Hi everyone, hope you’re all keeping safe & well out there!! For this week our activities are going to be butterfly based! Sue has put together a wonderful arts & crafts activity pack which we will be delivering to you by the end of the week; this contains all your child will need to make a butterfly life cycle, a Hungry Caterpillar picture, butterfly collage, and a lovely card making activity to send hugs & kisses to someone! As well as focusing on the butterfly life cycle, which is a very appropriate activity for summertime, these activities will involve your child in colouring, cutting and glueing – all great tasks for developing & improving concentration, hand-eye coordination, & fine motor skills as well as strengthening muscles in the hand. The most important thing though is that it’s all about the process, not the end result – enjoyment of learning is always crucial to its success, so there’s no pressure on the children to be producing masterpieces, or even anything vaguely recognisable!
Cutting can be an especially hard activity and a child can get demotivated very easily if it’s too challenging, so for this reason we often put trays of cutting out in the classroom which just involve children cutting a straight line, then a curved, then a zigzag – slowly getting more challenging as the child develops this skill. For improving pencil control, joining dots is always a popular activity – you can dot their names/ a shape/ a number etc & encourage them to join the dots to see what they make!
Encourage your child to also improve their gross motor movements by playing the ‘Bug Movement Game’ – get them to flutter like a butterfly/ crawl like a caterpillar / march like an ant/ climb like a spider….the options are endless, & take turns making up your own with your child!
Some further ideas for butterfly art, 1 of which we should all remember from childhood – putting splodges of paint on paper, folding the paper in half & squashing it with all your might – such great fun!! http://mrsmeijerandco.weebly.com/butterfly-painting.html#
Another variation on this is to cut out butterfly shapes, dip string in paint & use that to make your mirror image butterfly https://artfulparent.com/string-butterfly-art-project-for-kids/
There are some great yoga poses you can do with your children under the insect theme as well as the butterfly pose https://www.kidsyogastories.com/insect-bug-yoga/ ; also cosmic kids do wonderful stories through yoga poses that you can access on youtube – they actually do a whole yoga version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhWDiQRrC1Y
Lastly, the song we’re sending this week is a butterfly fingerplay which goes through the lifecycle just to further reinforce it!! We hope you enjoy this week’s suggested activities, don’t forget to send photos of your little ones taking part, or any news on how they’re getting on is always welcome!
Take care & stay well xx