In January, whist the new starters got settled in, the children at Leahurst Road Preschool got stuck in with a wide range of activities designed to teach them how to have active and healthy bodies.
The movement sessions included throwing, catching balls, riding bikes, dancing and negotiating their own obstacle courses. During story times, the reasons why we should eat healthy food was a key topic for discussion along with sorting various fruit and vegetables into groups. The children also made their own class height chart. After drawing around each other on a big piece of paper One afternoon the children made their own class height chart. They then drew around each other on a big piece of paper, measured each other and recorded the results on the height chart. “Who is tallest, shortest, middle sized?” they asked. B joining white paper straws together, the children created skeleton crafts and cut out their own first aid equipment with great precision to make their very own first aid boxes. A few showed great cutting skills and potential for perhaps even joining the medical profession in future themselves!
After all of the energetic activity, the “I’m a Little Teapot” nursery rhyme theme was welcomed by all. The ‘Tea and Cake’ shop in the home corner was open for business, complete with a cake stand full of cleverly knitted cakes and a variety of tea bags for the children to ‘make tea’ with. The children enjoyed opening the tea bags to explore the tea leaves inside and showed good hand eye coordination as they transferred the tea leaves back and forth between the teapot and teacups. The tea shop also provided opportunity for conversation as the children were overheard chatting about trips to coffee shops they’d had with their families.
In the water trough, teapots, cutlery, teacups and spoons were used to scoop, pour, splash around with and measure with.
Focus activities taught the children the journey of tea from tea leaf to the tea bag, to the teapot to the teacup. This turned out to be a great sensory activity, as they felt the textures and smelt the various tea leaves. After a little taste at snack time, the sensory theme continued as they took rosemary, oregano and ginger and kneaded into playdoh to make a selection of ‘biscuits’ to sell in the tea shop later. Not sure that any were suitable for dunking though! 🙂
The parents were as ever in awe of all of the innovative activities that the staff had come up with for each theme which not only offer educational value but had also well and truly kept their children entertained.
The Preschool have places available for April. If you would like to book a visit and/or a place call: 07941616369
