Suggestions for activities to support your child’s learning and development – Early Years

Week 7 4 th – 8 th May 2020

Make a simple number line with post it notes or collect some stones to number and encourage your child to line up corresponding lines of shoes/ teddies/ Duplo bricks

Crafts are a great way to help little ones engage in what they are learning, simple math flowers will encourage concentration and help with number recognition too!

Number bingo – a great game for all the family

A sheet each and a stamp. Take it in turns to pick numbers out of a bag and stamp off your sheet if you have it. First to get bingo is the winner, children love shouting out BINGO!

Number jump

This can be chalked inside or outside on a hard floor, call out a number or use dice for your child to jump to. Make sure you take turns too as children will always engage for longer if you are playing along.

Sound memory match

Write a letter and make the sound and turn over, take it in turns to try and match. When you get a pair, say a word that starts with that sound

Scissor skills – encouraging those fine motor skills

Give the paper people a haircut using strips of paper – stick the paper around old toilet rolls and the children can draw on or decorate to make people

Photo Challenge

Pick a theme e.g. things that are big, things that are round

Every time your child sees something let them take a picture

Have a look through the photos – maybe could you share them with someone – other children the child knows – you could set their friends a challenge.

Growing a plant – encourage your child to be hands on and be prepared for some mess!

Get the bottom of an egg box, poke holes in the bottom and put in some compost, put in some seed(s), cover the compost with water, pop them on a plate on the windowsill and watch them grow Talk about what’s happening and encourage your child to water them every day – you could use a ruler to measure. For older children get them to record which types are growing the quickest.

The easiest seeds to grow are:

Lettuce, Peas, Radishes, Turnips, Beans and Sweet Potatoes

Sunflowers are great fun to plant and the bonus is you have seeds at the end to plant for next year!Also Pumpkins in time for Halloween!

Stress balloons

Younger children will need some help with this, using a funnel put some flour into the balloon, tie a knot in the top, decorate the balloons with wool for hair and draw a face, enjoy squeezing the balloon into different shapes

Cornflour play

Put some cornflour and water into a tray, add food colouring use fingers to move the flour around and watch the texture change as it turns into a solid and liquid.

Make a stick person

Use some twigs and string to make your very own stick person, you can look for a leaf to attach to make hair.

Collect more twigs to make a family of stick people.