It’s gardening in Sea Turtles this month. We
will be extending on from last month’s topic of being active where we did things
around fruits and vegetables, and looking at how they grow. We will encourage the children’s interest in
growth by looking at plants and flowers.
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 with Sarah. Develop our gardening boxes with the children and
sharing the process with them.
·
Cress growing with Alice to make grassy areas and green
fields for the small world play
environments. Children will also have
their own, individual pots of cress to take home.
·
Planting sunflower seeds with Laura. Watching them sprout and grow.
·
Finding flowers and learning names with Afia. Collages out of magazine cuttings
and flower spotting in books and magazines.
·
Role playing gardening flowers and seeds with Christina. Using a range of tools to act out gardening.
·
Planting and growing herbs with Cristina.
Children will explore the smell and taste of the herbs during and after
the growing process.
·
Taking an excursion to Homebase to look at flowers and the growing
environment.
·
Making fruit and vegetable pictures with Sarah.
Using different materials and resources.
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.
