Did you know that research shows children learn things best through repeated exposure over time? They also learn best through playful, hands on learning where they can touch and manipulate and create meaningful connections within their own real life worlds.
Each week we create a new curriculum that weaves a rich tapestry of invitations into learning experiences that will build on the foundation of knowledge and skills your child is developing within themselves.
We have very carefully and thoughtfully created learning experiences that build on one another and that repeat concepts in different ways (repetition is key), but that are also playful and novel, so your child’s developing brain continues to make connections between everything they are taking in.
This week we are learning all about frogs, their life cycle, the colour green, having fun with shapes and are enjoying some early maths concepts too!
Wishing everyone a wonderful week of learning and fun together.
Learning points: introducing the concepts for the week and the letter Ff. Instilling a love of books and reading; the foundation of language and literacy development.
Learning points: help children to say the sound “f”, recognise the phonetic sound “f” in different words and help older children to recognise the visual formation of the letter “f”.
Do you know frog starts with the letter “f” and fire fighter? What other words begin with “f”. Let’s explore together….
Fill the bottom of a tray with sand/flour/salt or even shaving cream. Give your child the visual letter card to copy and invite them to draw it in the tray with their finger.
Benefits include: Development of fine motor skills, hand eye co-ordination, development of the sense of touch, letter recognition and letter formation.
Every child is different, but we recommend introducing tactile letter formation activities such as these around 4 years of age. After your child has mastered shapes.
All children are different, but generally at around 18 months of age they are able to grasp the idea of different colours. We should use colours in our vocabulary daily to reinforce the concept… “Look at the red flower”, “Please pass me the blue crayon”, etc.
At around 3 years of age your child should be able to start naming some colours. Don’t worry if it takes a while for your child to start proficiently naming all of the colours correctly. Repetition is key and both colour and shape recognition should be infused in our daily living.
This week we are exploring the colour green. Leaves are green, grass is green…frogs are green. What other things are green?
Join teacher Inger as she explores the colour green and sings a fun song all about a little green frog.
Did you know…… learning to recognise different shapes is a precursor to identifying written letters and numbers? After all, the written symbols we use for letters and numbers are really just shapes.
Shapes can take longer to learn than colours, but by age 3 children should generally be able to name some simple shapes (e.g. circle, square, triangle).
The more we infuse this kind of learning into our daily living, the easier it will be for our children to learn these concepts.
So far this term we have reviewed: circle, crescent, triangle and oval shapes. This week we are adding squares to the mix!
We have created some fun shape printables to go with our frog theme this week…. Have fun exploring circles, triangles and squares by following the froggy footprints with these original Watering Whole printables.
Print out the froggy footprint shapes. Invite your child to make the froggy footprints sticky with some glue. Sprinkle some sand onto the sticky foot prints to make them sandy and sticky! Once dry invite your child to trace the different shapes with their fingers.
Benefits include: Shape recognition, developing pre-reading and pre-writing skills. Developing hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, muscle control, and muscle memory.
Five little speckled frogs sat on a speckled log Eating the most delicious bugs — YUM YUM! One jumped into the pool, where it was nice and cool Then there were four green, speckled frogs. Ribbit! Ribbit!
Did you know…..? Counting rhymes like this one help to develop a solid foundation in early maths skills such as counting, addition, subtraction and one-to-one correspondence skills which involve counting each object in a set only once, with one touch per object.
When children have opportunities to touch and manipulate objects as they learn, they will create meaningful connections in their brains that stick…Let’s have some hands on learning fun by creating some of our own speckled frogs. Manipulating dough is also absolutely wonderful for working all the muscles in your child’s hands and fingers important for writing skills later on.
Materials needed:
1 Cup Plain Flour ½ Cup Salt 2 Teaspoons Cream of Tartar 1 Tablespoon Oil 1 Cup warm water 2 Tablespoons Green Food Colouring ¼ Cup red lentils
1.Pour all dry ingredients, flour, salt and cream of tartar together in a saucepan. 2.Add water, oil and food colouring to dry ingredients. 3.Whisk before heating to remove any lumps. 4.Cook over medium heat, constantly stirring until it becomes a thick blob. 5.Then turn out onto a clean surface and knead into a smooth ball. Be careful the play dough will be very hot! Use a little bit of flour if the play dough is sticky. 6.When the play dough has cooled, gradually fold and knead in the yellow split peas/lentils 7.Store in a plastic zip lock bag or air tight container.
Now create your scene. We painted a brown paper towel roll as our log and we used the blue fishy painting from our week 4 curriculum as our pond!
Mold your frogs into little balls and even add googly eyes if you have some! Have fun playing, singing and counting with your child as you explore together.
Learning about life cycles is an important part of any early childhood curriculum. It helps children to better understand the world around them and start to understand important life concepts such as birth, growth, change and eventually death.
Frogs are a wonderful way to start to teach the concept of the life cycle and the wonder of change through metamorphosis.
Starting as an egg in the water, then hatching into a tiny tadpole, sprouting legs, and turning into a frog that will in turn lay more eggs starting the cycle all over again.
Let’s explore a frog’s life cycle together by utilising the resources below:
Today we are making something green that’s also packed with vitamin C! Getting our children to eat a wide array of vegetables is not always an easy task, but these crispy courgettes may just do the trick!
When children help to prepare and cook food themselves, they are also much more likely to taste the food too.
Ingredients: 3 Large Courgettes 1 cup flour 2 beaten eggs mixed with ¼ cup milk 2 cups of fine dry breadcrumbs mixed with 50g of grated cheese such as parmesan ½ cup of olive oil
Directions: Slice the courgette in to thick diagonal slices Toss in the flour Dip in the egg mixture Coat in the breadcrumbs, cheese mix Fry in the olive oil (this is the grown-up part)
Children need to experience a sense of belonging in order to form a secure identity and sense of self. This begins with knowing, and being proud of, where they come from and having respect for all people regardless of their differences.
At Watering Whole we have been developing a wonderful library of books to support EQ over the years and for this EQ lesson please join teacher Linda as she shares one of these beautiful books called “All the Colours of the Earth”
