Small World Farm

We visited a local farm last week and the children thoroughly enjoyed seeing and feeding the animals.

As a way of building on our trip and re-living and discussing what we had seen, I provided  a small world farm in the tough spot tray. I added some sensory elements to make the tray a bit more interesting.

I used a type of wood shaving for the sheep's pen.

Straw in with the cows.

Luckily we had some left over chocolate playdough that became mud for the pigs!

And we put some branches in the tray for the goats that liked to climb! 

We also raided the cous cous from the sensory tray which became food for the animals.

J loved it, the pigs and 'mud' were definitely her favourite!

I love listening to the stories children make up as they play.  This story focused around a naughty baby cow that had lost its mummy (no, incase you were wondering this wasn't part of our outing! I managed to bring them all home:))

The younger ones also came over to see what was going on and imitated the play of the older children.  I'll probably leave the tray out for another week as the children still seem to be enjoying it.

Look out for our 'Hide and Sheep' activity that I hope to be doing this week!

Links to EYFS:

CLL: Language for Communication

KUW: Place

CD: Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play

Beach Small World

After our visit to the beach this week, I set up a small world beach in one of our trays.  Initially I set it up in the sand tray, but we encountered a few problems.

Our first problem was the combination of sand and water...

...we found that our beach kept sliding into the sea and and the children spent the majority of their time trying to rescue it. 

 So we replaced the water with laminated blue paper.

The next problem was that some of us still wanted to explore the sand tray in our usual way - digging, grabbing handfuls of sand and watching it fall etc (notice the small hand in the corner!)  This inevitably led to arguements.

So our beach was quickly relocated to one of our sensory trays.

I used; material sample squares for picnic rugs, cut down bamboo skewers and gummed paper to make a wind shield, a water bottle lid for a bucket....

...I made boats from foil and again used gummed paper and cut down bamboo skewers to make a sail (secured with plastercine)...

....I then added plastic shot glasses for shell collecting buckets, large rocks, shells, crabs and duplo figures.

It was fascinating to listen to the stories J developed as she played.

This aroused the interest of the other children who became involved in play.

Anyone else want to join in our picnic!

Couldn't quite hear what the queue was for (probably the toilet!)

As J loves play involving rescuing and saving people, I thought I would add a shark to the tray next week!

Ocean Adventure!

We have got a bit of a fishy theme going on at the moment and to extend the children's playI thought I would make them an ocean world in our black tray.  I had been lucky enough to pick up some blue vinyl flooring at the Materials Bank a few weeks back, which once cut to size, with its dark blue, grey and glittery bits, made a perfect ocean floor  (A piece of laminated blue paper would work just as well).

I then added a couple of the large rocks I brought back from holiday (which also helped to weigh down the vinyl and stop it floating to the top), the small world sea creatures, some shells and made some plants. 

 

These were simply pieces of green plastic (a green carrier bag would also work), wrapped around small stones and fastened with elastic bands.  I then cut the top part of the plastic to look like the leaves of plants. 

These were great because the 'leaves' moved around in the water, giving a realistic quality to play and also the creatures could 'hide' or 'play' amongst them. 

I set the tray up on a blue piece of material and added some larger shells and books to make the area more interesting and to give some ideas for play.

Oh and I forgot, we added water of course!
The children have certainly enjoyed playing in this area last week.  We've made up stories as we've played, talked about the fish that can breathe under water and the mammals that can't, practised naming the fish and had a good look at all the shells. 

I did think twice about doing this activity as I look after one little boy who loves to splash in any water and too be honest, I didn't relish the idea of having a flooded dining room. But much to my surprise, he has not splashed once!   I don't know whether this is because he hasn't experienced water in this context before, or because he has been too engaged in exploring the tray so think about splashing.  I wonder if this will last next week!
This week we hope to extend play by creating our own fish to add to the blue material, visiting the beach and pet shop to see some fish, and possibly making some boats to add to our underwater tray.  We may even have a go at the oat starfish that looked fab on the Its Playtime link-up!
Links to EYFS:
KUW: Place (Enjoy playing with small world equipment / show an interest in the world in which they live
CD: Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play (Making up stories to accompany play)

Dinosaur & Volcano Small World

Our volcano progressed to the dinosaur small world tray this week.

 The children were still keen to set the volcano off.

And the sticky swamp was pretty popular too!

We are going to continue the explosion theme with mints and cola next week!
Links to EYFS:
CLL: Language for Thinking - where children use language in their pretend or imaginary play.
CD: Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play - where children make up pretend scenarios for the dinosaurs.
KUW: Place - when children enjoy playing with small-world equipment such as dinosaurs.

Volcano

After reading about the volcano created by Teacher Tom, I couldn't resist trying to make our own.  If it worked I planned to use it in our small world play to enhance the current interest in dinosaurs. 

 So we started last week.  As the older children are on their Easter holidays, we had a bit of extra help.  I got a tray for a car boot sale for 50p and created a frame for the children. 

After the older children cut the newspaper into strips, all the children busily set about dipping them into the flour and water mixture and placing them carefully across the frame.

We then had to be very patient and wait for the volcano to dry out.  The lovely hot weather we are having at the moment helped to speed this up and the following week our volcano was ready for painting. 

We started off with lots of colours but our volcano ended up black.  This was probably due to our self-appointed 'chief mixer!'

It needed one more coat of paint, this time with a bit of sand mixed in for extra effect, a coat of pva glue and it was ready. We eagerly gathered round, got some chairs to make sure we were really comfy and waited.

Fantastic, we weren't disappointed!

We then decided a bit of red food colouring would make it even more authentic and erupted it again.....and again.....and again......and again until we ran out of bicarbonate of soda.  Next week our volcano is going in with the dinosaurs.