Please have a look at our ECC Handbook.
Please feel free to take part in any of the home learning activities and upload photos/comments to your child’s Learning Journal.
Health and Wellbeing is at the heart of everything we do in the centre and creating an environment where children feel Safe, Healthy, Active, Nurtured, Achieving, Responsible, Respected and Included is really important to us.
In the ECC, we have been focusing on and promoting Health and Wellbeing through a variety of activities such as yoga, circle time, snack, time in the gym and outdoor play.
Here are some ways you can support your child’s Health and Wellbeing at home if you wish:
Cosmic Yoga on YouTube
We use this in the ECC because it’s based around popular children’s stories and films so it’s relatable for the children, therefore they find it more engaging. The channel also provides Mindfulness and Meditation videos. Why not join in with your child?
Outdoor senses walk
Getting outdoors every day is hugely beneficial to children’s development and their health and wellbeing. Why not go out for a walk and use your senses to explore the environment? Talk to your child about what they can see. What can they hear? How does the rain feel? How does a tree feel? Talk about different smells and also talk to them about being safe in the outdoor environment – things they shouldn’t touch or taste.
Independence skills
Part of Health and Wellbeing is focusing on building skills to support your child to be independent. This could be getting themselves dressed/undressed, brushing their teeth/hair, tidying up after playing and even spreading butter or chocolate spread on toast (or a pancake!) Give your child as many opportunities as you can for them to work on these skills.
Choose and prepare a meal together
When your child feels involved in food preparation, they are more likely to want to try new foods. Talk to your child about different foods – get them involved in preparing their breakfast, lunch or dinner. Try changing the language of healthy/not healthy foods to foods we need lots of and foods we need little of. For example, we need lots of fruit and vegetables because they have lots of vitamins which our bodies need lots of to help us grow however we can still have a little bit of chocolate because our bodies need a little bit of sugar sometimes.
Family and friends
Our families and our friends are a really important part of our Health and Wellbeing and, of course, current restrictions are meaning we are using more online methods of communication. Why not let your child make a card for a family member or a friend? They could write a letter or they could draw a picture. Maybe they could make a Valentines’ Day card for someone special to tell them how important they are to them. Why not make one for your child too?
Theme – Numeracy and Maths
Here are some Numeracy and Maths based activities to try at home. These activities will develop the children’s early numeracy and math skills and provide them with strong foundations for understanding more complex numeracy and math activities as well as developing their problem solving skills.
Learning to count
One of the first things your child will learn about numbers is to rote count. This is a memory process as opposed to being able to count out however rote counting in both ascending and descending order is a really important skill to master as children can then apply this to many different contexts.
Try some of these counting activities:
- Counting games – climbing the stairs, pretending to blast off in a rocket, look at numbers in books, on your phone/tablet, fingers and toes
- Nursery rhymes such as Five Little Speckled Frogs or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
- Numberblocks on CBeebies
- Look for numbers on a number hunt – count up to that number
One-to-one correspondence
This is when children learn to count and understand that numbers are represented and signify a quantity of something. Start with the same object when you begin one-to-one correspondence and, if you can, include a visual of the number in print or dots like on a die or dominoes.
Once your child has mastered one-to-one correspondence with that object, you can start to introduce different objects to represent different numbers. Remember to also include 0 to represent nothing. Once your child has a good understanding of one-to-one correspondence, you can move onto sorting into amounts. Start small – group in 1 or 2 then in 2 or 3, 3 or 4 and so on.
Some things you can use:
- Pasta
- Shells
- Beads
- Pom poms
- Lego
- Pinecones
- Stones
- Leaves
Money
Money is something we start to explore in the ECC through role play by having a shop in our home corner. The children can use coins and notes to pay for shopping, label foods with prices and even write out their shopping lists, including quantities of items.
At home, why not explore different coins and notes you might have. Think about the colours, the shapes, the sizes and, of course, the amounts they represent. What do we use money for? Maybe have some our your food shopping out and use the money to buy things. Let your child set the price – what coins do they need? I always find it interesting the children think the coins are more valuable than the notes. Is this because they might associate coins with treasure?
Sorting objects
Sorting and grouping of objects is something we do a lot of in the ECC. As well as supporting children’s numeracy skills, it develops their knowledge of colour, size, shape, amounts, bigger, smaller etc. Gather some objects and ask your child to sort them into whatever criteria you like. You can also develop their senses by using taste, texture, smell, sound and sight as criteria.
Some things you could use:
- Lego
- Pasta
- Tins of food
- Toys – maybe they have figurines
- Beads
- Shells
- Pens/pencils
- Pom poms
- Stones
- Leaves
- Socks / washing
- Foods – sweet/savoury
- Fruit and vegetables
Patterns
Start with a simple 2 coloured pattern. You can use beads or pom poms or draw some circles and colour them in. Twinkl also have some worksheets you might be able to print off at home. Build up to 3 colours then 4 colours and so on. If you have threading beads, these are also good for learning about patterns.
Language of measure
- Big, bigger, biggest
- Small, smaller, smallest
- Tall, taller, tallest
- Little, littlest,
- Long, longer, longest
- Short, shorter, shortest
- Huge, tiny
- Full, empty, half-way
- A little bit more
- A little bit less
Activities that promote the use of measure include baking, building a tower, comparing heights in the family, collecting sticks and seeing who can make the longest line, water and sand play where children are filling and pouring, stacking objects and comparing objects.
Theme – Literacy and Language
Here are some Literacy and Language based activities to try at home. These activities will develop the children’s early literacy and language skills and provide them with strong foundations for learning to read and write.
Rhythm of words – syllables
We use objects and pictures to help the children develop their knowledge of syllables. You can do this at home by asking your child to find some objects or toys. Pick an object at a time, ask your child to say the name of the object and then you clap out the syllables whilst saying the word i.e. tea-pot. Encourage your child to do the same. Can they count how many claps they heard or did? You can also use their name, your name, a pet’s name etc.
TIP: start with 2 syllable words, moving up to 3 and then 4.
You can also practice blending syllables by breaking down a word for your child and asking them to tell you what word you said. For example, you would say tea-pot and your child would “blend” the word together and say teapot. As above, start with 2 syllable words, moving on to 3 and then 4.
Rhymes and rhyming words
To increase your child’s confidence in rhyme and rhyming words, you can sing nursery rhymes and miss out the end word in the song. Some good nursery rhymes to try are:
Baa, baa, black sheep
Twinkle, Twinkle
Humpty Dumpty
Row, row, row your boat
Jack and Jill
You can also support their recognition of rhyming words with simple word games using CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words i.e. cat, hat, dog – ask your child to either find the two words that “sound the same” or ask your child to find the word that “doesn’t sound the same”.
And, of course, reading stories! You can also support your child’s prediction and sequencing skills using stories.
Initial sounds – words beginning with…
Ask your child to find objects that begin with the same sound as the letters in their name.
I spy is another great way to work on initial sounds and Alphablocks is a really nice CBeebies cartoon that helps children recognise the letter sounds as well as the letter in print.
Recognising my name and print in the environment
There are so many opportunities around you to develop your child’s literacy skills. Look for signs and labels in your house, in your village or when you’re out shopping. Make up a bingo card of different environmental print and go out for a walk. See how many things your child can find on the card.
In the ECC, we support the children to begin to recognise their name by using picture symbols. This is because children recognise pictures before they can recognise letters or words. Ask your child if they can remember their picture symbol from the ECC.
Theme – Scotland / Robert Burns
We would usually celebrate Scottish week by learning all about our country and Robert Burns Day. We usually sing lots of Scottish songs and sometimes we get a special Scottish snack.
Why not see what you can learn about Scotland and Robert Burns at home?
Some Scottish activities you could try:
Making your own tartan – use strips of different coloured paper and stick them on to coloured card to make your very own tartan. You could also use different coloured paints.
Irn Bru and Mentos explosion – you’ll need a bottle of regular Irn Bru and a pack of mint Mentos. You might want to try this outside as it can get messy! Open your Irn Bru, pour a small amount out and then drop in a few Mentos…what’s going to happen? Stand back because you might get splashed!
Read or listen to a Scottish story – Hairy Maclary, Harris McCoo or Katie Morag are some of our favourite Scottish themed stories. You could also search on YouTube for Scottish stories and poems – maybe The Gruffalo in Scots? What’s different in the Scottish stories from other stories you’ve listened to or read?
Research some facts about Scotland – we would love to hear what facts you find out about Scotland. Can you find out what the national flower for Scotland is? Or can you find out more about Robert Burns? Did you know he was born in Ayrshire?
Make some Scottish tablet – try this very easy recipe to make some yummy shortbread.
Sing some Scottish songs – here are some of our favourite Scottish songs for you to sing at home:
Ally Bally
Ally, Bally, Ally Bally Bee,
Sitting on your Mammy’s knee
Greetin’ for a wee bawbee
Tae buy some Coulter’s candy
Three Craws
Three Craws sat upon a wa’, sat upon a wa’, sat upon a wa’
Three Craws sat upon a wa’ on a cauld and frosty mornin’
The first craw was greetin’ for his maw, greetin’ for his maw, greetin’ for his maw
The first craw was greetin’ for his maw on a cauld and frosty mornin’
The second craw fell and broke his jaw, fell and broke his jaw, fell and broke his jaw
The second craw fell and broke his jaw on a cauld and frosty mornin’
The third craw couldnae flee at a’, couldnae flee at a’, couldnae flee at a’
The third craw couldnae flee at a’ on a cauld and frosty mornin’
The fourth craw wasnae there at a’, wasnae there at a’, wasnae there at a’
The fourth craw wasnae there at a’ on a cauld and frosty mornin’
Theme – Winter / Ice
We know the children will have been very excited to see the snow and hopefully had the chance to get outside to play and explore. Maybe you built a snowman or you went out sledging? Here are some Winter / Ice themed activities we hope you will enjoy trying.
Paper snowflakes
You will need some paper and scissors. Follow the instructions found here and see if you can make your own snowflakes. This helps develop fine motor skills by using scissors.
Winter words
Think of some words you would associate with winter. How many can you come up with? Some ideas could be:
Cold, snow, weather, hat, scarf, gloves, coat, dark, lights, warm, ice, Christmas…
Are there any others you can think of?
This will develop your child’s language skills. You can find words that sounds the same (rhyme), words that start with the same letter as their name (initial sounds) and you can count how many syllables are in words.
Draw a snowman
Can you design your own snowman? You could use paper and pencils, buttons, glitter, glue…Does the snowman have a hat or a carrot nose?
If it snows again, or if you have enough snow outside, you could build your snowman creation.
Children will develop their mark making skills and their creativity skills.
Snowstorm in a jar
A fun Science experiment where you can create your own snowstorm at home.
You’ll need:
A tall glass or glass jar (an empty coffee)
Baby oil
Food colouring
A small bowl of water
A teaspoon of white paint or a tiny drop of blue food colouring
Blue glitter / sequins
Alka Seltzer tablets
Method:
Pour a cup of baby oil into the glass jar. Add your paint or food colouring to the small bowl of water. Stir until the water changes colour and then add it to your glass jar. Add in a small amount of glitter and sequins.
Break up your Alka Seltzer tablet into small pieces and then drop them into your glass jar. What happens? You should see a snowstorm in the jar.
Your child will be developing their knowledge of size and measure, listening and talking skills and their problem solving and prediction skills.
Make some ice
You could use Tupperware dishes, ice cube trays – anything you can fill with water and store safely in your freezer. Talk to your child and ask them what will happen to the water when you put it in the freezer. Why does this happen? And what happens when you bring it out of the freezer?
You could use food colouring to make different colours of ice. You could also use scents like lavender oil or peppermint oil to get scented ice.
Explore the ice in trays, plates or even in the kitchen sink. How many pieces of ice are there? Order them in biggest to smallest. Stack them on top to build an igloo.
You could experiment to see how to make ice melt the fastest and record your findings – does hot water, cold water or salt make the ice melt the fastest? Maybe a mixture of two will help melt it quicker?
