Fine Bush Lane,
Ruislip,
UB9 6LY
01895 638844
Open 51 weeks from 7.30am to 6pm
Blog Layout
Week Beginning Monday 20th April 2020
The Homestead Childcare • April 14, 2020
Shields
With the children’s support, cut up some cardboard in the shape of a shield. Using home resources, let the children decorate their shields before role playing in a pretend battle. Encourage messy play, talk to your children about the colours and textures of the resources they are using.
Traditional Lunch
To celebrate St George’s Day, prepare a traditional English lunch/dinner for your children. (At the Homestead, we were going to have mincemeat pie, chips and peas, with a pudding of butter and scones) Encourage the trying of new foods, tastes and textures and support the likes and dislikes of different foods.
Stars and Moon
As Ramadan begins this week, read and watch online stories covering different religions and support the understanding on how we are all different. Encourage the simple understanding on what Ramadan is and why it is celebrated.
Some Ramadan stories and videos can be found at:
To support the idea of fasting, create star and moon cut outs, talking to your children about fasting and supporting their understanding of Muslims eating and drinking once the sun has gone down and the moon has appeared. Allow your children to get creative, decorating their stars and moons. To show multicultural support, you could even place these in your windows for the remaining month, reminding your children of their value.
If your children own emergency services dressing up clothes, encourage them to put these on and act out different roles. Add resources from around the house to extend their ideas, learning and play. Act out scenes, get them involved in pretending to put out fires, put the baddies in jail or supply them with pretend medicine/bandages to make family members feel better.
Using resources around the house, paper plates if you have them (if not use paper and cut out circles) create emotion monster faces. Provide your children with coloured pens, pencils, child friendly scissors, glue, and any other resources you may have available. Talk about different emotions with your children, find pictures online to support their understanding of different facial expressions. Encourage your children to produce different emotion monsters, some being happy, sad, grumpy, sleepy etc.
It is curiosity week! Explore your gardens or outdoor areas, collect a variety of natural resources, some big, some little, some hard, some soft, some lumpy, some smooth etc. Take them home and create a sensory bin, let your children explore the different textures using their senses. Encourage communication from your children, extend and build on describing words they may be beginning to use. Explore each object individually, looking and comparing similarities and differences to others within your sensory bin. Involve maths, ask the children how many resources they have, what shapes they are and which are the smallest/biggest.
Get a large bucket/tub, fill it with warm water and lots of soapy bubbles! Get the children to wash their toys in the water. Talk to them about textures and encourage the use of their senses. Discuss with the children the importance of staying clean, you could even pretend to give the toys showers or baths and compare your children’s bath time to their toys.
The brilliant Axel Scheffler has produced a book about Covid-19 Coronavirus just for children - and it's available as a FREE download. Please share so it's available to every family who needs it. https://nosycrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Coronavirus_INS.pdf The Gruffalo illustrator worked with consultant Professor Graham Medley, two head teachers and a psychologist to make sure the book got the messages right, answering questions about quarantine, how you can catch the virus and what happens if you get ill. Publishers Nosy Crow have asked for donations in lieu of payment, to go to our fantastic health workers: www.nhscharitiestogether.co.uk/ This is great for our little ones and to keep as a keepsake to remember how we came together ❤
Create an Easter egg hunt in the garden or around the house. Hide eggs for the children, create small clues for them to follow. Introduce prepositional language such as ‘behind, in front of, next to, on top of’ to support their understanding and learning. Give the children clues, letting them know when they are close to finding an egg. Make the egg hunt as fun as possible, for older children, create some barriers, put an egg up high and encourage their problem solving to retrieve it.
Why not try making these fun pasta Easter eggs! You can make any design on your Easter eggs! You can even decorate other Easter shapes. To make different shapes, grab some Easter cookie cutters and trace around them to make shapes like flowers or a bunny. You will need: cardboard pasta glue paint
If you have access to paint at home, encourage your children to take part in the spreading of germs activity. Put some paint on yours and your children’s hands, get them to rub their hands together, looking at how the paint spreads from hand to hand. Get the children to touch their faces, show them in the mirror how the paint spreads to their face. Talk to the children about the spreading of germs, supporting them with the knowledge that washing our hands with soap and warm water can get rid of the paint, as well as the germs on their hands. Encourage hand washing after every activity, before meal times and after a cough or sneeze. We too have been encouraging the washing of hands whilst at nursery so this should be familiar to the children.
Fine Bush Lane, Ruislip, UB9 6LY
info@thehomesteadchildcare.com
07539 224224 or 07949 025023 or 01895 638844
