Hungry Caterpillar Literacy and Numeracy

One of the little ones that I childmind loves the story of the Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I found these printables and knew they were just perfect for a couple of extension activities. We read the story together and picked out the appropriate pieces as we went, laying them out in order (see above).

The set also contains caterpillars of increasing sizes and we ordered these using the language of bigger/smaller and biggest/smallest. The little ones have been exploring opposites and comparisons for a few weeks now and this fitted perfectly.

I did find lots of more complicate ideas on line that really sound wonderful but I have learned that less is often more and that a concept is more completely understood when it is simple. I store the cutouts in a plastic pocket along with the book and keep it in the book cart to be used when the children want it.

Introducing Elmer (ish)!!!!

My littlest girl spent the night being sick so I had to cancel my mindees today. Although we're both tired, we've had a lovely day at home together just the three of us. I had wondered what we'd do but after we played this Elmer colours bingo (see it on the middle shelf of the book cart behind Faith!) it just flowed that we made this paper Elmer from scrunched up newspaper and paper packing tape that needs to be wetted on one side to activate the glue. It isn't going to be as durable as paper mache but it's less messy and faster. He is getting plenty of love already and he isn't even painted yet (that's on tomorrow's flight plan!). Just a note about the bingo game....... it comes with the colours written in words to match to the colours but I printed out extra sheets of the cards and cut the colours out to match colours to colours for my non-readers. I made this last night for one of my little mindees who is really into matching games at the moment..... she can try it out on Monday!!

We don't actually have any Elmer books...... I think a library trip tomorrow is in order!

Introducing Incy Wincy's Wives.....

We had a very wet walk home from the children's centre last week and one of the children began to sing 'Incy Wincy spider'..... at the second verse I chimed in with a silly ending and set the tone for the rest of the walk home!! Poor Incy was subjected to more and more ridiculous situations with a good dose of 'toilet humour' thrown in I'm afraid (and not all of it from the children!!).  We were in fits of giggles all the way.... I just love to hear a group of children giggling uncontrollably, it's so infectious!  It probably took us longer to walk because of the silliness but it certainly seemed a short walk! The children were brilliant at rhyming though! 

After we had shed wet coats and shoes and dried off a bit, we sat down to make some spiders for ourselves.... I accidentally erased the 'in the making' pictures, but we made them from sections of egg box with eight holes pierced round the base and lengths of pipe cleaner pushed in and folded inside to keep them in place.  Once legs were in we added red glitter to black paint and painted them all over.  Whilst they dried we made a web for them by stringing wool around a hoop and looping it backwards and forwards. 

The children decided that their spiders were called 'Wetsy Betsy' instead of Incy Wincy!!

Find some more spider activities linked to through this post

A Singing Sack!

The nursery rhyme sack has had lots of use this week.  The older children are so used to using it now that they organise the toddlers with floor mats to sit on and then lead the singing session, making sure that the bag is passed around and every child gets a turn to choose something!

In the bag there is:

• A pig (this little pig went to market)
• A number 7 (7 men went to St Ives)
• A teddy (round and round the garden)
• A cow (Hey diddle diddle)
• A boat (row row)
• A fish (one, two, three, four five)
• A green bottle (ten green bottles)
• An egg (humpty dumpty)
• A cotton reel (wind the bobbin up)
• A duck (five little ducks)
• A star (twinkle twinkle)
• A mouse (hickory dickory dock)
• A sheep (baa baa black sheep)
• A shell (Mary Mary quite contrary)
• A spider (incy wincy)

Skills for early Writing (part one)

On Saturday I went to a seminar about literacy in the Montessori setting.  I was struck by the large number of skills that a child needs to have developed in order to write successfully.  Generally across early years settings there seems to be a lot of focus on mark-making and 'emergent writing' with little consideration given to preparing the child to be able to do those things!  If a child is pushed to write before they are fully prepared and developmentally ready then there can be long term effects that actually hamper the child's efforts to write.  These effects take the form of 'bad habits' that have become ingrained such as a distorted pencil hold or backwards formation of letters.  So what are the attributes that a child needs to develop?

• Tripod grip - strength in fingers and hand needs to develop, alongside good control over fine-motor movements in order to hold a pencil and write.
• Lightness of touch - needed to avoid pressing so hard that pencils break and paper becomes gouged.
• Flexibility of wrist and hand - needed for continuous fluid writing.
• Hand-eye co-ordination - this is how the hand responds to what the eye sees, controlled by the brain, and will aid in controlling a pencil to form letters.
• Memory of shapes - the mind is almost like play dough, shapes leave an imprint upon it making a lasting memory.  This is why correct letter formation from the outset is so important, and why leaving out letter tracing activities can be counter-productive for young children.
• Visual discrimination - recognising the difference and similarities between things; this will help to tell apart letters such as b and d.
• Self-esteem - A child valuing him or herself and being valued by others around him or her will feel confident enough to give things a go that are new or a little difficult.
• Concentration - this is a skill that needs to have developed in order for children to be able to focus for a long enough time to learn letter shapes and their sounds.
• Sequencing - knowing what becomes at the beginning, middle and end.  it provides a structure that the child will use as a foundation to build grammar upon.

All of these skills are equally as important as each other and when taken all together provide a mighty looking list of skills that we can support very young children to develop in order that they may have a good chance of beginning to write successfully when they are ready.  In part two I will look at activities that can support each of the skills, both shop-bought and home-made.

Writing to Penpals

This is my daughter concentrating on writing a letter to respond to our penpals at 'The Playhouse', set up through the childmindinghelp forum.  We are really enjoying corresponding with them and it is great on so many levels because letter writing is dying out somewhat these days, yet it remains so special to receive a handwritten letter.  If you don't want to write to penpals, you could encourage children to wriet to their parents, or grandparents (especially lovely if they live far away and don't see their grandchild often!)

• PSED - dispositions and attitudes as the children get excited about receiving mail and then replying; making relationships as they work on a reply together and working at making a relationship through writing to new friends; sense of community as they learn about others and how others live and what they like to do.
• CLL - language for communication, linking sounds and letters, reading and writing.
• PSRN - handling money to buy the stamp we need
• KUW - Time as they wait for a reply and think about what others are doing in other places; communities as they become more interested in what people in different palces are doing; talking about how the post works (a bit of history about how post used to work)
• PD - fine motor control drawing pictures and writing words to their friends; using equipment and materials by folding the paper to go in the envelope.
• CD - make a postbox together to add in to role play.

Some other ideas I have tried are to find writing paper that ties in with anything that the children are interested in.... these are quite simple to find through searching google.  We have started a scrap book to keep the letters in and have decorated the front with these realistic stamps.

if there are any readers who would like to team up with other settings to exchange letters, please e-mail me at littleblossomschildminding@googlemail.com and I will try to pair you up!

Curly Cursive Writing!

This is a subject close to my heart... a strange topic maybe but my daughter didn't get along with print so we tried cursive and she loves it.  Cursive is 'old style' lettering that is curly and has a flick to lead into it and a flick to lead out of it.  All children will learn a version of it eventually, when they need to join up their handwriting, but most schools teach print to begin with.  Print is the type of lettering that you will see in books, newspapers etc.  The problem my daughter had with print is that all of the letters start in different places, consider 's' and 'e' and 'l', they all begin at a different place, with cursive, this doesn't happen, as all letters begin at the bottom left, with a lead-in stroke to the letter.  This particularly helps when children get muddled up with 'b' and 'd' and 'p'!  Cursive also supports children to form the letters properly as they are less likely to draw a ball and a stick for 'p' for example as they understand that it must flow from the left, so bad habits are less likely to be picked up. 

Lots of schools are beginning to go back to teaching cursive as a starting point, and this may affect you as  a childminder if you find yourself supporting a child with homework that is in cursive, or looking after them in the holidays.  Whilst it is accepted that children who learn letters in cursive usually have no problem in reading in print, it is great to be able to meet the needs of all children by differentiating what you do.  I searched high and low for cursive resources for two years and then I found this site which is well worth a read as it details soooo eloquently all the best bits about cursive!!!! I am biased I know, but my point is that if you care for children whose school teach cursive (even if those children have yet to begin nursery and you know that they will be going there, you can use one of the fonts from this site to produce titles, captions for paintings, headers for your displays, name tags for the child's coat peg and so much more)  The fonts are so affordable and make individualising your planning so easy that it is well worth writing off against tax!!

There will be more to come from this talented lady, as I will hopefully be interviewing her soon!!