Dear Parents

Hope you are enjoying the start of the holidays. Here are some activity ideas to do over the holidays to continue your child’s learning.

Number Hunt – Search around your house or look for numbers when out on a walk. What numbers can you see? Can you identify the numbers? If you child needs support with knowing their number names then name it for them so they are able to hear the number name as they look at it.

Pencil control – This gives your child with number of opportunities for drawing and mark making. Some of the children who are already in the Butterfly room are tracing over the letters of their name and some of the older children are writing their name so they will be able to add their name.

Counting – Count everything and anything. The stairs as you walk up and down, how many cookies they have left after sharing with friends or grown ups.

Share a story each night – This activity is a good activity to get your child into routine. Spend a quiet time with them before bed. They will hear the way words are spoken, how books are held, how pages are turned, how the character voices change, the way it sounds when a question is asked. These will all help towards their early reading. Think of all the new words they will hear. You can listen to audio stories together on a phone too.

Sensory activities – playing with a playdough, threading pasta tubes on the straws etc helps to keep their muscles in their hands strong. We do activities at nursery just like these each day, for example finger gym.

Build a den together – This is a great acitivity for problem solving and team work. What can they use to keep their den up? What could they use to sit on in the den? How could they make it dark in the den?

Cooking – Making cakes or helping with the dinner. This gives them a lot skills to be learn, washing and drying their hands, seeing numbers on the scales, mixing/cutting builds the muscles in their hands to spread butter on their toasts.

We would love to see any photos or videos of you over the holidays and we will share these with other children when we are back at Pre-School.

Woodlands Team