What are we doing in Dolphins this month?
July will see a focus on sequencing, sorting, grouping, and classifying.

This has come from two emerging interests. Firstly, following on from our plants, animals and living things topics, the children have started to really think about grouping, pairing, ordering and sequencing. We have also been talking a lot about sequences of events, such as growing up, metamorphosis, etc. This is particularly topical for our school leavers and those children who are staying at nursery but saying good bye to old friends.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:

- Playing games; snap, matching, dominoes.
- make our own sequencing cards with the children. E.g. I get up, then I get dressed, then I eat breakfast, then I brush my teeth, then I go to school.
- Discussions about growing up and the order of growth.
- Ordering sizes of our strawberries and tomatoes we are growing.
- Discussions about the stages and sequence of living things growth.
- Use of matching and sorting sets.
- Using the clay or play dough to make objects of varying size and comparing.
- Going on a walk to collect natural materials to sort at nursery.
- Go to the library and get books out on the topic.
- Lots of small world, sand and water play with objects to sort, sequence, group and classify.

What you could do to support your children at home:

- Talk about sequences of events in your own life; routines, patterns of activity, etc.
- Ask questions like, ‘what happens after we have a bath?’
- Write a story together about sequences of events in their lives and get them to think or talk about what you do in the day, your work routines, when you have lunch, etc.
- Go on a natural materials hunt and collect items to sort at home.
- Talk about size; smallest, biggest, the same as, etc.
- Sort your laundry together; ‘Daddy’s shirt, my shirt, Mummy’s shirt’, etc.