Suggestions for activities to support your child’s learning and
development – Early Years
Summer Term 2: Week 2 – 8th to 12th June 2020
Healthy Eating Week
Literacy:
Book Focus: If you have the book below, read it to your child. If you do not have the book, you can watch an storytelling video of it or listen to the story book being read by clicking on the links below:
‘Supertato’ by Sue Hendra
Storytelling = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rze89HB9u8g
Book Reading = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1nlJBkWGLo
Discuss happened in the story above, thinking about the beginning, the middle part and the end of the story.
Ask these questions and discuss – Where did the pea escape from? What ‘unkind (naughty)’ things did the pea do? Where did the pea hide?
Ask - Why or How questions about the story? (Can they give a reason or explain how/why questions?) How do you think the pea escaped from the freezer? Why was the pea mean to the other vegetables? How do you think the pea felt after he had been caught?
Understanding The world:
Freezer (Science – changes of state)– Show your child the freezer and some of the food that is frozen. Explain what happens to the food when it is frozen and why it has been frozen.
Task: Make some ice cubes or freeze some cubes of orange juice, or fill up some bags with coloured water (maybe put a small plastic toy inside the bag). Leave these for a few hours or overnight to freeze. (so the children can see that liquid water changes to a solid when cold enough, then it ‘melts’ back to
liquid, when you take it out of the freezer). Or you could freeze ice pops or make lollies (if you have the plastic moulds for this).
Other activities: Staying Healthy
Look at the power point about Healthy eating and living (below) – to find out how to stay healthy
healthy-eating-and-living-powerpoint_
Talk about all the ways to stay healthy – exercise, enough sleep, brushing
teeth, keeping clean (washing) as well as eating healthy food. You could look at
this in more detail and do some activities like running, walking playing sport,
copying Joe Wickes exercise routines etc. You could look at washing hands,
bodies and clothes and why we need to stay clean, plus you could explore why
we need to brush our teeth etc.
Healthy Food & Unhealthy Food
Recap that some food is ‘healthy’, which means it is very good for you to eat and some food
is ‘unhealthy’, which means it is not so good for you, so you can eat it, but not all the time.
Sorting food Task:
Get you child to sort a group of different food items (real or pictures) into ‘healthy’ and
‘unhealthy’ groups.
Drama: Act out the story of ‘Supertato’ – make a costume.
Or Small world – or use trays to create a mini‐world for the story (use printed cut outs of
characters in the story or you can use a real potato to be ‘Supertato’!
OR you can make a potato head ‐
Make Mr or Mrs Potato Head Sheet.p
Art/Craft – Potato Prints:
Cut some potatoes in half. Then cut some shapes out of the bottom or just have different sizes. Then the children can dip these in different coloured paints to make some patterns or pictures.
Or you could print with other fruits and vegetables:
Oranges cut in half broccoli, mushrooms etc apples, leeks, peppers
Pencil control (fine control): Writing over/under names
Write you child’s name on a piece of paper (laminate if possible then you can re‐use it). Otherwise
just write it out each time. Please try to use a cursive script, because this is what we teach at Red
Oaks. Then your child can practise writing on top of their name for a while. When they can do this
well, they can try and write it underneath. Lastly, they can try and writ their name from memory.
PLEASE ONLY USE A CAPITAL LETTER AT THE START OF YOUR CHILD’S NAME (that is how they will
write it at school – NOT all in Capital letters!!)
Make ‘Name Writing’ fun –
Children can paint their name, write in with water on the ground outside, they can use a white
board, or chalk outside or they can write their name over and over in different colours (rainbow
writing). Other ideas are to write it in the sand, shaving foam, in some flour etc.
What Word Starts With…?
Sorting by Initial Sounds – Keep practising these Phase 2 letter sounds
Keep practising all the letters from the last few weeks (s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, e, u, r, h, b, ck, f, ff, l, ll, ss) . Print off the letters onto paper or write them too – so children can see the letter and link the sound to it (Only use LOWER CASE letters please NOT CAPITALS!). It would be good to add a picture onto the back of the letter sheet, showing an object that starts with that sound e.g. for the letter ‘f’, you could have a picture of a ‘fish’ on the back or a ‘fan’.
Remember to just keep practising these letter sounds. Plus sing the alphabet song – please make sure that the children say ‘Zed’ for ‘z’ NOT ‘Zee’ – which is American!!
Practise this Alphabet Song below, with your child on You Tube, until they know it off by heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPVbJ-IaHIw
Maths – Matching amounts to Numerals
Children learn to recognise some numerals and they can count out the
corresponding amount of objects e.g. no. 3 in a bowl and the child can count
three beads into the bowl.
1. Start off with numerals 0, 1,2,3 (if your child doesn’t know any yet).
When they know this well go to step 2.
2. Use numerals 0 to 5. When they can recognise these numerals and put
the correct amount of objects into the bowls, tins etc (e.g. buttons, pom
poms, grapes, lego pieces, pasta etc), then practise it for a while, until it
is easy.
3. Then do the same kind of tasks, but gradually increase the numerals – up
to 10.
N.B. DON’T DO TOO MANY NUMBERS AT FIRST – Build it up gradually.
Start 1 to 3, or 1 to 5, then build up to 10.
Practise in lots of different ways inside and outside. See below for some ideas.
Also a good interactive website for children is Topmarks. See links below –
Gingerbread count and matching games
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning‐to‐count/gingerbread‐man‐game
Underwater counting and number recognition game
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning‐to‐count/underwater‐counting
Teddy Bear Counting & Number recognition
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning‐to‐count/teddy‐numbers