Animal antics listening game

'What the Ladybird heard' is a fab book by the fantastic Julia Donaldson (of 'The Gruffalo' fame). In the book a ladybird does some good listening and hears some crafty robbers planing to steel a prize cow. I won't spoil the ending by telling you what happens (but involves some noisy farm animals). This led to a conversation around listening with'The Fairy'. What could be a better opportunity for a listening game. 

We modified the 'hot/cold' game I used to play as a child. We took it in turns to hide 3 farm animal toys. The 'seeker' then choose one animal at a time - by selecting a card (we were lucky to have matching toy animals and cards). The 'seeker' then searched for the hidden animal. The 'hider' aided the search by making that animals sound (i.e. moo for cow)- getting louder as the 'seeker' gets nearer the hidden animal.

Look who we found.

Many reception teachers report that children entering school do not have good listening skills. This game offers a great opportunity to practice whilst having fun! It also gave us an added bonus to practice using positional language (e.g. next to the wheel, under the stool, on the bricks etc).

Tennis ball painting

After the success of out first Wimbeldon post we thought we'd try some more tennis related fun. This time we attempted a giant version of marble painting.

and 

We rolled

tipped

bounced (this one took nerves of steel form me especially after our previous blue paint explosion- I was very glad we were in a room with a no carpeted floor this time though!)

And produced some fab results

Even the paint trays became art,

Language Focus

Vocabulary, verbs- roll, tip, bounce, splash, push (and wash - afterwards!)

Strawberries and cream

In honour of Wimbledon we decided to have some strawberries and cream based sensory play...

I made some 'strawberries' out of craft foam and some 'cream' gloop by mixing cornflour and water. I put some foil in the bottom of the baking tray so when we made marks in the gloop they were even clearer

It was great for mark making as well as sensory exploration. If you've not tried using gloop before - give it ago -its amazing how it changes state from liquid to solid. This morning had been a little fraught (check out my facebook page if you want to find out why!) - this was the perfect 'calm' down activity for the afternoon.

A Very Hungry Party

'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' is a popular bed time story in our house, we even have a CD version for the car. So for 'The Fairy's' 2nd birthday we had a very hungry caterpillar themed party. I have thought about blogging about the party before (it happened over 18 months ago!) but with other more recent stuff to blog about it never happened. After seeing this post and realising that Eric Carle (the author of the Very Hungry Caterpillar) had a birthday today I thought now would be a great time.

Here was the centre piece ( I got the idea from this blog)- using fairy cakes (or 'cup cakes') was great as I didn't have to spend ages cutting the cake - we just bunged them on a the plate for the little ones. It also meant that we could cater for dietary preferences the 'The Fairy's Aunty cooked some low sugar- un iced ones for friends who prefer thier kids not to eat too much sugar (so if children had intolerances using cup cakes rather than one big one could be helpful too). I have since discovered icing gel paste, here I used the liquid stuff and it didn't colour the face as bright a red as I would as liked.

For games I made a 'throw the food in the caterpillar' out of an old cardboard box.

We also had a sun pinata.

To decorate I made items of food from the book out of craft foam (I always seem to have more craft foam in  my craft box than a person could humanly use in a life time - but that's another story). I stuck the pictures of with blue tac.




Happy Birthday Eric- Thank you for all your wonderful books

Father's Day card (baby style)

This post should have gone live last week but things got busy! Here is the The Frog's first craft activity (aged 8 months). Baby finger painting.



I cut out the words 'Papa' from a card (not worrying too much about leaving pencil marks as I knew they would be covered!)

Then I let the Frog loose with some paint- I thought he might like this as he loves to bang things- and he did (infact so much so I quickly whipped some more paper under his hand for a second go). Handy tip - If you try this at home remember wet wipes to clean their hands- I didn't and ended up with paint in my hair!

The finished project looked great (and was much appreciated on Father's Day morning)

Baby water play

Today we've all been feeling a bit under the weather so we needed an activity that was quick and simple for both children. Cue water play. A bowl and a towel and away we splashed

The Frog loved joining in and copying his sister.

Soon everything that could be washed was being washed. So simple yet so fun.

**As with all activities children need to be supervised never leave children or babies alone near water**

Language Focus
Vocabulary: Wet, splash, wash

Playdough pledge # 3 - Nature dough

Take one lot of unflavoured playdough add natural 'treasures' gathered by small people, throw in a few dried pulses.

Calm, relaxing, natural playdough fun

We had planned to do 5 x sessions on the playdough pledge, but we haven't (yet!). Not sure if we'll carry it on over the weekend - we'll have to wait and see how it all pans out. We've had fun doing the things we've done!