Easter

This week at Nursery, we would have been learning all about Easter!  If you celebrate Easter in your family, then here are some details of what we would have done at Nursery.  If you do not celebrate Easter, then you could continue to work on our Spring theme or follow your child’s interests and do activities based around something that they like.

At Christmas time in Nursery we read the story of baby Jesus’ birth.  Talk to your child about Christmas time and see if they can remember any parts of the Christmas story.  You could remind them of our Christmas show where we were sheep on the hillside outside Bethlehem.  Explain that baby Jesus grew up to be a boy and then to be a man so that they understand that the Easter story is about what happened when he was a grown up, not when he was a baby. 

If you have a book about the Easter story at home, then you could read that with your child.  If not, you could watch the following clip from BBC Teach:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/religious-studies-ks1-the-christian-story-of-easter/zhgv47h

Our EYFS curriculum says that children should learn about special times for family and friends and also about special times of year for other people.  Therefore, throughout the year in Nursery we learn about how people of different faiths celebrate their own special festivals.  You could talk to your child about how you as a family celebrate Easter, whether that is by eating chocolate eggs or going to church.  If your family celebrates another festival at this time of year, such as Ostara or Pesach, you could talk about that.  At Nursery, we would have watched the CBeebies programme, Let’s Celebrate, to find out how Christians celebrate Easter:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/lets-celebrate-easter

Reading

Here is an online version of one of the stories, ‘We’re Going on an Egg Hunt’, that we would have read this week:

See if your child can join in with the repeated refrains!

Rhyme of the Week

Unfortunately, I cannot find an online version of ‘6 Pretty Easter Eggs’ which would have been our rhyme of the week this week.  However, here is a similar song called 'Five Easter Eggs' that you could sing with your child (if you have a printer you could print out the pictures of the Easter eggs to use as you sing it):

Here are some other Easter songs that you could learn:

Boom Chika Boom:

Five Little Bunnies:

Peter Rabbit’s got a fly upon his nose (the children know this song and love singing it):

Please always remember to supervise your child when they are watching anything on Youtube!

Fine Motor Skills

We were going to make Easter baskets at Nursery.  If you have a printer at home you could print out this template and help your child to cut around it and make it into a basket:

Otherwise you could try to make an Easter basket out of recycled materials (if you did this then you could also tick off one of the boxes on your ‘Project Bingo’ sheet in your home learning pack):

Cooking

We were going to make Easter nests at Nursery.  I realise that it may be hard to buy the ingredients for these at the moment, but if you do already have them at home then it is a fun and easy activity to do with your child.  Remember that you do not need to use shredded wheat.  We use rice crispies at Nursery but you could use cornflakes, crushed up wheat biscuits or whatever cereal you may have at home.

Here is a recipe that you could follow:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/shredded-wheat-nests

N.B. At Nursery we do not place the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water as described in this recipe.  Instead we boil water in a kettle, pour it into a saucepan, wrap a tea towel around the outside of the saucepan and then put the bowl of chocolate on top.  The water will stay sufficiently warm to melt the chocolate and the children can stir the chocolate in the bowl while standing at the kitchen table or worktop instead of at the stove.  The tea towel ensures that the children cannot touch the hot surface of the pan.  However, it is still important that you supervise you child while they are doing this.

Expressive Art and Design

We were also going to make Easter cards at Nursery this week.  Obviously, what you are able to do at home with your child with depend on the materials and resources that you have at home, but here are some ideas for home-made Easter cards to get you started:

If you have managed to make any cards at home, I would love to see photos of them on Tapestry!

Literacy

At Nursery we have been encouraging the children to try to write at least the first letter of their name on their work.  In your child’s home learning pack, there is a name card so that they can practise tracing over the letters of their name with the felt tip pen.  Please encourage them to start each letter at the small car picture and to follow the dotted pathway.

You child could also practise tracing or copying their name into their Easter card.

Mathematics

We were going to do an egg hunt out in our garden, looking for numbered eggs.  The children were going to find numbered eggs – either 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 (depending on how good their recognition of number is) - and then, once they had found them all, put them in the correct order.  You may have plastic eggs at home that you can write numbers on or you could just cut egg shapes out of paper and write numbers on.  Hide them around you house or garden and see if your child can find them, tell you what each numeral is and then put them in the correct order.

I would love to see photos on Tapestry if you manage to do this activity!

Otherwise, you could go on a scavenger hunt in your house and garden.  Ask your child to find a certain number of different objects e.g. 3 stones, 5 leaves, 6 lego bricks.  When they have found the objects, ask them to count them to check that they have the correct amount.  Show your child how to arrange the objects in a straight line to make them easier to count accurately and model touching each object with a finger as they count.  You will have to adapt the number of objects depending on how confident your child is at counting out.  It is fine to just stick to 1 to 3 objects, but please extend it to 1 to 6, then 1 to 10 and then 1 to 20 if your child needs extra challenge.

Phonics – Letters and Sounds

Why not have a go at some of the activities on the ‘Rhythm and Rhyme’ challenge sheet in your home learning packs:

f you have access to a laptop at home, your child could have a go at this rhyming game: