Learning at Nursery is based around play and practical activities.  Whilst at home, give your child lots of opportunities for play.  By playing with your child, you can support their learning, explain concepts and develop their language skills.  If your child has the opportunity to play with siblings then this will help develop social skills such as turn-taking, sharing and conflict-resolution.  Also, give your child time to play on their own as this develops imagination, allows them to come up with their own ideas and encourages independence.

At Nursery, one of the key areas that we work on is Communication and Language.  Talk to your child lots and lots and listen to what they have to say to you.  By reading books together, playing together and even watching telly together, you are supporting their communication and language by introducing new vocabulary, helping them understand new concepts and modelling good listening skills.  The BBC website, Tiny Happy People, has lots of information about how you as parents can support your child's language development and also has activity ideas and resources.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people

Routine is also important for young children as it makes them feel secure when they know what is happening.  While children are not at Nursery, maybe think about creating some structure or a new routine for the time of day when they would normally be at school.  You could plan to spend some time playing; then do a short adult-guided activity from the ideas in your home learning pack or from the resources below; sing some songs; prepare and share a healthy snack; have some outdoors time if you have access to a garden; and then share a story.  You could make a visual timetable, using pictures, to show your child what you are going to do together.

Here are some ideas for adult-guided activities that you can do with your child to support their learning while the Nursery is closed.

Reading

Please try to read with your child every day.  Children love to re-read familiar stories so don't worry if you do not have a huge selection of books at home.  By re-reading the same stories over and over again, children learn about story structure, begin to join in with 'reading' the story, are able to look carefully at the illustrations and can begin to talk about the characters, settings and events. 

The cBeebies website has a selection of stories that you could read with your child:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories

The BBC iplayer website has all the bedtime stories that they show on the cBeebies channel for you to watch with your child:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b00jdlm2/cbeebies-bedtime-stories

Singing

Sing Nursery rhymes and traditional songs with your child to develop their language skills, sense of rhythm and rhyme and also counting skills.  Encourage children to do actions to match the words of the song.

Here are some links to online songs and rhymes that you could watch with your child. Please remember to always supervise your child while they are watching things online.

"Barefoot Books" has some lovely sung stories on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25_u1GzruQM&list=PL0maGUp7cdUkPJgFg9PL0CAqzSDsWo2UR&index=1

The cBeebies website also has a whole section of songs and rhymes to watch and sing with your child:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch

Phonics

In Nursery, we work on Phase 1 of the Letters and Sounds phonics scheme. Here are sheets with ideas that you can do at home to help your child develop their early phonics skills:

Mark Making

It is really important for children to have regular opportunities to mark make.  This could be drawing, colouring, painting with paint or water, using chalks, making marks with tools in dough or playdough or messy play like making marks in shaving foam, mud or flour!

Fine Motor Skills

It is really important for children in Nursery to develop their fine motor skills.  You can help them to do this at home by giving children the chance to use pens and pencils, child scissors and toys that require them to use a three-fingered tripod grip to pick up or hold small parts.

Here are some ideas for activities that can strengthen your child's hand muscles and develop their fine motor skills, using items that you probably have around your house:

• Thread pasta tubes onto a piece of string to make a necklace
• Clip clothes pegs onto a washing line or around the edge of a paper plate
• Use tweezers to pick up small objects and place them in a dish
• Roll, pat and pinch playdough
• Help prepare a healthy snack by using a knife to cut soft fruit like bananas and strawberries
• Pick up and drop pennies into a money box
• Use child scissors to snip around the edge of pieces of paper or old greetings cards
• Pick the petals off a daisy one-by-one

Here is a recipe for you to make your own playdough at home:

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1 cup water

½ cup salt

1 tablespoon oil

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

Drops of food colouring

Place all the ingredients in a saucepan and cook over a medium heat, stirring continuously.  Eventually the ingredients will come together to form a ball of playdough.  Store in a sealed box or wrapped in clingfilm and it will last for a few weeks.

You could also try cooking with your child. Recipes can be found on the BBC Good Food website

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/kids-cooking

Outdoor Play

If you have access to a garden or an outdoor area, try to go outside to play every day, whatever the weather.  Practise running, jumping, crawling and climbing - moving in lots of different ways.  Look at what is happening in the natural world - talk about what they weather is like, look at the plants and flowers that are growing, search for minibeasts or put out food for the birds and watch them as they visit your garden.