We hope you will find these pages useful when at home with your children.
There are so many things that you can do with your children at home that link directly with the EYFS learning they would be doing at HETTY.
If your child would like to send a picture of what they have been up to at home or send a message to us, we would love to hear from them. Please use the email address mrschesterteacher@gmail.com and we will get back to them. We can even put your photos on the ‘Picture Gallery’ page in the home learning section of the website if you like?
Maths:
- Set up a shop with tins, packets, clothes, toys – put price labels on the items (1p, 5p, 10p etc) and see if the children can add them up. Use phrases like ‘one more’, ‘one less’.
- Ask the children to count the stairs as they go up to bed.
- When you are out for your daily exercise, look at the numbers on the doors of houses and see if the children recognise them. Ask which is the biggest/smallest number?
- Look at car registration plates and see if the children can spot any numbers in them that they know.
- Look for shapes in every day objects in the environment – go on a shape hunt around the house and ask the children to mark off any that they see on a piece of paper, eg. a square light switch, a circle around a lamp shade, the rectangle shape of the TV screen.
- Baking – all children love to bake! Allow the children to count out or weigh the ingredients.
- Ask the children to help you sort the washing out, pairing up socks, counting how many t-shirts, sorting the clothes into big/little.
Literacy:
- Look at books with children. Show them the correct way to hold them and turn the pages (get it wrong sometimes and let them correct you!).
- Look for letters that they recognise in the environment – on cereal packets, clothes labels, post that is delivered, etc.
- Introduce a new word every day – you’ll be amazed how quickly children learn new words and their meanings!
- Write a letter or draw a picture to send to people in a residential home that are unable to have visitors at the moment.
Communication and Language:
- Ask the children each day what has been their favourite/least favourite bit of the day and what they would like to do tomorrow (this is also using mathematical terms like today, next, tomorrow, yesterday, etc)
- Put on a puppet show.
Expressive Arts and Design:
- Make puppets for a puppet show by decorating wooden spoons or lolly sticks, or even use old socks and put stickers on them for eyes, etc.
- Make a den/fort out of sheets and blankets. The children would love to have secret meetings in there or even a picnic lunch that they could make themselves.
- Put some music on and dance! Try different types of music that you might not normally listen to – we quite often get the children at HETTY to conduct the music with their hands, or close their eyes and describe what the music makes them think about.
- Draw a picture of a rainbow to put in the window of your house to cheer people up as they walk past on their daily exercise.
Physical Development:
- Anything that uses their bodies is a form of physical development from holding a pencil, to climbing the stairs, hopping on one foot, threading a lace or dancing!
- Squidge playdough or knead bread to strengthen muscles in your hands.
- Paint with water on a wall outside or draw with chalks on the pavement.
- Let the children lie down under a table and draw above them on the underside (that has been covered with a piece of paper).
- Ask the children to help peg the clothes out on the washing line. This pincer action for the pegs is great for strengthening muscles in the hands.
PSED (Personal, Social and Emotional Development)
- Talk with the children about how they are feeling.
- Ask them what makes them happy, sad, scared, angry.
- Pull faces and see if they can guess how you are feeling from your facial expressions.
- Read ‘Stay home superheroes’ below to give the children opportunity to talk about the current situation.
We are constantly updating the stories, phonics lessons and activities on these pages so please keep checking back to see anything new that might have been added.
We know it is an unsettling time for children who perhaps don’t really understand why everything around them is changing. We came across this story (from The Children’s Therapy Centre) that helps children understand what is happening and helps them feel safe during these uncertain times. We hope you find it useful too.