Ice Cream Shop - Small World Play
This activity is great to keep young children entertained and is simple to prepare, it can allow for hours of fun and can be developed into a range of activities and games after. The ice cream shop only needs basic materials such as cotton balls, ice cream scoops, bowls, pom poms, glitter and paint, and can be set up anywhere as it doesn't take up much space and is not messy! By creating a small sign, in which the children can help design, and putting this up on a wall with the resources near by, you can role play with you child, pretending you are on a beach and getting your favourite ice cream. This could also be done with real food and children can help make real ice cream cones for the whole family, pretending they are the shop keeper. All this can help develop and build skills such as their fine motor skills - small movements - to help with their coordination and hand control, children's understanding of the world is also supported through the use of real world materials and acting out real situations, bringing in the use of money can support their mathematical skills too. The resources can be kept up for a role play area in general, meaning children can get good use out of them and being to use them in other ways with their own ideas.
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Farm Making
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This activity encourages children to use the resources around them, both natural and not, to create their own variation of a farm. This may be created by finding stones to act as a horse bed or placing water on a lid to create a pond for ducks. As well as learning about different textures and materials, the children can explore their knowledge of where certain animals live and how they can create. Children are free to express how they want their farm to look- whether it is a space farm, or an all green farm using different leaves and grass from the garden. This activity can help encourage the child’s imagination and creativity but can also be create a valuable time for you to test ideas with the children, using your senses together to talk about the area created, adding different resources to make each individual part of the farm. This activity may also be used with any foods that have gone out of date so cannot be eaten, but will make a create surface for a pig to roll in and a horse to jump over.
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Frozen Dinosaur Eggs
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This activity stimulates the senses, helping children use these to explore the world around them and learn. With easy resources and preparation, this activity can be done with basic effort yet will still encourage learning and development, also, everyone has dinosaurs! With just some dinosaurs, water and a freezer, and children can get stuck into learning about dinosaurs and many games can be made from this. For example, using simple tools to break the egg open, naming the dinosaurs and keeping a journal or creating a world for them to hatch into, will keep a child interested and wanting to know more. Their understanding of the world is supported, their senses which support cognitive development, their physical skills and science skills through understanding how water can be ice. This activity can be done again and again and simple to tidy, also, a range of resources can be frozen too such as foods, dolls and food colouring to support children’s expressive arts and design.
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