What are we doing in Sea Turtles this month?

With many of the toddlers becoming aware of their feelings and how the interactions of each other affect one another both positively and negatively, we are planning a month really looking at positive and negative feelings and how our faces express that. The younger Sea Turtles will experience lots of ‘gentle touching’ smiles and cheer from the teachers and the older children too.

The activities this month will be based around the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) areas of learning:

KUW- Learning to anticipate or expect the reactions of others.  PSED- feeling good and sharing our emotions with each other. MD- Counting, comparing, etc through all activities. CLL using words and language to express feelings as well as gesture and sign language. PD Lots of dancing and activities to make us feel good and develop physical skills.  CD- exploring images of emotions and making collages and art work based around feelings and emotions.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:

• Ella will be setting the children up with a range of facial features for the children to collage with and think about facial features.
• Manjit will be making emotion faces and using them as flash cards for the children to copy and imitate the emotions.
• Manjit will be setting up baby (doll) bathing for the children to role play caring for babies.
• Sara will playing ball games with the children. Calling their names and rolling the ball to them when they smile.
• Sarah G will be helping them to play musical statues and pulling the face of an emotion when the music stops.
• Sarah G will support the children working together to explore and appreciate each other’s differences. E.g. soft hair, cheeks, etc.
• Chloe will be supporting the children with pass the parcel games to encourage sharing, patience. She will also be teaching nice cuddling..
• Sarah-Louise will be supporting the children in making art comforters, toys, blankets, etc.
• Ella will be taking photos of items that are special to the children, like their blankets, toys, etc to display at eye level for them and support a sense of belonging.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

·         Pull some emotions faces with your children and label the face you are pulling by calling out ‘happy!’, ‘grumpy!’.

·         Role model gentle touching, stroking, tickling, cuddling, kissing and interactions that make you feel good.

·         Sing ‘If you’re happy and you know it….’ And come up with a range of emotions.