Monday 22 August 2011

Space Week - Part 2

We had a visit from http://wormseye-view.blogspot.com/ later in the week to join in on the fun!
It's summer holidays at the moment so my nephews Brendan and Kenzie came along too, we had quite a house full!

We found another box to put together a third spaceship....but it actually ended up being Geoff from top year...lol the pair of them do make me laugh. Baby 'R' even climbed in for a ride!



Next we needed to finish making the laminated planets for the window display


Some writing practice for the names!


All finished!! It's a bit hard to see in this picture but we also put up some glow in the dark stars, it looks amazing when the sun has gone down in the evenings, unfortunately all the children have gone home by then so it's just for me!


My new space set was a big hit with everyone, even baby 'R' couldn't wait for her turn to have a play!


Another play with the sensory tray, 'C' used the spaceship arm to pick up the beans, great for fine motor skills!

Next we made some space scenes with card rockets on lollypop sticks!


With a little detour to decorate each other....

hehehe

So that was our space week!  I had so much fun planning all these activities and loved watching the children all really get into it. I'm already planning our my next big theme!!

Friday 19 August 2011

Space Week!! - Part 1

It's was my Birthday week this week, and my partner Georgia has taken the week off work (she works very long days) to be at home with me, unfortunately I was not able to have time off too but I'm planning as much fun as possible with the children so she'll never want to go back to work!

Recently I bought a little 99p book about space and the solar system from a local shop, just because I saw it and thought we didn't really have anything spacey yet! So it was a bit of a surprise when the kids found it and just fell in love with it!
It got to a point in fact that it was comming out everyday and I was being asked questions about the planets and the sun, 'can we go there can we go there?', and was having to sort out squables out about who had it first and whos turn it was!

So following the childrens interests I decided to devote the week to all things SPACE!!

We started off with making some tissue paper laminated planets, 'C' wanted to make the Sun and Earth, and 'I' wanted blues and greens so we made them Neptune and Uranus. These planets became the base to my new window display which was a wok in progress through the week. The children were fascinated watching the sheets go through the laminator and were asking all about how it works!

Next up, was making some of our very own spaceships! I just happened to have a couple of boxes around the house, we drew on the basic spaceship design and then handed them over for the finishing touches!
Once they were all decorated we were ready for a space race around the garden, on your marks....


After that spurt of energy we came back inside to have a look what else there was to do!
I had been getting some ideas together from other blogs on a space sensory tub, mine consists of black eyed beans, marbles, some glow in the dark stars, some pots and scoops for pouring practice, some jigsaw pieces and a globe to have a look at where we are. Theres also a jigsaw book, a 'Pepper Pig' space rocket and the solar system book which started it all off!!
Both 'C' and 'I' had a fantastic time looking through all these bits. 'C' is a bit older and got straight into the jigsaws as he does love a good puzzle, 'I' at just 2 years old was fascinated by the little stars and pots I had put in there and spent ages scooping the beans and digging around.

We finished the day by cooking some 'Planet Cookies' and 'C' spent some time practicing his writing, asking for spacey words which we dot out first. We also had a look on YouTube and found some footage of some real spaceships taking off.

By the end of day one I was very tired and the children were very excited about what I had in mind for the next day!!

Thursday 11 August 2011

cameras...

I always find it quite interesting when one of the children I look after asks for my camera or my phone to take some pictures. I always let him as it's a pretty simple bit of technology and great to get children introduced to IT as one of the areas we have to observe and record their progress.
He'll always bring it back to me if it goes on to a screen he's not sure about, or if I get a message or a call through and it's great insight into seeing the world quite literally through his eyes!

These are a few of his latest snaps...



Monday 1 August 2011

A few days in the garden...

We've been having some lovely weather over the last week so we've been spending as much time as possible in the garden. It's been such a lovely couple of days and just goes to show children don't need expensive toys to keep them entertained, all I provided was a tray of water, some paint brushes and other little bits and bobs....
'I' spent most of the day just painting the path with water, we took turns making swirls and lines and 'colouring-in' the shapes we had made. We explored the different sizes of brushes I had out, we had normal brushes and some foam ones too, making splodges and strokes and then filling the brushes with water and squeesing it out with our fingers.

The next day 'I' big brother 'C' came to play too..
This time we made some 'tracks' down the path and pretended to be trains running around the garden.

Then 'C' picked up the bucket and spade and went over to the 'mud corner' (soon to be my veg bed) and started some digging. I suggested he could make some 'mud-castles' which he found very funny. However his first try the castle collapsed, so we spoke about what I do to the sand when it's too dry and we want to make castles to which 'C' replied "oh yea, we add water!!"
So off he went to find a watering can! It worked much better this time and we had ourselves a very impressive mud-castle!!