We have had a literacy focus for the fortnight, focusing particularly on fostering a love of reading, and introducing early phonics skills. ☀️
Earlier this week on camp we had a role play home corner created out of crates, where we decorated the garden with flowers and plants in chalk. We used this opportunity to explore some literacy concepts like letter recognition and sounding out singular phonemes. We printed prompts around the house like ‘garage’ and ‘cabin’ and challenged children to hunt through the letters to find “their letter” (which is the letter which starts their name). This exercise not only supported early phonics but let us introduce some new vocabulary related to the home🏡
Some brilliant role play started to emerge in the home corner, and the educators were ushered into the ‘bedroom’ area where a few of our children wanted to explore some new hairstyles and hairdressing techniques. We modelled plaiting, all kinds of braiding and a simple ponytail, and we supported the little ones to brush and attempt to tie their own/each other’s hair with hair ties. Fine motor and attention skills were put to the test and we were impressed with their motivation. We saw lots of attentiveness and care for each other, being cautious of hurting each other and readjusting their technique if they were brushing a tad too harshly.
The spurts of sunshine and warmth have meant we’ve had some wonderful opportunities for water play. We’ve had ‘babyccinos’ made in the mud kitchen with mud, leaves and sticks. Our little adventurers have loved being little baristas, taking an order from an educator and waiting attentively to check the customer likes their ‘drink’. “Yummy! But could I have a sprinkle of chocolate powder?” “Of course” (some dried dusty mud is sprinkled into the cup) “Delicious!”
We additionally had some water structures built, where our Little Forest Folk-ers used pipes to create streams and rivers. They put on their investigation hats and realised that the higher they tilted the pipes, the faster the water made its way down when poured. 💧
Little Forest Folk
Fulham