Helping your child at home

If your child is not able to come to nursery through either mild ill health or unforeseen circumstances, you could click on the links below for some ideas for home learning activities linked to our nursery curriculum.

Online Resources

Hungry Little Minds
Simple, fun activities for kids, from new-born to five. Many little things light up hungry little minds. Kids take everything in, and even the smallest things you do with them can make a big difference. View the Hungry Little Minds website.

Tiny Happy People
Tiny Happy People is here to help you develop your child’s communication skills. Explore our simple activities and play ideas and find out about their amazing early development. Visit Tiny Happy People website.

Songs & Rhymes

Durham Music Service has produced a YouTube channel with daily musical activities; the Groovy Moovy Monday and Tiny Tunes Tuesday videos may be particularly enjoyed by very young children.  View the video here

These are some of the children’s favourite rhymes and songs. Why not have a sing-a-long! If you are struggling with the tune, you can find lots of videos to help you at Songs & Rhymes,  Bus Songs and BBC Nursery Rhymes and Songs (Nursery Rhymes and Songs – BBC Teach) websites.

• Number Rhymes

Below are some ideas and activity cards for you to try out at home, we’d love to see which ones you try.  Please send photos via Class Dojo.

Ideas for Helping you child at Home

Physical Development

• If confined to the house you could make little obstacle courses for your child/children from cushions. If space allows encourage your child to practise jumping (Can your do 6 big jumps?), hopping, crawling, rolling, running on the spot.
• Do a mini exercise workout with them – practising stretches, claps and practice moving forwards and backwards.
• Dance with them! Choose a song that you both enjoy and just have fun!
• Help your child to learn about healthy foods by letting them help you make a healthy fruit salad or soup.
• Search on YouTube for some great videos by This Is PE
• Try Cosmic Yoga for physical development and mindfulness  Cosmic Kids Yoga – YouTube

Literacy

• Help your child to develop the correct pencil grip if they are ready for this.
• If they are not keen to do the above, they can still develop their finger control (which will help them later in writing) through activities such as playing with Lego, making necklaces from pasta on a string, cutting out shapes from cards/magazines etc (use children’s scissors only).
• Help your child to write their name. Only the first letter should be a capital letter, the rest needs to be lower case letters. Some children may not be ready for this yet, but may enjoy just writing the first letter. Praise and encourage what they can do – don’t try to make them as you risk putting them off.
• Draw a face – draw a round shape and ask your child to add eyes, nose, mouth.  Encourage your child to make marks and tell you what they have drawn.
• Give your child any unwanted paper/cardboard to draw on. At first it may just be scribble, but over time and with practice this will develop into faces and more representative pictures.
• Get them to find letters that they know in books and in the environment. It is the letter sound they need to learn first, not the name (e.g. “sssss” for S, not “ess”).
• Read stories to your child, you can search for online books too. Look at the pictures in the books and talk about what you can see.

• Jigsaws are an excellent way for children to develop their observation skills, and learn about corners, sides etc. Show them “jigsaw techniques” such as completing the sides first. If you don’t have any jigsaws, they can be borrowed from the library. There are also jigsaws on children’s apps such as Bob the Builder.

Understanding the World

• Some of the Blue Planet documentaries are fascinating for the whole family and even young children will enjoy watching them for short periods of time.
• Encourage your child to ask questions and answer as honestly as you can. Be aware of what is on the TV though, as even some programmes such as Coronation Street which are on quite early can show some scenes which could cause anxiety for young children.
• There are a huge amount of educational apps for young children for tablets/iPads. The best learning takes place when these are done alongside an adult or an older sibling.

Art and Design

• The cleanest way to let your child paint is to use block palettes of paints rather than tubes of paint. Again table covering and supervision required! At this stage children’s paintings tend to be very experimental – with lines and mixing colours (doesn’t really look like anything yet) – think of it as modern art!
• Many children start to draw at this stage – so provide pencils/crayons and paper. Don’t waste money on expensive paper as their drawings tend to be quite quick initially. Colouring sheets/books can be good finger control practice if your child enjoys them. Again supervision is required for drawing activities so you don’t end up with some extra wall designs! Children much prefer to draw/ colour alongside an adult too. If you have time to spare – why not join in – its very therapeutic!
• Sing songs together. Make it fun by playing little games e.g. suggest a topic e.g. sheep and see if your child can sing a song about it (Baa Baa black sheep). Make up silly songs that rhyme (this will help your child begin to learn about rhyming words).
• Use boxes and other household objects to encourage imaginative play e.g. making a car from a big cardboard box or let your child pretend to be a chef, using empty pans and spoons on the table. Any sort of pretend games are good for developing children’s language and imagination.
• Art kits for young children are available from shops such as the Works. They can be quite prescriptive, so will need adult input. Alternatively you can let them make their own pictures from stickers or use cut out pictures from magazines and a tube of glue (supervision and covering of table required!)