Category Archives: Sensory Play

Fine motor skills, Imaginary Play, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

Construction and Ice Creations

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Creative Skills in Construction Corner
The children have been spending lots of time in Construction Corner, trying out different types of material, like bricks, wood, bamboo and crates, to design and build their own structures.

Science Investigations: Making Ice Eggs
At the water table one day, the children were role playing together and inventing pretend ice. So later they were invited to try making some real ice to play with. They carefully filled up balloons with water and took them to the freezer. They were very excited to handle and describe their giant ice eggs.



“It’s so shiny…”   “It looks like a diamond inside.”  “It’s going to hatch!”
Indoors the ice balls were taking a long time to melt, so the children eagerly tried taking them outdoors into the sunshine and then tested out pouring on warm water to speed up the process.


“It’s melting now…”

Creative Arts, Eco Learning, Fine motor skills, Gardening, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Imaginary Play, Literacy, Natural World, Numeracy & Mathematics, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

Science Adventures: Space and Planting

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The Wonders of Space

The children in Pink and Yellow groups have recently showed an interest in learning about Space, so they have been designing rockets and reading the story of Little Moon in the Story Box to find out more about planets and black holes…


Exploring the Story Box and experimenting with different sphere shapes


Rocket Number Games and Play Dough Aliens


Creating Rocket Designs and Junk Modelling

We also tried making some paper mâché planets by mixing up a paste of water and flour, dipping in newspaper strips and tissue paper, then wrapping them around balloons.

“I think that one looks like our planet – Earth.”
“This one looks like Mars and that one is the sun.”
“Rover is on Mars.”
“Craters are on the moon.”
Earth has “more water” than land.
“That’s a gas giant!”

The children also began some other experiments with balloons and discovered static electricity when they found they could rub the balloons and make them stick to the walls.

Planting and Growing

Mrs McInnes has been showing the children how to plant grass seeds to make Grass Heads, and they have been learning what a plant needs to grow.

We have been carefully watering the plants for 2 weeks and look how quickly the grassy hair grew!


Time for a hair cut!

Some other outdoor fun in the sun!


 

Creative Arts, Culture & Traditions, Eco Learning, Fine motor skills, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Imaginary Play, Mark Making, Natural World, Science, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

Exploring Eggs and Nests 🐣

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Plenty of eggs exploration has been going on this week…
The children have been learning about how birds are making nests at this time of year and will soon be laying eggs. They have been creating their own clay eggs and various Easter designs.

Eggs Role Play and Exploring  Properties & Materials
“This is Bird World!”
“This egg is light and this one’s very heavy.”
“It’s made of stone.” “This one’s made of rock.”
“This one rattles.” “That’s metal.”
“That’s a rooster. Don’t put him in the pond – roosters can’t swim, but ducks can swim ‘cos they’re waterproof.”

“These are the baby birds saying “We’re hungry!”“


Birds & Block Play:
“Look, we’ve built this for them. This is the tree bird (green), this is the water bird (blue) and this is the lava bird (orange).”

Later we made birds’ nests using twigs, ivy, moss, fern, leaves and feathers. Great snipping and fine motor skills!

“I like the smell of that” (ferns)
“Maybe we should go outside and put these out for the birds. It should be up a tree so we need a ladder. We need feathers as well…”

Making Eggs with Clay Modelling

Painting the Clay Eggs

Printing Marbled Eggs
The children squeezed shaving foam, then added marbling inks to create a marbled pattern on egg shapes.


Designing individual Easter Cards


Eggs exploration and squidgy colour gel beads in the water tray


 More Nest-making and an Egg matching game. 

Have a very Happy Easter and Spring Break, everyone!

 

 

Fine motor skills, Fun, Learning at home, Mark Making, Science, Sensory Play, Videos with ELCC Staff

Slimy, Bumpy, Sticky Sensory!

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If you fancy some sensory & science exploration at home, why not try out one of these fun ideas from Miss Hampton, Miss MacFarlane, Miss Henderson, Mrs Krivickiene & Mrs McInnes!
1. MAKING GLOOP with Miss Hampton:
One way we can explore our senses is by making gloop. You’ll need:
2 x cups of cornflour
1 x cup of water
2 drops of food colouring (optional)
In this video Miss Hampton demonstrates what to do:


How does the gloop feel? Is it a solid or a liquid?
The great thing about gloop is it can be both. There are lots of ways to explore gloop. Did you know that cornflour is made of lots of long stringy particles and when the water is added they don’t dissolve, they just spread out? When you roll it in your hands the particles join together and it becomes solid, but if you hold it up and let it dribble it becomes a liquid.


2. MAKING PLAY SNOW with Miss Henderson:
If your fingers are getting cold from the snow outside you could make some non-melting play snow of your own.
All you will need is:
 Cornstarch
Hair Conditioner (white conditioner works best)

Mix the ingredients together to form a smooth dough. If it’s too sticky, add more cornstarch. If it’s too crumbly add more conditioner. Think about the textures and the smells as you make the dough. Is it cold or warm? Is it smooth or sticky? Hard or soft? Has the conditioner made it smell like coconut, fruit or flowers?
Another way to explore our senses and science is:
3. MAKING SNOW SLIME with Miss MacFarlane
For this you will need:
1 cup of white glue
2 cups of shaving foam cream
1/2 tbsp of baking soda
1 table spoon of contact lens solution (it must contain boric acid!) 

Put the cup of white glue in a bowl and mix in the shaving cream, then stir until well combined. Add in the baking soda and stir. Slowly add 1 tablespoon of contact lens solution until a slime has formed. Once the glue starts sticking to the spoon that’s when you knead it with your hands until you are happy with the consistency!
And there you have made your own snow slime!
Use your senses to explore the slime:
What words can you use to describe how the slime feels?
Can you think of any words to describe its smell?
Can you think of words to describe how it looks?
Does it make any sounds?   Why don’t you use different materials & tools to investigate what different sounds it makes? Go around your house and find different things to poke your slime with!

 


4. Make a SENSORY WRITING PLATE  like Mrs Krivickiene for practising your letter/number writing and at the same time explore your sense of touch.
You’ll just need a plate, any dry grains you have in your cupboard (rice, lentils, couscous, etc). Feel the grains and then write or draw in them with your finger or any kind of stick.
(If you want to avoid too much hoovering afterwards, you can do it outside, or cover the plate in cling film first.)

5. Mrs Krivickiene has  also been making a SENSORY JAR, using water, oil and a drop of food colouring. 

This is a great experience if you want to have a mindful break and look at something extremely mesmerising. Besides, there is true science behind it. Water and oil have different molecule structure (molecules are the tiny building blocks of everything you see around.) This means that water and oil won’t mix.

First,  pour some baby oil into a glass  jar or bottle. Then add some water coloured with a little food dye and close the lid tightly. Watch the effects as you gently tip and jiggle you jar…

6. As if that wasn’t all enough, in Google Classrooms this week you can also watch Mrs McInnes use all of her 5 senses as she dissects and investigates an onion!

Fine motor skills, Health & Wellbeing, Learning at home, Mark Making, Natural World, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

The Wonder of Snow ❄️

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Hello everyone,
This week we are focusing on Sensory Play and Fine Motor Skills.
We have been given a free gift of one of the best sensory experiences ever – SNOW – and lots of it!

What have you been doing with this sparkly new toy?

If you are building snow people or an igloo, or rolling giant snowballs or sledging, these are all great for your gross motor skills like strength and co-ordination, as well as your creativity. Drawing or writing your name in snow is also really good for your fine motor skills.

And we can use all our 5 Senses to enjoy the wonders of snow.
For example can you –
– See the snow sparkling in sunlight, like millions of tiny diamonds?
– Hear the “crunch crunch” sound as you stomp through the snow?
– Feel snow with your hands, feet, cheeks?
– Smell the freshness in the air?
– Catch a snowflake on your tongue – how  does it Taste?
What do you notice about the snow?
Snow has many different forms:
When is falls, is it light or heavy?
What about when it is rolled into a giant snowball?
And when it melts, what is it like then?
What colour are snow shadows?

Have fun investigating and playing in the snow!

 

Creative Arts, Eco Learning, Fine motor skills, Learning at home, Natural World, Sensory Play, Social Subjects, Videos with ELCC Staff

Let’s Get Crafty!

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Here are a few ideas of fun ways to get creative, using some household objects you may have lying around:

PASTA ART with Miss Hampton
“Today I felt creative, so I thought I’d share my idea to see if any of you wanted to be a creative designer. All you need is pasta! I have attached some of my creations, plus a masterpiece I found online, to inspire your creative juices. There are lots of ways you can be creative with your pasta. I used a glue and some colouring pens to make a flower, but don’t worry if you don’t have these things because the great thing about not using glue is that you can make something different every time by rearranging the pasta into different patterns or shapes.”


Make a flower, a boat, a face… whatever you can think of!

PRINTING with STRING and FOIL with Mrs MacLeod
☀️ 🌤 🌦 🌧 🌨 ❄️ ☃️
“We’ve  had all sorts of weather recently – rain, snow, ice, frost, sleet, sunshine and rain. Today I tried printing some weather pictures with different objects. Perhaps you would like to try printing patterns too. These are some items you could use to print with: corks, fruit or vegetables cut in half (ask an adult to help cut), string, old cardboard, tin foil, cotton buds – plus some paint.

Watch these quick videos if you’d like to see how to try foil printing and string printing.

You can use the same technique, wrapping string around a square of card then painting  it blue to print rain next to your sunshine. You might also use a cork, dipped in white paint, or cotton wool balls or buds to print snow falling.

Have fun getting crafty!

 

 

Eco Learning, Health & Wellbeing, Learning at home, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play

Amazing Ice

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We all have five senses in our bodies. Do you know what they are all for?

You can find out more about your senses in this video: https://youtu.be/XUMiPK6LZBI

Mrs Krivickiene did something very interesting at the weekend, using her senses – Forest Bathing!

“I went on a mindful walk in the woods. On a mindful walk, I try to use all my senses and pay attention to everything I can see, hear and feel. I use my eyes to notice the colours, spot an animal or a bird. I use my sense of touch to feel the texture and temperature. I use my ears to listen to the sounds of the wood and then try to guess what makes it and if it is a close or a distant sound. And I use my nose to smell. There is even a special name for mindful walking in the woods – it’s called “forest bathing”. Just like having a bath makes your body clean, forest bathing helps to release tension and feel calm.

So yesterday, on my mindful walk I found some pretty amazing staff that I would really like to share with you. I spotted hair ice, that is a rather rare phenomenon that can only be found on dead wood. This hair-like shape of ice is made by a special kind of fungus. Isn’t it amazing that such a thing as fungus can make its own style of ice!
It felt cold just like any ice but it was very delicate and was breaking down easily.  What do you think it looks like? I hope you will try “forest bathing” next time you are on your walk and it will help you to discover something new and amazing that could be shared with all of us.”

Have you seen any different types of ice whilst outside? Sometimes it makes wavy lines, sometimes circle patterns, sometimes it looks like gemstones. Sometimes it is thick, sometimes thin and fragile. Isn’t ice amazing?
Eco Learning, Learning at home, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play, Videos with ELCC Staff

Bird of the Day: Robin

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Friday’s Bird is the cheeky Robin.
The Robin is many people’s favourite with its bright red tummy.
Robins are very friendly and will often come up really close to us. They sometimes follows gardeners around because when gardeners dig in the soil, they might turn up worms which Robin will then fly down and eat.
Robins’ eggs are a creamy colour with reddish speckles.
They have many different songs and they sing for most of the year. Listen to this one singing a Winter song in a tree last week:
Bird Quiz: Let’s see if you can remember the names of the 6 birds we have looked at over the week. See if you can point to each one and say their name:
How many did you get right?
Making Bird Food 

On Google Classrooms you can find a video of Mrs MacLeod showing you how to make fat balls to hang out for birds.
And here’s a great idea from Mrs Marshall of how to make bird food, using cereal:

Making a bird feeder is a great way to help out our feathered friends in wintertime. All you need is pipe cleaners/string, Cheerios/Hoops cereal, and something to hang your bird feeder with such as ribbon. Start by threading Cheerios/Hoops onto pipe cleaners/string – a  great fun fine motor skills challenge (you may enjoy munching some while you thread!). Leave space at either end to twist the ends together or tie together to ‘seal’ the ends. Add a ribbon or string for hanging and your bird feeder is done. Hang and enjoy watching the birds enjoy their snack! Remember to hang them in a safe place for visiting birds, avoid low spaces where they are within a cat’s reach, and avoid open and noisy areas.

The Big Garden Bird Watch

If you are taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch this weekend, have fun and we hope you spot something.
People who watch birds have a big long name – Ornithologist.
Sometimes they use tools like binoculars to help them spot birds. You could also take a bird book when birdwatching to help you identify birds, and perhaps some seed or raisins to attract the birds.
But really the only tools you need to watch birds are these –

– Eyes and Ears. So keep looking and listening and you can be a Young Ornithologist!

 

Group Blue, Group Green, Numeracy & Mathematics, Sensory Play, Uncategorised

Firework Fun with Green and Blue

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This week the Green and Blue group have been very excited about Guy Fawkes night which has inspired the children to make a range of beautiful art work.

We dipped string in to paint and moved it across the paper to create a firework effect.

The children were developing their fine motor skills while using the PVA glue to create firework patterns. The colourful glitter made the pictures shine bright just like the fireworks we saw on November 5th!

Look at our finished display!

We used food colouring to make a variety of vibrant water beads. We really enjoyed the sensory aspect of this activity as well as pouring and filling them in the water tray.

Maths

Our focus in maths has been pattern.  The Green and Blues created repeating patterns using the paint and stampers.

We were also taking turns at maths games on the board to finish the sequence.

Creative Arts, Fun, Group Purple, Health & Wellbeing, Loose Parts, Mark Making, Numeracy & Mathematics, Sensory Play

Purple Group Adventures

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The Purple Group have settled back into Nursery life really well.  We have been establishing old and new friendships, following routines and learning lots of exciting things.

We have been spending a  lot of time outdoors, accessing all aspects of the curriculum.

We love getting our wet suits on and exploring in the rain.

We have been exploring symmetry through a variety of different experiences.  The children  created butterflies and used transient art to develop their awareness of symmetry in their local environment.

Making tea in the water tray stimulated our senses. We have enjoyed taking part in a lot of different sensory activities across the playroom and outdoors.