Leaves glorious Leaves

Autumn is here

Little man painting leaves 

We had a fab autumn themed after school arts and crafts session. I find the gap between coming home from school and making tea a great time to get the paints out and a great way to keep the kids occupied while I am cooking lunch. On our way home from school we collected lots of leaves to paint and print. 

I sat down with the children for 20 minutes and we talked about autumn and autumn colours while we mixed colours and made some lovely leaf prints.

It is really easy to get wrapped up in a busy lifestyle there are always a million things that need to be done and we forget to get involved with small activities like this. We tend to set the paints up and let the children get on with it but spending ten minutes getting involved in an activity each day is something we can all fit into our schedule and is more beneficial than we realise. Let the child lead the activity, don't give demands or ask too many questions. It is important to be attentive and give lots of praise. It makes children feel like your interested in what they are doing and builds their confidence and self esteem.

Macey found a pine cone in the crafts box and wanted to find out what print it would make. 

"Oh it looks like rain" 

Googly Leaf People

Oh we had lots of fun with this activity. There is nothing better than playing with gloopy glue and googly eyes.   The best thing is it is soo simple and can be fit into busy routines. We collected the leaves on our way back from school and then got stuck in making our little leaf people whilst waiting for tea to cook. The children found the leaf people highly amusing and were smiling and giggling and really enthusiastic and proud of there pictures.

Dinosaur theme sensory table

Today we got our hands dirty and made a dinosaur land in our sensory table. I used compost, pine cones, shells, plastic plant pots, and spaghetti pasta.

We also made a car ramp using a bit of plastic and a bucket of water :) 

A lot of people dismiss sensory tables thinking its just an inconvenient mess, when in reality they are so much more. Young children learn using their senses. They need to feel, see, smell, hear, and sometimes taste materials in order to fully understand it. We are very aware of this when our children are babies and are putting whatever they can find in their mouths and playing with crinkly toys but we forget that this goes beyond the toddler years.

Sensory tables build on cognitive development. This is a mental process that includes memory, making decisions, problem solving and understanding language. It is the part of our brain that helps us process information and apply knowledge.
When it comes to the sensory table the children are given materials and tools with no instruction of what to do. They will  use their senses to process what materials and tools they have been given by observing and experimenting  and apply their knowledge to decide what they are going to do with it.
This self directed play allows children to be creative and gives them confidence and a feeling of self achievement.

Macey quite often puts quite a lot of thought in to this when I put new things into the table. Yesterday evening she was drawing up plans on ideas that she had for the table. She wanted a slide for the dinosaurs and asked if she could have some glue to stick the spaghetti together.

Maths can be applied to count, size, match and sort items into groups. They can grasp a better understanding of full and empty, more or less, and whether things float or sink.
In our dinosaur themed table Drew pointed to the pine cones and attempted to count. He then put a pine cone in one of the plastic plant pots and filled another with shells. Macey told him he had more shells than pine cones.

Science concepts are used when predicting outcomes and experimenting with materials such as cause and effect. Children have the opportunity to explore and build a better understanding of gravity and speed.
When Macey and Drew were playing with the water bucket and car ramp they were trying to figure out which car went down the ramp the fastest and recognised that some cars floated and the bigger ones sunk to the bottom of the water. They also used cause and effect when discovering  what happened when they mixed  water with mud. They put the wet cars in the sensory table and noticed that the water made the mud slimy.

English and language can also be improved. Children build their hand eye coordination and fine motor skills which are used for holding a pencil to learn how to write when pouring stirring, whisking and manipulating the materials. The activity gives a child a sense of self awe which they want to share. It gives them something interesting to talk to others about because each child will use the materials differently. It builds on their vocabulary as they try to express and share their ideas.

A simple activity, with huge benefits, that will give your child hours of enjoyment!

Other sensory table ideas:  ( click the image title to find out more)

Mars rover theme 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmazingLittleMinds

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/littlemisskirst/

Trip to the Nature Reserve

Equipped with wellies we set of to the marshlands to discover the creatures that dwell in the marsh, across the grasslands and beneath the rippling ponds.

Hiding in the murky waters are great crested newts and slimy frogs and toads. Swarms of tadpoles and the googly eyes of the stickleback. Unfortunately it was difficult to capture them with our camera.

Stickleback!

Tadpoles

We made it our mission to find as many of these creatures as we possibly could before the dark clouds erupted and the heavens opened.