What are we doing in Sea Turtles in June?

It’s gardening in Sea Turtles this month. Developing the sensory garden last month has been so much fun and the children have loved play gardening and watching the planting of seeds and small plants. So let the good weather bring on some green fingers!

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

Prime areas:

PSED: Engaging others to achieve a common goal such as working together to get items out of reach.  PD: Making connections between their physical actions and the effects they can make. C&L Gesturing, facial expressions, demonstrations of emotion in sharing an interest.

Specific areas:

M: Recognising big things and small things in meaningful contexts. UW: Exploring objects by linking different approaches; shaking, hitting, looking, feeling, tasting, mouthing, etc. EA&D Imitating and improving actions they have observed, such as chapping, shaking, patting hands.

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

·         Gardening. Continuing to develop our gardening boxes with the children and sharing with them the process.

·         Cress growing with Ella to make grassy areas and green fields for the small world play environments.

·         Planting sunflower seeds with Laura. Watching them sprout and grow.

·         Finding flowers and learning names with Cristina. Collages out of magazine cuttings and flower spotting in books and magazines.

·         Role playing gardening flowers and seeds with Sarah. Using a range of tools to act out gardening.

·         Looking at images of insects and creating insect collages with Sarah.

·         Taking an excursion to Kew Gardens to look at flowers and the growing environment.

·         Visiting Dolphins gardening work to see what they have been doing.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

·         If you have a Kew membership, know someone with an allotment or garden, take an extra visit. Find a gardener and just take some time out to watch them gardening. Talk about what they are doing.

·         Invest in a children’s watering can. Small toddlers love watering gardens, window boxes, etc. If you have nothing for them to water, fill up a can and go for a walk down the street to water someone else’s plants. Weeds are good for watering too!

·         Do you have a small patch in your garden that you could give up for your little one to develop their green fingers and do some digging? Or, how about a tray you could put some soil or sand in, add some weeds, small seeds, sand and let them loose with a children’s gardening set.

·         Read some books together with a gardening topic. Let them point, communicate with gesture and share what they have been doing at nursery with you.

·         Language: dig, push, pull, turn, scratch, soft, hard, sharp, spikey, flat, bumpy, pour, tip, drizzle, drip, slosh, splash, splatter, any great descriptive words that explain what you are doing.