Week beginning 6th July

Describe and find it

• Set up a model farmyard. Describe one of the animals but do not tell the children its name. Say, for example: This animal has horns, four legs and a tail.
• Ask them to say which animal it is. Ask them to make the noise the animal might make. When they are familiar with the game let individual children take the part of the adult and describe the animal for the others to name.
• This activity can be repeated with other sets of objects such as zoo animals, toy sets based on transport (e.g. aeroplane, car, train, bus, boat) and musical instruments. It can be made more challenging by introducing sets of random objects to describe and name.

Playing with words

• Gather together a set of familiar objects with names that have varying syllable patterns (e.g. pencil, umbrella, camera, xylophone).
• Show the objects to the children, name them and talk about what they are used for. Wait for the children to share some of their experiences of the objects; for instance, some of them will have used a camera. Then encourage them to think about how the name of the object sounds and feels as they say it.
• Think about the syllables and clap them out as you say each word. Then clap the syllables for a word without saying it and ask: What object could that be?
• As children gain confidence try some long words like binoculars, telephone, dinosaur.

Mirror play

• Provide a mirror for your child or one large enough for the group to gather in front of.
• Play at making faces and copying movements of the lips and tongue.
• Introduce sound making in the mirror and discuss the way lips move, for example, when sounding out ‘p’ and ‘b’, the way that tongues poke out for ‘th’, the way teeth and lips touch for ‘f’ and the way lips shape the sounds ‘sh’ and ‘m’.

This week use the good weather to play with water and recap language of capacity. 

Free play filling and emptying bottles;  using size language and 'full', 'empty' with adult support

Use different shaped containers to fill and empty.  Introduce half-full, overflow/up to the top

Consider which container has the most water in.

Consider which container would hold enough water to fill two cups/three bowls etc

Order various shallow and deep containers – which will hold the most/least?  How many containers will it take to empty/fill the water tray?  What could we use the water for that we tip away?

Key Questions:

Is it full, empty?  nearly full?  Is it a big container?  Is it smaller than this one?

Key vocabulary:

more, less, full, empty, overflowing, top, bottom, pour, half-full

Play a game :)  

Try counting the number of spaces moved, explore numerals using a dice or count the images on the dominoes.