Learning-Mathematical Development

Measuring – Collect shoes of a similar size and help your child arrange them in a long straight line, heel to toe without spaces in between.Encourage them to measure family members by lying beside the line of shoes, counting how many shoes ‘long’ they are. You can write each number on a piece of paper with each person’s name and display the page somewhere to refer to again later.

Area of Learning-Personal, social and Emotional Development

Set a challenge this week to continue to develop your child’s self-help skills. Encourage your child to make their own bed daily, put on and take off their shoes, pour their own milk for their morning cereal or butter their own toast. This continues to foster a sense of accomplishment and promotes independence.

Area of Learning-Physical Development

Fine Motor Skills – Hand strength and coordination – Use a sock to help your child make a simple hand puppet, adding paper circle eyes and an optional long, red paper tongue.Opening and closing the frog’s mouth is great exercise for the hands, strengthening muscles and developing control and coordination. Your child can ‘feed’ the frog with some dried pasta or beans, one piece at a time – see how many pieces the frog can keep in its mouth at once!

Gross Motor Skills *Daily spurts of vigorous exercise are great – run, jump, dance, skip etc!

Frog jumps – place some mats close together on the ground as lily pads. Encourage your child to crouch low with knees apart and hands on ground and then jump, straightening the legs as much as possible before landing crouched down on both feet – this takes practice! Croaking while jumping is optional. To create more challenge, move the mats further apart.This helps build core strength, balance, coordination and control.

Area of Learning-Creative Development

• Sensory play- Gather natural resources from the garden or on your daily walk. Gather leaves, sticks, grass, flowers, petals, pebbles, weeds or any other fantastic things you can find. Fill a few empty yoghurt cartons with the materials and add cooled boiled water. Place in the freezer, remove when frozen, place in a basin and have great fun exploring and retrieving the materials whilst the ice melts.
• Natural resources gathered from your garden or your walk can be used to make a beautiful garden collage. Spread glue over a large sheet of paper and then allow your child to be creative and place the resources on the page to create a unique picture.

Area of Learning-World Around Us

• Continue to engage in conversations around life cycles of the frog and other creatures e.g. lamb – sheep, chick – hen.
• During your daily walk encourage your child to use their senses to explore the world around them and become aware of the noises they can hear and smells that they encounter along the way. Ask questions, “Can you smell anything?” “What can we hear, listen?”
• At home encourage and engage your children in recycling household waste to develop an awareness of caring for their environment.

Wide Mouthed Frog

Nursery Rhymes

Songs

• The farmer plants the seeds x2

Hey ho ma deario the farmer plants the seed,

The rain begins to fall x2

Hey ho ma deario the rain begins to fall,

The sun begins to shine x2

Hey ho my deario the sun begins to shine

The flower begins to grow x2

Hey ho ma deario the flower begins to grow.

• Little bird poem.

I saw a little bird go hop, hop, hop

I told the little bird to stop, stop, stop

I went to the window to say

‘How do you do?’

He wagged his little tail

And away he flew!