I hope that you are all still happy and healthy!

Here are some things that you could do with your child at home this week.  There are a lot of ideas but please do not feel that you have to use them all.  It would be lovely if you could have a look at the Story of the Week and the Rhyme of the Week with your child and also do a fine motor skills activity and some maths.  However, at this age the majority of time should be spent playing, exploring, singing, dancing, reading, being creative and having fun!

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

If you would like to try yoga, there is a lovely channel on Youtube called Cosmic Kids Yoga.  Maybe this week you and your child could have a go at a short yoga listening game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUIGKhG_Vq8

It’s really good for practising listening carefully and concentrating for a short amount of time.

Our practical mindfulness activity this week is to make a Breathing Wand. This wand can be used to help children take deep, calming breaths when then feel anxious or angry.  It is a simple craft to make and only needs a kitchen roll tube and some ribbons or strips of paper.  Here are some instructions:

When your child has made their breathing wand, encourage them to go to a quiet part of the house – maybe put some calm music on for them to listen to.  Show your child how to take slow, deep breaths, holding the wand by their lips so that when they breathe out, the ribbons or strips of paper dance.  Continue to make the ribbons dance until your child feels calmer.

Communication and Language

This week at Nursery our Story of the Week would have been Germs are Not for Sharing (quite an important message at the moment).  An online version can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HJZTU5QGNM

Our new vocabulary for this week would have been the words linked to our story:

• clean
• dirty
• sticky
• smelly
• germs

You could use these words when you are helping your child to wash their hands or at bath time and encourage your child to use these words to tell you why they need to wash their hands.

Physical Development

Fine Motor Skills:

This half term we would be doing lots of work on strengthening our finger muscles ready to work on pencil grip in September.  This week your child could use the scissors in their home learning pack to do some snipping. It is easier to snip thin cardboard than paper so give your child old greetings cards or strips cut from a cereal box.  Help them to make small snips all around the edge of the card.  Show them how to hold the scissors in one hand and open and shut them to cut.

Self-Care:

If your child is not already potty trained, then this time in lockdown is a perfect time to work on this.  It will really help your child’s independence and self-confidence if they are able to use the toilet before they start in our Morning Nursery Class. Here is one of the potty-training books that we read with the children at Nursery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNoB9Lj5UE

Also, as we are talking about not spreading germs, please make sure than your child knows how to independently wash their hands properly:

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/best-way-to-wash-your-hands/

Literacy

This week at Nursery we would have continued to work on Phase 1 of our Letters and Sounds phonics scheme.  This week we would start to talk about Environmental Sounds. Here is a challenge sheet with ideas for activities to do at home:

Here is an online phonics game that your child could try:

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/match-sounds?phase=1#

Please try to read with your child every day and also to give them the opportunity to look at books independently.  Also, please let your child make marks with pens, paints, chalks or water and paint brushes.  You could even have a go at some messy mark making in something like flour, mud, sand or shaving foam (and then wash hands afterwards!)

Mathematics

This week at Nursery, we would have been starting to use the language of quantity.  These are the words ‘a lot’ and ‘more’.  When playing with your child or doing daily activities like eating lunch, talk to your child about the things you see in front of you e.g. “You have a lot of cars” or “I have more peas than you”.  See if your child can identify who has more of something.

If you have access to a printer, here is a fishing game that you could play to see who catches ‘more’ fish:

If you have some jigsaw puzzles at home, have a go at some with your child.  Most 2 and 3 years should be working on completing 4, 6 and 8 or 9-piece puzzles independently but if your child is able to do puzzles with more pieces then that is great.

If you do not have puzzles at home, here are some online versions that you child can try which, while it will not develop the skills of fitting pieces together, will help them to look for patterns in pictures:

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

Understanding the World

This week, we would have been talking about how it is important to wash our hands, brush our teeth, comb our hair and have a bath or shower. 

Here is a clip from BBC bitesize about washing hands:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zbdcy9q/articles/z7dxjhv

Here is a Cbeebies ‘Get Well Soon’ episode about brushing your teeth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H28dFnHl1qk

Also this week, please try to talk to your child about what they look like.  When brushing their hair, you can talk about what colour it is and if it is long or short, straight or curly.  When looking in a mirror, talk about the colour of you child’s eyes.  Think about if other people in your family have the same or different colour eyes. This will help your child to start to see what makes them unique and how they are the same or different to others.

Expressive Arts and Design

Our rhyme of the week would have been ‘Here we go Round the Mulberry Bush’. Can your child do all the actions and join in with the singing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjlwUnVXQ4U

We would also have been continuing to sing lots of nursery rhymes and action songs to make sure that the children know all the common rhymes before they move up to the Morning Class.  This week your child could listen to these versions by Pop Babies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epW0SbUAPYk

Finally, this week why see if your child can draw or paint a picture of themselves or their family.  I would love to see their pictures if you would like to put them on Tapestry!