RECYCLE ♻️ AND RECREATE

 

RECYCLE ♻️ and RECREATE 

Hello boys and girls,  this week it would be lovely to have a look around your house to find materials to make some fun arts and crafts, it is great to use things again especially for arts and crafts,  many household items can be recycled and used 😀 take some photos of your recreations we would be delighted to see you're creativity. 

1 TIN SNOWMAN. Here is a tin can snow man, made from cans and simply painted and decorated,  a great opportunity to chill 😀 

   2.  MINI AQUARIUMS 

Gather some plastic bottles and fill them with water and a few drops of blue food colour or paint,  decorate with seaside shells and 🐟 🐠  to create a miniature aquarium 

                       3. TIN CAN GARDEN DECORATIONS  

How cool are these garden decorations 😍 made from food tin cans and decorated as different insects,  these would be lovely in the garden this spring time. 

4.DIY  BOTTLE BIRD FEEDER 

A DIY Birdfeeder ♥  recycle an old plastic bottle,  with the help of a grown up you will need to make a few holes,  place an old wooden spoon through the holes for the little 🐤 🐦 to sit on. 

Fill up bottle with bird feed and hang from a fence or branch  and watch the birds enjoying eating in your garden. 

5. DIY PLANTERS 

These DIY planters would look really cool in a kitchen or anywhere in your house. Decorate them whatever way you want and place a small indoor plant  or herbs inside! 

6. FLOWERS 💐 

All you need is some toilet roll or kitchen roll holders,  paint and paper so this one is really 👌 

A grown-up can supervise as you cut the top of the holders ,flatten the cut pieces down to make into shape of a flower 🌼 and then paint the flower shape,  dab onto some paper to make beautiful flower prints 

Pancake Tuesday

 

Happy pancake day!

Cooking with kids provides practical experience with many essential skills such as reading, following directions, and measuring. Getting involved in cooking helps your child to develop fine motor skills, eye hand coordination, and even early concepts of math and science. ... Finally, cooking with kids is great family time.  Exposure to scratch cooking helps kids develop a mature palate and a taste for fresh, wholesome ingredients. The earlier kids become accustomed to nutritious foods, the less likely they will acquire a taste for processed foods. Kids are much more likely to eat what they make.

As it Panacake Tuseday, here are a few receipts to cook with your kids at home.

 

 Lion Pancakes For Kids

 

•        2 cups Pancake Mix

•        1 1/3 cup Water

•        20 Mandarin Orange Slices (per pancake)

•        1 Strawberry (halved, per pancake)

•        2 Blueberries (per pancake)

•        Chocolate Syrup

•        Ziploc Bag

•        Non-Stick Cooking Spray

1.     Prepare the pancake batter and mix thoroughly. Heat the frying pan to about 350 degrees and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Pour your pancakes onto the pan and cook following package directions.

2.     Once your pancakes are cooked to your desire, place one pancake in the canter of a plate. Around the pancake place your mandarin oranges to create the mane of the lion. Use the two blueberries for the eyeballs and the strawberry for the nose.

3.     To create the mouth, squeeze a little chocolate syrup into a Ziploc baggie. Make a small snip to the end of the baggie and use draw on the lion's mouth and whiskers.

4.     Serve warm with syrup or whipped cream.

   

Pumpkin Pancakes

   

 

•        2 cups Pancake Mix

•        1 1/3 cup Water

•        1 tbsp Canned Pumpkin

•        1 Strawberry (halved, per pancake)

•        6 Candy Corn (per pancake)

•        2 Chocolate Chips (per pancake)

•        Whipped Cream

•        Non-Stick Cooking Spray (per pancake)

1.     Prepare the pancake batter, add 1 tbsp of canned pumpkin, and mix thoroughly.

2.     Heat a frying pan to about 350 degrees and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Pour your pancakes onto the pan and cook using package directions.

3.     Once your pancakes are cooked to your desire, place one pancake in the center of the plate. Place dollops of whipped cream on the pancake to create the two eyes and the smile.

4.     Use the candy to form the smile into the whipped cream, the strawberry to create the nose, and the chocolate chips to create eyes.

5.     Serve warm with syrup or whipped cream.

 

 

  

The Sunshine Pancake

  

 

•        2 cups Pancake Mix

•        1 1/3 cup Water

•        3 Strawberries (sliced per pancake)

•        6-8 Blueberries (per pancake)

•        2 Chocolate Chips (per pancake)

•        Non-Stick Cooking Spray

1.     Prepare the pancake batter and mix thoroughly. Heat a frying pan to about 350 degrees and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Pour your pancakes onto the griddle or pan and cook using package directions.

2.     While the pancakes are cooking, slice strawberries lengthwise into small, flat, slices.

3.     Once pancakes are cooked, place one pancake on the center of the plate. Place strawberries around the pancake to create the rays of the sun. Use the blueberries to form the smile and the two chocolate chips to create eyes.

4.     Serve warm with syrup or whipped cream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

GP Love is in the air ❤

💕Good morning Boys and Girls Parents/Guardians.💕

This week would have been the final week before our mid-term break. We would have had so much fun this week in school doing lots of Valentine's Day activities making lots of hearts and talking about love and our feelings. 

It's a lovely theme where we talk to the children about what they love 💕 to do what they love to eat ,play and things that make them happy. 

We would have been baking and making cards, and special gifts for people at home.

Its important to the children that they understand the events that take place around them, if the shops were all open the children would be seeing hearts and the colour red all around them just like Halloween or Christmas decorations that would be visible everywhere, so its important to them that we acknowledge these events and help them to understand what they mean.

If we were in school we would do a cute questionnaire with the children some of the answers can be so funny.

Maybe you could ask them these questions and see what they say ,

This is another one to show that we love lots of things around us .We would have loved to do this with the boys and girls.

Poems and Songs

       This is a fun one to do with the kids.

This is a song I found but also an activity cut out a heart and hide it in the room some where and see can the children find it .they always love hide and seek games ,and they love singing, its an American song so you can change the word ponder to wonder.

    Now for the messy fun stuff 

There are lots of fun activities you can do around the valentine's/ love  theme that the children will really enjoy. 

This is just a toilet roll tube that the children can use to do some paint printing, maybe they could make a card for someone ,

You could also have the children try tracing a heart using the sandwich bag from previous weeks.

                           

                       Valentine's Gloup ❤

Make up a batch of Gloup as a messy and fun Valentines Science activity for a great themed  science project it's so much fun to play with.

Gloup is a really interesting play recipe as it has both properties of liquids and solids. You can slowly dip your hand into it like a liquid, but if you squeeze the gloup or punch it, it will feel solid. It's a great sensory valentines day activities for kids! But can be messy .

Materials:

• Cornflour.
• Water
• bowl
• Spoon or Whisk
• Food Coloring (red or pink)
• Heart sweats (to mix in)
• Cookie cutters (optional)

                     Salt dough hearts

                                 💕

Salt dough is really cool because what ever you make you can keep forever and it's very easy to make, only 3 ingredients.

 The candle holder is made by dying the dough first before you bake it so it will be red when cooked and no need to paint ,after you cut out your heart shape (if you dont have a cutter just cut a heart shape from a cereal box and let the children cut around it)

We make this in school all the time, I still have Christmas decorations my adult children made. What ever you make bake in a moderate oven 150 degrees for about an hour and let cool. If you decide to leave the mixture plain the children can paint their creations any colour they like once cooled.

These would be a lovely gift, or hanging from a tree in your garden, use a straw to make the hole.

                  Baking treats🎂

What you need:

• 175g/6oz Self Raising Flour
• 125g/4oz sugar/Caster Sugar
• 125g/4oz Butter or Margarine (half a block)
• 2 Eggs
• 2 tablespoons Cold Water

To decorate

• White chocolate melted 
• You can add red food colouring to the melted chocolate to turn it pink.
• Hundreds and Thousands
• Little heart decorations. 

How to:

1. Ensure oven is fully preheated to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.
2. Next, put bun paper cases into bun tins.
3. Put the flour, sugar, butter/margarine, eggs and water into a bowl. Beat all the ingredients together .
4. Put heaped teaspoons of the mixture into each bun case.
5. Place in the oven on the top shelf and bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown.
6. Cool on a wire tray. When cold, decorate as liked with your favourite toppings.

                             Pancakes🥞

While we are on our break it will also be pancake Tuesday 16th of February. 

All children love pancakes .

Pancakes are delicious and easy for the children make and can be enjoyed with lots of toppings my favourite is chocolate spread and banana, everyone has a favourite take some photos of your pancakes and send them into us we would love to see your creations. 

There's a lovely story on YouTube the runaway pancake. 

https://youtu.be/fnEj6x0nFDI

They will really enjoy it, it's like the ginger bread man.

Hope you all have a great valentine's day and spoil each other💗 enjoy trying some of our activities. 

Kindness and Valentine Preschool activities

💖

Hello boys and girls,  this week is special as we celebrate Valentines day on Sunday the 14th of February! Its nice to think about the people we love and how special they are to us. It's so important that we all show kindness to each other,  we talk a lot about kindness and friendship in preschool and how we try to treat friends and family with kindness ❤ 

It would be lovely for you to make and send a kindness postcard to people or friends,  post it in their letterbox if you don't live far away or if you can't, ask a grown up to send a picture of your lovely kindness postcard .

 

Ask a grown up to draw something like this on some paper and practice Heart tracing,  remember to take your time tracing and then colour in the hearts 💕  this is a really good activity for getting children use to pencil holding and familiar with tracing 

CHOCOLATE APPLES 🍎 😋 

Dip some healthy apples in melted chocolate and cover with sprinkles or fizzy love hearts 💜 🧡 💛 

A grown up will need to supervise with melting the chocolate slowly in a saucepan or in a microwave.

Stir up the melted chocolate and dip the apples into and then sprinkles with a toppings of choice to make a healthier valentines treat 😋 

MARSHMALLOWS CHOCOLATE AND SPRINKLES  !!!

Dip marshmallow in melted chocolate and add sprinkles too 😋 

There's so many different valentine's treats to make are you going to make something special?

Storytime with Natasha, Dear Zoo

Hi boys and girls I hope you have had fun this week with your home activities,  and my Storytime for you all to listen to. 

Tara's Dinosaur Art and Crafts Video

 

GP Spring is here

Good Morning Boys and Girls

Hope you are all in good form and enjoyed doing some of our activities last week , this week is very special because February 1st was the first day of Spring. 

 Spring is a very special season, its the season of new growth, the evenings will start to get brighter the weather will start to get warmer. Although it has been raining a lot lately that's to help all the new plants to grow. The birds will begin to build nests and lay eggs and all the baby farm animals and wild animals will be born. 

The animals that went in to hibernation will begin to wake up. The children learned about hibernation in autumn, they learned about the squirrels and hedgehogs. It's a really exciting time when the cycle of life in the natural world begins to start its annual awakening and one of the most beautiful seasons of the year .

If we were in Pre-School we would be celebrating spring doing lots of fun activities. This week for home activities we will look at life cycles that are relevant to the children but also visible around them. We will look at the life cycle of the plant and butterfly with some fun activities songs and stories. The children always enjoy our spring activities at school, we would usually be planting bulbs and looking after them in the classroom there is always great excitement as they watch to see whose bulb starts to grow first .

Encouraging children to be aware of the world around them is very important as young children are so connected to the natural world, it's where they explore, play and learn, it's also a large part of a young child's life it's where they experience many learning opportunities. In nature, children can run, jump, hop, skip, climb, roll, and shout, which relaxes, and reduces tension, anxiety, and restlessness all beneficial to children's emotional wellbeing and development.

Children love to explore and can spend a long time just enjoying the sensory benefits of being outdoors and connected to nature. 

• Build with and dig in dirt
• Watch worms wriggle through the soil
• Gaze at clouds
• Jump in puddles
• Listen to birds sing
• Collect seeds
• Construct things with twigs ,stones and mud.   

It's also great fun for children where they can explore and just be children and enjoy the freedom to do what ever they choose without restrictions. With spring here hopefully they will begin to get out more and enjoy the outdoors. 

This week we will look at the life cycle of the plant starting with a seed all plants that grow start from a seed ,bulb or with vegetables, carrots ,parsnips they will grow from just there tops where they were attached to the plant ,you can have great fun with these and they grow really quickly .

It's just wet kitchen towel and carrot tops and they grow very quickly.

You can create your own rain Forrest and play with animal figures.

                     

                              🌱   Life cycle of a seed 🌱

This is a wonderful science experiment to do at home you can use apple/orange pips, dried beans, popcorn kernels ,any seeds from fruits.

This is great for children to watch it's also a great introduction to science, all plants need a certain environment to grow and if you remove one they will not grow ,water ,soil and light. If you try this at home as the seed grows it will need to be put in a small amount of soil and it can be planted outside when the weather gets better, 

Theses are two little poems we would use in school to help reinforce the theme of the plant life cycle 

                                      The children will enjoy singing them with you.

                                 🦋    Life cycle of a butterfly 🦋

This is a favourite at playschool, we do so much around this theme ,I miss being with the children and enjoying all the activities that go with this theme.

                               🐛   Caterpillar crafts  🐛

The children can make there own Caterpillar using an egg box and paint or markers and use twigs for his little antenna these are so cute .

This another Caterpillar made from dyed or coloured pegs ,cut a half circle from a cereal box and arrange the coloured pegs around to form a Caterpillar. 

                     

                             🦋Window Painting🦋 

Children love to experiment, draw a butterfly shape and tape it to the outside of the window the child can trace it on the inside and colour it in using markers or let them draw it themselves it will be lovely with the sun shining through and washes off easily. 

                                  🐛Caterpillar stories🐛

You can watch the hungry Caterpillar by Eric Caryle on U-tube it's a lovely animated cartoon and a favourite by all children it explains the life cycle in a lovely engaging way. I've included the link.

https://youtu.be/75NQK-Sm1YY

The children will really enjoy it.

Another lovely story is by twinkl about a Caterpillar whose afraid to become a butterfly called the cautious Caterpillar. 

https://youtu.be/E0PO0QcPxbk

If you did the sandwich bag tracing activity from last week you could have the children trace a flower shape ,just draw a flower shape yourself and pop it in the bag it would be a nice activity to accompany the theme .

Draw a flower shape for children to trace.

When your out point out the daffodils that are blooming at the moment tell the children their flowers that only grow in spring and point out new leaves and buds on trees.

                                  🌺  Flower decoration 🌺

One more cute daffodil inspired activity it's just egg boxes cut in the shape of a flower and coloured using paint ,crayons or markers and threaded on to string to make a lovely hanging decoration. 

Again we would love to see some pics of the kids doing any activities or just having fun.

Enjoy this weeks activities see you next week with some more home based fun and learning. 

BW Dear zoo story and activities

 

Language and Literacy

Hello everyone and I hope you are all keeping well! This week I have chosen the lovely book Dear zoo by Rod Campbell as a learning theme and some activities to go along with the story. 

In preschool we love to use books to build on learning and as an opportunity to build language and knowledge, lots of activities can be done based on one story and offers extended learning in many areas.

First I have attached a you tube video of Dear zoo for all the boys and girl's to look at below 

https://youtu.be/ZqGYWRHOV6E (Link to the story )

After you have listened to the lovely story you can do some nice activities based on the story 😀

1. Draw the animals from the story try to remember what animals were in the story, cut them out and colour them in,  talk about where the animals come from and the food they like , their size and sounds , a great opportunity to introduce some new vocabulary and build literacy and language. 

2. Collect stones and make story stones by drawing each animal on a stone and try retelling the story to a grown up,  this is so much fun and you can do many stories this way, this is a great way to build on literacy skills and drawing on stones helps build hand eye coordination too!

3. Maybe you have some toy animals at home, see how many you can collect from the story! If you don't have them all don't worry,  instead make the ones you don't have with some playdough!

Have fun and as always it's important to do your best, if you want why not send some pictures of your animal creations by PM ! I would love to see some of your beautiful creations!

Natasha and Team