Pre-School Squirrels
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/
- Make a routine board to help your child understand their day
- Create a ‘My feelings’ chart to discuss your child’s emotions throughout the day
- Create emotion bottles or jars to help your child express their feelings
- Create a playdough person
- Make a calming sensory bucket, using water and food colouring
- Build a den and play in it
- Look in a mirror and draw a self portrait
- Play the Healthy vs. Unhealthy game with real food or images
- Do a puppet show
- Make a family photo book and discuss your family.
- Make your own story sacks
- Help your child to invent their own story
- Sound bingo – listen to different sounds and tick off images of what you hear.
- What shall we do today discussion
- Make up a song/nursery rhyme, then perform it!
- Play a game of Guess Who?
- Go on a treasure hunt
- Learn simple phrases in another language
- Read poems
- Opposite game – use words or flashcards to explore opposites
- Encourage your child to dress themselves in the morning
- Practise scissor skills on old magazines/scrap paper
- Play hopscotch on the pavement
- Play balancing games
- Let your child help with household tasks, ie sweeping, wiping etc
- Yoga for children (available online)
- Cook with me! Let the children help make their own dinners, chopping veggies, mixing etc
- Play ball games like catch or piggy in the middle
- What’s in the box? Feel the different textures of different objects and guess what it is.
- Create a sensory footpath with different textures, e.g. pebbles, sand, water
- Help your child make their name with Lego
- Play Twister with letters stuck onto the coloured circles
- help your child make up their own poem
- Story stone making – paint on stones to create props for stories and use them when reading the story
- Play a game matching letters to objects
- Spot letters in the community – go for a walk and find different letters on shop fronts, road signs etc
- Write in sand and paint using different resources, such as sticks, chopsticks etc
- Alphabet soup activity – place plastic/magnetic letters in water with other objects and let your child stir the soup before picking out letters.
- Involve your child in writing the weekly shopping list
- Help your child come up with their own recipe, and then cook it!
- Play shape basketball – throw different shapes into a bucket and name them
- Play number bingo
- Rock sorting – go on a rock hunt then put them into big and small piles
- Go on a walk with a list of things you may see, for example cars, buses, dogs. Tally how many you see
- Jigsaw Puzzles
- Count spoonfuls with your child as you dish up at mealtimes
- Play board games, e.g. Snakes and Ladders, Dominoes
- Play a pairing game – you can even use socks to do this!
- Let your child help with hanging up the washing, and count items as you go.
- Giant shape match
- Go on a walk to find natural materials, such as sticks, stones, leaves etc
- Who lives in my house? Help your child draw a house and the people they live with
- DIY Volcano Experiment (Google – there are a few options).
- Take pictures of the things we like at home or in the community with a camera or phone
- Make bird feeders and hang them up in the garden
- Talk about different occupations – go on trips in the local or wider area to see different occupations in action.
- Make maps of environments and then go on a walk using the map
- Make a bug hotel in the garden
- Jelly Bean colour changing experiment (please Google)
- Colour changing flowers, lettuce, celery etc (place in a vase and add 2-4 drops of food colouring to the water. Watch the objects change colour over a few days).
- Make chalk paint
- Ice cube painting – freeze paint in ice cube trays and paint with it
- Make Moon Dough
- Create DIY tunnels and play in them
- Mark Making to music (use classical or unusual music to stimulate children as they draw)
- Nature rubbing, e.g. tree bark rubbing – place paper over bark/twigs/leaves and rub with a crayon.
- Make own musical instruments
- Design your own bookmark and use in your favourite book
- Shaving foam marbling using food colouring
- Shadow drawing – shine a torch behind an object onto paper and let your child draw around the shadow.
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
