Ducklings
Home Learning Area
We trust that the majority of the resources you need to complete these activities will be available in your homes or in most shops. Of course, almost anything can be purchased online too, but we would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to support local shops where you can. It is often possible to use alternatives to the specified resources in these activities that will work just as well.
The below websites are very useful for finding educational resources, such as worksheets or templates.
BBC Bitesize – Pre-school – https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zks4kmn
Twinkl – https://www.twinkl.co.uk/
- Explore our sense of smell – using different scents on cotton wool.
- Have a baby spa day using dollies.
- Lemon and orange water play (use fresh and dried oranges and lemons).
- My turn, your turn games.
- Hide and find favourite toys.
- Make facial expressions and encourage children to copy them.
- Sensory time with lights and textures: blankets, torches, colourful lights, sensory toys, scarves etc
- Learning about hygiene – give children time to practise washing their hands, brushing their teeth and helping to dress themselves.
- Teach basic signs from Makaton, e.g. ‘thank you’, ‘please’, ‘milk’.
- Emoji activity – talk to children about emotions and see if they can copy the emoji you place in front of them.
- Sing nursery rhymes with finger puppets.
- Cup and string DIY telephone to encourage language.
- ‘Five little speckled frogs’ nursery rhyme water play.
- Make a farm, then sing Old McDonald and make animal noises.
- Create your own song with your children.
- Play “can you find the…?” games, asking children to find things from around the room or their body parts.
- Go for a walk, listening to noises in the environment and talking about what they are.
- 10 green bottles scene: sing the song whilst playing with green bottles.
- Make own flashcards to encourage language – let children take the pictures.
- Give children fun instructions to follow and see what they do e.g. “can you spin around”.
- Mark making in playdough.
- Ball games in the garden.
- Making fruit ice lollies.
- Water play; pouring, filling and emptying.
- Do some baking together.
- Build towers and structures together with a variety of bricks.
- Create an obstacle course with things to climb over and crawl through.
- Acting out actions to songs e.g. wheels on the bus and head shoulders knees and toes.
- Playing with a hula hoop; encourage children to step through it, pull it over their heads, swing it around them etc.
- Dressing (and looking after) dollies
- Hungry Caterpillar tasting game (use the food from the book).
- “Find the letters” in a sand tray.
- Make your own “lift the flap” book (use post it notes).
- Story time/story sacks with props.
- Make sock puppets/props from stories.
- Literacy sensory bottles; make bottles relating to stories or fill a bottle with water and magnetic letters for the children to explore.
- Audio books; listen to the story together and use props/pictures to help keep children’s attention.
- Dear Zoo Activity – create a zoo with lots of animals and read the book to them.
- Go and visit the Gruffalo Trail or Stick Man Trail in Brentwood and read the book whilst having a picnic.
- Play with alphabet spaghetti.
- Colour mixing with water and food colouring.
- Button sorting game (sort by colours, size, shape etc).
- Painting with pipettes.
- Have fun scooping berries, such as cranberries, whilst exploring measurement.
- Toilet roll shape painting – cut shapes out of the end of toilet roll and paint/stamp with them.
- Exploring locks and latches.
- Sing counting nursery rhymes, e.g. 5 Little Ducks, Once I caught a fish alive
- Coloured pasta sensory tray.
- Encourage counting during play: count what the children are playing with.
- Magnify objects: use magnifying glasses and binoculars to look at a variety of items.
- Use kinetic sand to build a construction site with pretend tools
- Paint the snow (cotton wool).
- Scoop ice cubes.
- Create a car wash where you wash and polish all your toy cars
- Make a sensory footpath with different textures to explore with their feet, e.g. mud, sand, water.
- Do some gardening together with real tools.
- Create a shaving foam sea/beach scene.
- Make an outdoor sticky mural – using sticky back plastic and lots of leaves and sticks from outside.
- Go to the shops: give children their own list (with pictures) and let them hold objects after you find them.
- Write own letters (or draw pictures) and go to the post box together to post them to family/friends.
- Nature painting with leaves, sticks and flowers.
- Painting with animals – use plastic animals to create paw prints.
- Make a gift wrap and bow collage.
- Painting with forks.
- Create a collage with a variety of tissue paper.
- Decorate rocks from the garden/park.
- Painting with water, particularly on wood/stone on a warm day (less mess!).
- Make your own band using lots of pots and pans.
- Blow bubbles and let children pop them.
- Make gloop with rice and pasta added in (dried or cooked so children can explore the different textures).
Educational Framework
The EYFS is a statutory framework of education that all early years settings must deliver and it informs our everyday practice. The Development Matters document acts as a guide for nursery practitioners to help them understand how children should develop and identify when any child is exceeding or not meeting these developmental goals. However, it is very important to remember that the Development Matters framework is not a tick list and that all children develop at different rates.
Link to Early Years Foundation Stage document – Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage for group and school providers (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Development Matters in the EYFS – Development Matters – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Birth to 5 Matters – Birthto5Matters-download.pdf
