Dayz Daycare

Making snowballs and decorating them 🎄

Sensory play:
* Open ended play
* Builds hand eye coordination skills
* Strengthens muscles in hands and fingers ready for life skills such as writing and getting dressed
* The chance to experiment with their senses (See, touch, smell) preferably not taste for this one🤣
*wide range of mark making tools to encourage making marks and knowing the marks they make are of value

Autumn activities have begun🍁 🍃

This week so far we have been doing lots of activities to encourage sharing and taking turns 👧 👦🏻

We also enjoyed a lovely morning at soft play. We had to take turns here on the slide, trampoline and to create spooky spiders 🕷

We have also been practising our accuracy skills in order to help independently feed ourselves. We have done lots of scooping, pouring, filling, emptying using a range of different tools and cereals, pasta, water, rice, lentils and stones. The children used their accuracy skills to wash all the vehicles.

This week we have been learning our colours, filling and emptying, reciting numbers 1-10 and we introduced the scales to see how we can make containers weigh more, less or the same.

This activity was really simple yet it had a lot of learning opportunities which could be achieved from it. The children were given a box with some mark making tools which would hopefully encourage the children to enjoy mark making, make connections between their movements and marks that are made, to show preference for dominate hand and to show increasing control in holding and using mark making tools.

We also spoke about the colour pencil/pens we had chosen and what our favourites were.

Water play 💦

The children used their fine motor skill to use pipettes to transfer the water from the tray into cups to create ‘cup of teas’ for one another. The children counted the number of pipettes full of water they squeezed into the weighing scale containers to try and make the scales balance.

🌟The children used enjoyed pouring and emptying the containers.

🌟We used language such as ‘more’ ‘less’ ’lighter’ ‘heavier’ ‘same’ ‘even’.

Recently we have been working really hard on the little ones learning to independently feed themselves.

The children have been given lots of different resources in which they can scoop, pour and empty with accuracy in order to achieve this target.

A trip to the farm and to feed the ducks this week! We are trying to go out places with lots of shade as the weather is too hot for us little people to play in 🌞

The children enjoyed threading fruit loops onto spaghetti pasta. They used the pasta afterwards to make marks in the playdoh. They also made ‘birthday cakes with candles’🎂

The children used the goal post poles to create slopes which the fruit loops could travel through.

🌟Helping develop motor skills reading to write, do up buttons, open zips etc in the future.
🌟Hand eye coordination skills
🌟The children learnt lots of new language during this activity
🌟Accuracy

On Monday we took a visit to the farm. We loved meeting all the animals, playing on the parks and hiding in the woods for some shade while making dens :)

Yesterday we took a long walk to feed the ducks. Before leaving we coloured in an egg box making each section a different colour. On our journey we tried to find nature which matched these colours. 🌸 🌹 🍁 🍃

The children had an amazing time at soft play today 🙂

Introducing, using and learning language such as ‘over, under and through’ and working out which of these our vehicles needed to do on which obstacle.

Making ice creams🍦

Love this🙌

From Wilder Child

They walk and make noises- free to any dinosaur lovers! Preferably 1 per person so two people can have one!

The children were asked to swim through the balls and when a colour was shouted out see who could find the correct colour and hold it up the fastest 🌟 They absolutely loved this game 🙂

First time using our new picnic bench table 🙌

We used multi coloured giant water beads to learn colours, match colours by placing them into the same cupcake case and by posting them into the same colours holes.

We also used the ball drop toy to drop the water beads into and watch them spin round very fast! One of the children decided to get two people figures and one of the water beads and play football with the water beads.

🌟Learning colours
🌟Matching colours
🌟Posting items into small holes
🌟Turn taking
🌟Fine motor skills
🌟Introducing language such as ‘same’ ‘more’ ‘less’
🌟Using their imagination
🌟Extending activities

Improving our fine motor skills using spaghetti pasta.

We used all sorts of fine motor tools such as scissors to strengthen our fingers ready for writing. We used knifes in order to get ready to chop our own food.

🌟Strengthen each individual finger
🌟Coordination
🌟Preparing for life skills
🌟Making choices
🌟Turn taking
🌟Sensory experience

We had a lovely time at a toddler group 😁

🌟Imaginative play
🌟Turn taking
🌟Playing along side others
🌟Forming friendships
🌟Watching others play
🌟Following a different routine

This bubble making tray was a favourite today 🫧 🫧🫧🫧🫧

The children used straws to blow air into the water and washing up liquid to create bubbles. They revisited this activity numerous times throughout the day😀

🌟Working as a team
🌟Ability to control their breathing
🌟Learning to carry out complex mouth movements
🌟Developing new language skills
🌟Stimulating the brain
🌟Making the eye concentrate on one specific area
🌟 Helps gain cognitive development
🌟Introducing basic science

We had an amazing trip to marwell zoo 🦓

Whilst at the zoo we discovered lots of fossils, skulls and bones. We held a gigantic great white sharks tooth from millions of year ago. We also held a real dinosaurs leg bone 🦴

Can you help rescue the dinosaurs? 🦕 🦖

The children used different tools to help save the dinosaurs from the ice ⚒️

🌟Boosts self-confidence
🌟Develops motor skills
🌟Fine motor skills
🌟Turn taking
🌟Choosing tools

One toy can be used for many things 🍦

The children haven’t been using the play kitchen much so we turnt it into a ice cream shop. Dafe to say the kitchen got used lots 🙂

Today we used the aquadoodle mat specifically so the little one was able to join in making marks without eating the pencils or pens 😂 She used a whole hand grasp to make some marks.

We extended this activity to support a child’s next steps of recognition of numbers.

The older children realised the mat had numbers 1-10 on so they used their pincer grip to use the water pen to uncover these.

We chose a foam number one at a time, recognised the number and matched it to the same number on the Mat.

🌟Enjoys making marks
🌟Using hold hand grasp
🌟Knows the marks they make are of value
🌟Counting number 1-10 in the correct order
🌟Beginning to notice numerals
🌟Recognition of numbers 1-10

🌟 Letter and number recognition
🌟Name recognition
🌟Writing our own name
🌟Letter forming
🌟Sounding out letters
🌟Putting objects in the order of small to big
🌟Making Marks

Firstly Riley had to find the letters which make his name. Once he found all the letters he had to arrange them to spell his name correctly. We used the letters to make an imprint of his name in the playdoh which we were then able to copy for him to write his name himself.

We picked 4 numbers which Riley correctly identified using their number names. He chose a number and counted the same amount of multi link which he then clicked together.

Finally Riley put the numbers in order from smallest to largest 🌟

The children’s favourite activity with playdoh at the moment is making pizza 🍕

We used a knife to trace along the lines to make triangular pizza pieces. We chose some toppings from our play food box and made the pizza yummy😋

One of the children was asked to place 1 piece on a plate, 2 pieces on another and 3 pieces on the remaining plate. He was able to do this confidently by counting each piece he placed down.

We spoke about how all the pieces of pizza were triangular, how many sides made a triangle and if the sides were curved or straight. We then went on a hunt around the playroom to find some other objects which were triangular also.

After this activity the children wanted to see what different marks they could make using different play fruit and vegetables.

🌟Building our strength
🌟Working on our fine motor skills
🌟Learning our shapes
🌟Counting
🌟Following simple instructions
🌟Creative play
🌟Making choices for themselves
🌟Role playing real life experience
🌟Mark making
🌟Comparing objects to one another
🌟Introducing new language

The children helped one another to build a very large camp fire 🔥

We went for an adventure into the forest area where we found lots of pine cones so we collected these in our buckets. Once we collected them we found a clear and safe space in front of some trees so that we could throw the pine cones one at a time counting how many we were able to accurately throw and hit the tree with. One of the children was able to count to 30 independently.

🌟Strengthens muscles
🌟Hand-eye coordination
🌟Building on our concentration levels
🌟Counting number 1-30
🌟Accuracy
🌟Imaginative play
🌟Experimenting new sense
🌟Sensory development

We played a dinosaur board game for dinosaur crazy children 🦕 🦖

🌟Counting spaces
🌟Identifying colours
🌟Recognising number of spots on the dice
🌟Turn taking
🌟Watching other people play
🌟Making decisions
🌟Developing hand-eye coordination
🌟Problem solving

The Easter books made a late appearance for some maze fun🙂

🌟Learning to follow simple instructions
🌟 Learning sense of direction
🌟Learning our left and right
🌟Tripod grip
🌟Pencil grasp development

The children have been using scissors to cut out shapes and follow some simple lines.

🌟Strengthens hand muscles
🌟Builds hand-eye coordination
🌟Fine motor skills
🌟Accuracy
🌟Moving fingers individually

Playing along side others and independent play are both as important as one another🌟

🌟Fine motor skills🌟
🌟Emptying containers🌟
🌟Turn taking🌟
🌟Learning colours🌟
🌟Using vocabulary such as ‘In’ ‘out’ ‘push’🌟
🌟Using both hands to hold objects🌟
🌟Banging objects together🌟

🌟Exploring and making patterns🌟
🌟Learning that patterns are everywhere🌟

Even the cops and robbers have time for a little water play😂 👮‍♀️

Collecting natural resources to create a insect house.

The children found a snail on our walk home from feeding the ducks and decided they needed to create him (they called him Simon and snail) a house. 🐌 🐌

🌟Using their imagination🌟
🌟Role play🌟
🌟Turn taking🌟
🌟Playing along side others🌟
🌟Sharing their experiences in real life events and using these in play🌟
🌟Fine motor skills🌟

The children previously sorted all the food out into two different boxes. One was ‘healthy foods’ and the other ‘unhealthy foods’.

The children created a restaurant using the play kitchen and all the food. They took it in turns to be the chef and cook the food and to be the customers.

The children always try and help hanging out the washing as they love playing with pegs so this was a perfect opportunity to play a colour matching game with an object they don’t get to play with day to day. This also helped to strengthen their fine motor skills.

This activity enabled the child to gain strong fine motor skills. The child reached for the laces, pulling these out by grasping the lace between her thumb and finger. Once the lace was out she explored it with her mouth and then released her grasp. She repeated this until all the laces were out.