Activity for children 0-2 years old.
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 babies play with it then add food colouring to change colour and rice to add texture. Babies can touch and make marks with the gloop. This is messy but simple exercise to see how your baby really does want to explore their environment. At The Red House, we see children copying each other’s movements and exploration while at the same time developing their own.
This activity will help babies to respond to what they see, smell touch and feel.
Activity for children 2-5 years old.
Equipment needed: magazines, papers, card, scissors and glue.
Use magazines, papers to cut out pictures and writing to create a collage picture. Glue your cut outs onto the card. Talk about shape and size during this activity. It really is amazing to see the pride children take when creating their collages. If another member of staff passes a room and asks what they are doing we often see a whole table of individuals wanting to show off their work. Friends talk to each other about what they are making and it is fun to see them copying each other for example if one of them makes a triangle they all want to!
This activity will help develop their skills by using one – handed tools and equipment, helps with physical development and creativity.
Understand that tools have to be used safely.
Practise and develop what they can do.
Activity for children 0-2 years old.
Equipment needed: paint, card and a pen.
Paint babies hands and feet and watch them explore them. Babies will reach out to touch their hands and feet. Use a piece of card to print baby’s hands and feet on as a reminder of your activity. This is a popular activity at the Red House and visiting parents often tell us how cute the hand and feet prints are on our collages. We have seen babies crawling to their painted handprints which are blue tacked to the wall, offering their hand up to match the print they have made. This really shows how they are developing and I am sure you will take pleasure from observing this yourselves.
This activity will help your baby to watch and explore hands and feet and works towards their physical development.
Activity for children 0-2 years old.
Equipment needed: small bricks, containers
Play with bricks talking about colours and build towers for babies to knock over. Encourage babies to build towers themselves. Use containers to put bricks in and out.
This activity will help children learn by observation about actions and their effects.
Create interest in pushing and pulling things, and begin to build structures.
In this activity children are starting to build up knowledge and understanding of the world.
Activity for children 0-5 years old.
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.
This activity will help children to notice changes in groupings of objects, working towards helping with problem solving, reasoning and numeracy.
Say some counting names randomly.
Use own methods to work out a problem.
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.
Activity for children 2-5 years old.
Equipment needed: chair, empty shampoo and conditioner bottles, towels, brushes, mirror hairdryer, paper, pens and telephone.
Create a role play area as hairdressers, book appointments and write them into a book taking turns, then wash each others hair and style. Talk about different colours cuts etc.
This activity will help children use language as a powerful means of widening contacts, sharing feeling, experiences and thoughts.
Know information can be relayed in the form of print.
Examine the marks they make and make.
Taking turns with you being the customer and hairdresser with you child is exactly what they do with their friends at the Red House. You won’t be able to help smiling when they tell you you’re doing it wrong!
All of this is helping with communication, language and literacy.
Activity for children 0-2 years old.
Equipment needed: none needed for this activity
We all finding singing fun at the Red House. Of course we sing lots of nursery rhymes, however we also find children asking to sing parts of songs they’ve heard on the radio at home or in the car.
Sing songs and talk about the body eyes, nose, and mouth etc. Point to facial features encouraging babies to point to theirs too. Song ideas include row, row, row your boat, this little piggy and round and round the garden.
This activity will help babies to make sounds with their voices in social interaction.
Understand simple meanings conveyed in speech.
Listen to familiar sounds, words or finger plays.
In singing songs we are helping children with communication, language and literacy.
Activity for children 0-5 years old.
Equipment needed: mirrors, pencil crayons and paper.
Sit with your child and talk about different features of your bodies, use the mirrors to explain about different features and expressions we use. Talk about how you feel and ask your child how they feel, pull different faces and say what makes you happy, sad, excited, angry, cry, laugh etc. Finish activity by drawing a picture of how you feel.
Help them to show their particular characteristics, preferences and interests and find comfort in touch and in the human face.
This activity will help to develop an understanding and awareness of themselves and helpswith personal, social and emotional development. You may find your child has picked up new words and names while they’ve been with us at the Red House.
Activity for children any age. Clearly the older the child the more understanding they have of the story, however it amazing to see even very young children become attentive during story time.
Make a quiet area for story time with cushions etc. Choose a story and re enact it using props, talk about phrases in the story and encourage your child to say them and act. At the Red House we have cushioned areas to ensure the children feel comfortable and our carers encourage the children to become involved in the story
Trying this at home will help your child to make believe by pretending, have favourite stories and handle books carefully. If you ask our staff which stories we are reading during the week, you may find your child reciting some of the story themselves. Story time helps develop speaking and listening skills as well as working towards reading and writing
Activity for children under 2 years.
We have a music teacher from Bolton Music school who sporadically attends the Red House to train our staff, but also get involved with the children to observe how well we are doing in our music lessons. There are varied musical activities we provide, these are examples of things to try at home;
Equipment needed: pans, plastic cups, card, cello tape, radio.
Make a music session for babies to make music using household items. Babies can bang, shake and dance to the music. We know it’s always a pleasure to see your baby dancing and we see the babies at the Red House copying their friends their own age as well as some of their older friends from our toddlers group. I am sure you will see your baby copying some of the simple nevertheless enjoyable and in time with the beat to your baby.
This activity will help your baby to anticipate repeated sounds and actions and explore the space around them through movements of hands and feet and by rolling.
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