Overview of Teaching and Learning (NURSERY)

Week beginning 1st June 2020

I would love to hear from you about your child’s home learning. Please use the home learning email at:

fshomelearning@exwickheights.devon.sch.uk . Thank you.

Personal, social and emotional development (PSED) Key focus: Changing Me – My Body Activities:

Sing body actions songs with your child such as: ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZanHgPprl-0 ‘Simon Says..’ : https://safeYouTube.net/w/SuvI

Watch this short clip about body parts: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z9yycdm/articles/zqhbr82

Do: look at the words below with your child. Can they find the matching body parts from the labels? Perhaps you could write the words on pieces of paper

or on sticky notes for them to be placed on the correct body part. If you have a large piece of paper such as wallpaper or chalk for drawing outside, you could even draw around

your child and use this as a place to add the labels.

Questions: Can you tell me what this part of your body does/ why it is important? (using each label at a time)

Extension activity:

If your child is finding social distancing between family and friends difficult, then this clip from a story ‘Sharing a Hug’ may give you some ideas and is a lovely talking point: https://safeyoutube.net/w/CggG

Communication & Language (C&L) Key focus: narrative – Avocado Baby and The Elephant and the Bad Baby Activities:

Watch and listen to Mrs Davies read the story: ‘Avocado Baby’ by John Burningham (attached). You can watch another person read the story by following this link https://safeYouTube.net/w/FgyF

Listen to Mrs Woodard read the story: ‘The Elephant and the Bad Baby’ by Elfrida Vipont & Raymond Briggs (attached).

You can watch another person read the story by following this link https://safeYouTube.net/w/jzvI

Talk about the following 4 components of narrative within each story: Who? Where? When? What happens next? Who are the main characters in the story? Where did each story take place? When did events in the story happen? E.g. bedtime? Dinner time? What happened throughout the story and why?

Extension activity:

Focusing further on the ‘what happens next’ component of narrative, talk about the different scenarios in the attached PDF document - What Happened Next 4

The ‘Speech Link Association’ has sent an address where some fun talking and listening games may be accessed; these include activities that can be done as part of day-to-day home routines:

https://speechandlanguage.info/parents/activities “We have put together some games and activities for you to use at home to encourage your child’s talking and listening. Some activities are aimed at developing your child’s understanding by using everyday activities. Our speech activities develop your child’s listening skills. Our language activities focus on supporting understanding of language.”

A further list of suggestions for language related activities (recommended by a local Speech and Language therapist) can be found on CBeebies:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people “Tiny Happy People is here to help you develop your child's communication skills. Explore our simple activities and play

ideas and find out about their amazing early development.”

Physical Development (PD): fine motor Key focus:

Develop fine motor control Begin to draw lines, circles, use anti-clockwise movements and re-trace vertical lines. Begin to form recognisable letters.

Activities:

Mark making using different materials Babies love to use their fingers to explore different materials and get very messy. Now that you are a little

older, you can still use your fingers to explore materials but then see if you can create patterns, pictures and marks.

Provide your child with:

A tray or a wipe clean surface

Tactile materials such as: paint, aftershave, sand, flour After an initial explore, encourage your child to use their fingers to create pictures and shapes incorporating

lines, circles, spirals, zig zags and swirls. Encourage movements that include clockwise and anticlockwise motions, up and down actions, and left to

right movements. If your child has their name card, this would be a good opportunity for them to practise writing their name

using the correct letter formation.

Activities: Create finger puppets for the finger family song; the words and tune can be

found at https://safeYouTube.net/w/wZJF The words can be changed to represent your own family, including grandparent or other siblings.

Physical Development (PD): gross motor Key focus:

Travel confidently in a range of ways.

Move freely, with confidence and awareness of the space around. Activities: Movement challenge cards

In the story, ‘The Elephant and the Bad Baby’, the elephant moved with a ‘rumpeta, rumpeta’. Discuss with your child about what this movement could look like?

Talk about the challenges below and how they have to move from one place to another, but in different ways. They could help you find and collect the objects needed.

Provide your child with:

a start line and a line to race to, e.g. rope or chalk

an empty box to place objects in: a plastic bottle, a tin can, plastic pot, piece of paper, empty cereal box, kitchen roll tube

(objects can be changed!)

music

Further activities could include:

Activities: Use reclaimed materials to make weights.

Avocado Baby was very strong because he ate avocados; however, we also need to exercise to become strong. Can you design and create some weights for yourself to use at home or in your garden. You will need some containers and some thing to put inside. What sort of filling will you need? Would cotton wool be any use? What about stones or sand?

Can all your family lift your weights? What sort of weights will your adults need? Do you think you could lift theirs?

Physical Development (PD): health and safety Key focus: Understand the importance, and talk about ways of keeping healthy and safe Activity:

As the weather is getting better (fingers crossed), talk with your child about how to take care of themselves in the sun.

There is some advice on the ‘Boots’ website (see below). (Please note that these products are not endorsed by the school but the website does provide some useful discussion points and suggestions) https://soltansunready.com/for- families?utm_source=recruitment_smc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pshe_edcoms&utm_content=familyhubcta

Literacy (L): Key focus: Phase 1 phonics - environmental sounds - animals Activities:

Do you know what sound an elephant makes (- like the one in our story)? Play this sound game with your child and see if can find the elephant sound?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd6wZHUDCUg Another interactive guess the animal sound game can be found on Phonics Play:

https://new.phonicsplay.co.uk/ Log in as follows:

Username: march20 Password: home Click on:

Play free resources Phase 1 (on the top bar) Play ‘Welcome to the zoo’

Further activities could include:

Extension for children beginning Reception in Sept 2020

Key focus: Phase 1 phonics – oral blending

Last half-term, we looked at ways of supporting your child to hear initial sounds in words. We are now going to look at the skills of blending; a description of blending is below, along with other sources of support.

Glossary of terms:

Phoneme – the smallest unit of sound

Grapheme - a written symbol that represents a sound (phoneme)

Segmenting – breaking a word up into its separate sounds (phonemes) e.g. c-a-t

Blending - linking the separate sounds (phonemes) together and saying the whole word in one go e.g. c-a-t…cat

Single-syllable: a single, unbroken sound within a spoken word. They typically contain a vowel and perhaps one or more consonants. Syllables are sometimes referred to as the ‘beats’ of a word, and breaking a word into syllables can help with phonetic spelling.

If you would like support with pronouncing any phonemes (sounds), then visit: Exwick Heights web site

School Blog Phonics Videos (https://exwickheightsblog.co.uk/phonics-videos). Sets 1-7 will show you how to

pronounce sounds. (If you would like to share these videos with your child, you are most welcome. However, there is no pressure for them to learn these sounds at present, as this is part of the Reception curriculum in September 2020)

The following video clips was made by the DFE and may provide you will further support. The video is for guidance and is not intended for you to try all the activities this week. We will focus on blending further over the next few weeks:

https://safeYouTube.net/w/v8vI https://safeYouTube.net/w/a6vI

Alphablocks is also a good resource for hearing initial sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/curations/alphablocks-stage-1

Blending activities:

Toy Talk (taken from Letters and Sounds): Introduce to the children a soft toy that can only speak in ‘sound-talk’. The children see the toy whispering in the adult’s ear.

To add to the activity, as the toy whispers the adult repeats the sounds, looks puzzled and then says the word straight

afterwards. For example: What would Charlie like for tea today? The toy speaks silently in the adult’s ear and the adult

repeats ‘ch-ee-se’ looking puzzled and then, says with relief ‘cheese!’ Now invite the children to see if they can speak like the

toy: Do you think you could try to toy talk? Say ch-ee-se: (the children repeat ‘ch-ee-se’). Ask the toy again What else would

you like? Be careful to think of items with names of only single syllables (e.g. fish, cake, pie, soup).

Use different scenarios: What does the toy like to do in the playground? (hop, skip, jump, run, etc.). As the children become

more confident, make some errors – blend ‘skim’ for ‘skip’, for example, and ask them to catch you out by giving the correct

blend.

Encourage the children to ask the toy questions with yes/no answers (e.g. Can you sing? Y-e-s/N-o). Or ask the toy the colour

of his bike, his bedroom walls, his jumper, etc. and the toy will answer r-e-d, b-l-ue, g-r-ee-n, m-au-ve.

Working with your child regularly, until they are confident, encourage them to try blending other single-syllable words such as:

tip pit sat pig cat dog pin sad mug

Mathematics (M) Key focus:

Show an interest in representing numbers

Count in sequence forward and backward from 0-10 and beyond Activities:

Counting and introducing the concept of a zero Encourage your child to count form 1-10 (and beyond if they can) and backwards from 10-1. Support and

model this activity whenever it is needed. Watch Numberblocks – ‘Zero’:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0blsx34/numberblocks-series-3-zero Repeat the above counting activity, this time going from 0-10 (and beyond) and backwards again to zero. Sing the ‘zero’ song: https://safeYouTube.net/w/ZVMF

Challenges: Show me zero fingers Show me zero hands Show me zero feet Look in different rooms and find containers with zero items in them. If you cannot find any,

then why not? Can you find any boxes with zero items in them? Can you eat all your dinner every day to leave zero items?

Understanding the World (UW) Key focus:

Talk about significant events in own experience

Develop an understanding of growth, and changes over time Activities:

Human Life Cycle Talk about the life cycle of humans using the attached PDF How Humans Change as They Grow and PDF All

About the Human Life Cycle Talk with your child about how they have changed since they were a baby. You may have a baby in your family

that you can make comparisons with, or look at their baby photos. Do you, or friends or family have items of baby clothes and toys that you could look at. (Perhaps you could

video call someone). Why can you not wear these clothes now? Would you like to play with baby toys still? Do you know people in your family or family friends that would fit into each of the different life cycle stages? How many baby pictures can you find from different family members? Does anyone still look like they did when they were a baby? How have people changed? Perhaps you could play a ‘guess-who-the-baby-is?’ on-line game with different family members.

Do: Make a family tree poster. This could include photographs, drawings, and paintings.

Questions: Who are the youngest people in our family? Do we have any teenagers in our family? Who are the adults in our family? Who are the oldest adults?

Your children may be amazed that you, as adults, are actually somebody’s child! Talk about who your mum and dad are. The same could be done for your parents.

Look at different family members. Can you see similarities between people?

Further activities: Key focus:

Talk about own life experiences.

Talk about things they have observed, such as plants and natural objects.

Develop an understanding of growth, decay and changes over time. Activities:

Trying different foods

Questions: What sort of foods do babies like? Can they eat the same things as you? Why not? Have you ever eaten an avocado like the baby in the story? Did you like it? What is an avocado?

Can you research about avocados on–line? What will you find in the middle?

Can you choose something to eat that you have never tried before. This could be a piece of fruit or a vegetable, some cheese or some different type of bread.

Why did you choose it? Was it because of its colour or texture or size? Did you like it? Perhaps members of your family could try this. You could make a poster stating everyone’s likes and dislikes of

their new food. If safe to do so, you could try each other’s choices.

Expressive Arts and Design (EA&D) Key focus:

Manipulate materials to achieve a planned effect.

Create with a purpose in mind, using a variety of resources.

Use simple tools and techniques competently and appropriately. Activities:

Create a toy for a baby or a toddler. Have a look at baby toys. You may have some at home or you could find pictures of baby toys on-line. Think about

Why are baby toys sometimes so big? Why are some soft and why are some hard? Do they have sharp pieces? Do pieces come apart? Are there toys in your home that babies could play with? Why? Are there toys in your home that babies could not play with? Why?

With resources at home, what could you make for a baby or a toddler that will be safe? (If safe, you might be able to give your creation to a baby and see if they enjoy using it.)

Before creating your toy, make a list of resources that you will need and a design plan. What will you need to do first? What next? Your plan could be written or be a plan of pictures, or both.

For example: decorated stacking cups hanging toys shaking toys

Key focus:

Understand that they can use lines to enclose a space, and then begin to use these shapes to represent objects.

Choose particular colours to use for a purpose.

Explore colour and how colours can be changed.

Create simple representations of objects. Activities:

Design a blanket for a baby. What colours and pictures do you think a baby would like?

Your blanket could be a drawing or a painting. If you have some fabric, you could make a fabric-

collage blanket. If you have strips of paper or fabric you could learn

to do some weaving? See enclosed PDF Paper Weaving for help.

Where is Hugs? Hugs has been counting again this week. Have a look at the enclosed PDF Hugs Counting and see what he has been counting.