This week’s suggested activities are very summery, to tie into the fact that May has arrived, & summer is here – as we can see from the amazing sunshine we’re being treated to at the moment!! We thought it might be nice for the families to get out together and enjoy a picnic & maybe send us a photo of it, as Sarah & her gorgeous model children Calum & Rebecca have done below It could be an outdoors or an indoors picnic, equally great fun!
The children can get involved by helping prepare some yummy sandwich fingers & cutting up fruit before threading them on skewers; this promotes independence, fine motor skills & hand eye co-ordination. The fruit could also be used to make healthy fruit smoothies like we often make in school this time of year – any fruit that you like, add spinach, orange/apple juice, throw in some ginger if you like it & voilà! Tasty AND healthy!! The children could then revise what they remember of the food pyramid from earlier in the year…
Explore fruit using the senses – for example, get messy with a watermelon, explore how it smells, feels and most importantly tastes. Try scooping out the insides using a melon baller; keep the seeds & dry them out to practice spooning and transferring with. Here’s a really cute story to go with the watermelon theme!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLAteN1YZ3s You could also do blind tasting with the children to see if they can identify fruit by its smell/ taste/ feel while blindfolded…
Try some basket weaving or creating a pattern for a picnic blanket – this is wonderful for fine motor skills!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6W—m5j9I
The children could practice a practical life activity by setting the table, this could involve counting how many e.g. plates/ cups they’ll need so they’re doing Maths calculations as well!
Design & build your own park or playground out of lego, blocks, playdough or whatever you like to use at home – construction is wonderful for pre-Maths skills such as grading, seriation, spatial sense, classification & problem solving.
Play a memory game where picnic & food items are placed on a table, remove an item as your child closes their eyes & see if they can tell what is missing – memory games are fantastic for development of concentration, short term memory, classification, vocabulary….but most importantly, they’re great fun!
Enjoy❤️❤️