This morning, Maureen, who is our outdoor play person just now, tried a really nice writing activity in the garden.  She put out different natural materials: chalk, slate, charcoal, sand, sticks and leaves and invited the children to come and make their names.  It was lovely to watch them trying the different materials as the experience was highly sensory.  Each material had a different texture and some, like the charcoal and the leaves had a special smell.  It not only gave practice in recognising and writing their names, it also was a great chance to talk about the sounds different letters made and a bit of a challenge to use the materials creatively to make letters.  Holly was very clever in combining sticks and chalk to make her name on the slate.  She would have had to look for ages for a circular stick so she improvised. What a smart cookie!

In the afternoon Maureen changed the activity to pattern sequencing.  Recognising, copying and creating simple patterns is part of the Early Level Maths curriculum.  The children loved this too, and the descriptive language about colours, textures etc was excellent.