Blue Room - Home Learning for week of 1.6.2020 'Our Friends' Theme - This week our focus is 'Our Friends'. For 2-3 year olds, building relationships begins with parents and carers. Beyond this, children learn to play alongside alongside others, before beginning to be interested in watching them play. The next progression is to interact with one another and build special friendships. This week's learning focuses on building relationships with familiar people, and some of the day to day social interactions involved in these relationships. (I am following the interests/needs of the children, so please let me know of any new interests that your children have!) Remember to follow our Twitter page @kingsley_EYFS for daily updates and activity ideas! Tweet us the children's work or upload an EYLog observation. The children are all working at their own level and stage of development, so please change any of the home learning to suit your own child :) Communication & Language For our younger Blue Room children, here is a very simple activity to build on turn taking and shared attention / early speech: Sit opposite your child on the floor, with a gap between you. Say "Ready, steady, go!" and roll a ball to your child. Take turns to roll the ball back and forth between you, saying "Stop!" and "Go!" to add extra excitement. Can your child repeat the familiar phrases that you are saying? Repeating the activity lots of times will help. If there are other children and adults at home, ask them to join the game too - take turns to roll the ball back and forth to each other, saying who's turn it is, e.g. "My turn....now Ahmed's turn...now Nora's turn...". For older Blue Room children, try out this sensory activity to develop understanding of 'kind words/kind friends':
Transcript
Blue Room - Home Learning for week of 1.6.2020
'Our Friends' Theme - This week our focus is 'Our Friends'. For 2-3 year olds, building relationships begins with parents and carers. Beyond this, children learn to play alongside alongside others, before beginning to be interested in watching them play. The next progression is to interact with one another and build special friendships. This week's learning focuses on building relationships with familiar people, and some of the day to day social interactions involved in these relationships.
(I am following the interests/needs of the children, so please let me know of any new interests that your children have!)
Remember to follow our Twitter page @kingsley_EYFS for daily updates and activity ideas! Tweet us the children's work or upload an EYLog observation.
The children are all working at their own level and stage of development, so please change any of the home learning to suit your own child :)
Communication & Language
For our younger Blue Room children, here is a very simple activity to build on turn taking and shared attention / early speech:
Sit opposite your child on the floor, with a gap between you. Say "Ready, steady, go!" and roll a ball to your child. Take turns to roll the ball back and forth between you, saying "Stop!" and "Go!" to add extra excitement. Can your child repeat the familiar phrases that you are saying? Repeating the activity lots of times will help. If there are other children and adults at home, ask them to join the game too - take turns to roll the ball back and forth to each other, saying who's turn it is, e.g. "My turn....now Ahmed's turn...now Nora's turn...".
For older Blue Room children, try out this sensory activity to develop understanding of 'kind words/kind friends':
Learning to use kind words with others is a key friendship lesson and this is a perfect age to bring empathy and kindness to children's attention, to help them cultivate these skills!
1) How can the way we speak help each other? How can it hurt? We're going to use our sense of touch today to look at this closer!
2) Present a small pile of cotton wool balls. Let your child touch them, squish them, and rub them on their arm. Ask your child how the cotton balls feel. Use descriptive words like soft, fluffy, and light.
If words were cotton balls, how would it feel to have them bouncing on your arm? Fill your cup up with cotton balls and pour it out onto your child's arm. Now, can your child tell you any words that are like cotton balls? (for example: please, thank-you, compliments, May I help you?, good job).
3) Present a piece of rough sandpaper for your child to touch. As they touch it, ask them how the sandpaper feels. Use descriptive words like rough, spiky, or sharp. If words were sandpaper, how would it feel to have them rubbing on your arm? have a go. Can your child tell you words that are like sandpaper (for example: unkind words, an unkind voice, calling names, unnecessary criticism). Show your child how sandpaper can scratch something like a scrap of wood or a piece of plastic. Tell them sandpaper words "scratch" our feelings. It hurts when people talk to us in a mean voice or say mean things.
4) Give your child a scenario where they have a problem, and see how they could use cotton words or sandpaper words to try to fix it. Which would be most helpful? For example, you could show them their favourite toy and say, "What if someone took your toy when you were playing with it and you were very sad? What are some cotton wool words they could use to make you feel better? (E.g. "I'm sorry").
5) Place a cup of cotton wool balls where your child can see them, and every time they use cotton wool words, say "I love your kind words" and let them put a cotton wool ball or two in the cup. When it fills up, have a "Kind Words Party" to celebrate! For your party, simply take turns pouring cotton wool balls on each other, saying kind words, and playing with the cotton!
Literacy
Saying sorry is an extremely important 'social rule' when building friendships, and takes lots of practise in Blue Room and at home!
Here, Anita reads the book 'I'm Sorry' to explore how saying sorry can fix a problem between friends. After watching the video, talk to your child about all of the times when it is important to say sorry - such as if they bump into somebody, if they use an unkind word, if they snatch a toy from another child, and so on:
https://vimeo.com/422843774
Personal, Social, Emotional Development
It has been a confusing time for our children and their emotions. Their usual routine of going out each day to nursery to see the same familiar faces in Blue Room has suddenly stopped. Everything must seem so different at the moment, and many of you commented to me on our recent phone call, that the children are missing nursery, their Key Person, and their friends.
So, we have decided to make some 'keeping in touch' videos for the children to watch. Here are our first instalments - we hope they enjoy seeing our faces after all this time!
Mandy H sings 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'
https://vimeo.com/420412707
Amy reads 'Dear Zoo'
https://vimeo.com/420413186
Anita sings 'Days of the Week' (repeated from last week)
https://vimeo.com/419602939
'Sandy Girl' - a very familiar circle time song for Blue Room children, about cheering up our friends when they are feeling sad, and helping others to join in...
A lovely craft activity to explore our special relationships is to make hand prints! These could be hand prints made with paint, hand prints cut out from different coloured paper, hand prints drawn around with crayons, or hand prints made by printing hands onto clay - whichever resources you have at home to use.
Here are some examples I found - I know the Blue Room children would love getting involved in a craft project like this with their loved ones, and it's a great way to create a memento of your time at home together in Spring 2020...
Physical Development
Dance is a fantastic way to exercise, building muscle strength and gross motor control at the same time, as well as having lots of fun and developing creativity! Take a look at these exciting dance videos to dance along and burn off some energy - join in with the children dancing to the themed songs...
Boogie Beebies dances -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mvsc
For our fine motor skills (small movements) exercise this week, we're using a clip from 'Teach Handwriting' and the familiar song 'Tommy Thumb' - you can also adapt this song to the 'Finger Family' song, asking your child to name their family members (or alternatively, using the names of their friends), and singing about them whilst exercising your fingers together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abWFIy0r9Fs
Understanding the World
Children LOVE seeing pictures of themselves and their loved ones in stories. This week, we are making social stories to explore friendships and/or relationships with family/carers.
A social story is a very short story which is personal to the child, using photographs (or drawings) and very short sentences, to help to introduce social rules (meaning, how we should behave with each other).
Here is an example of a social story about a little boy called Owen, exploring friendship and how to be a good friend:
A friend is someone that you enjoy spending time with. A friend can be a boy or a girl. A friend can be someone older or younger.
Sometimes it can be hard to make a new friend. They might not know that I want to be their friend. By smiling and saying, “hello,” I can show that I am friendly.
