Activities at home


Home learning bags, books, Bottle books and Chattersacks are available to borrow from the Preschool Free of Charge.

We send home a learning through play pack with your child each half term with your child’s next steps and an a suggestion of an activity you can do with your child to encourage this next step. There is also a comment box in there so you can tell us how the activity went which is really helpful to your keyworker to know.

 There are lots of lovely activities to do with your child on this Oxford Owl link to help your child's learning and development as well as having fun together.  

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/kids-activities/

This is a new website .gov website that has some lovely activities to do at home from birth to five.

https://hungrylittleminds.campaign.gov.uk/

Gloop Floor Activity

Equipment needed: corn flour, water, food colouring and rice.
Discover mark making by using gloop, mix corn flour and water together to make a sticky mixture. Let Children play with it then add food colouring to change colour and rice to add texture. Children can touch and make marks with the gloop. This is messy but simple exercise for babies as well. At Murrow pre-school we see children copying each other’s movements and exploration while at the same time developing their own.
This activity will help babies and children to respond to what they see, smell touch and feel.

Everyday Mathematics

Equipment needed: everyday objects

Use everyday activities to encourage children to count and calculate. Count stairs when going up or down them, count how many cups are needed for teatime, count how many girls for tea and how many boys.

Look at door numbers when out and about. Talk about numbers on remote controls and make a game of pressing the buttons.

This activity will help children to notice changes in groupings of objects, working towards early mathematical skills

Children don’t get the counting right straight away, but encouragement goes along way in helping them associate with quantities. We even see some of the very young children following the counting rhyme, pitch and tone by trying to copy some of the older children.

We have resources that have more ideas on how to encourage this area of learning. Please just ask if you would like to know more

Fruit Tasting Session

Equipment needed: melon, lemon, strawberries, kiwi, orange, cover for eyes, knife (keep this out of reach of the child), bowls, paper and pens.
Show children all the fruits and talk about colour and texture. Chop the fruit up and cover your child’s eyes. Let them taste the fruits and guess by tasting, touching and smelling what each fruit is. At the end of the activity draw a picture of your favourite fruit. Parents tell us their children encourage them to be involved in the activity and often want to cover their eyes up which makes it more of a game.
This activity will help children to respond to what they see, hear, smell, touch and feel.
Seek to make sense of what they see, hear, smell, touch and feel.
Talk about personal intentions, describing what they were trying to do.

Chatter sacks

We have 6 themed based bags available to borrow that will help your child's speech and language development. We also have extension sheets to go with these bags to encourage communication skills to develop even further.

Please just ask if you would like to borrow one. There is no charge for this resource.

Murrow Pre-School has an association with Book Start and each year every child receives a bag with several books at no cost to the parent, to encourage bed time reading and stories to be read at home.

Home Learning Bags

These boxes contain simple resources that will sustain your child's attention span in the home environment while also aiding their learning and development.