These types of activities don’t always need to be drawn or written. Here are some simple ideas of what you can do with coloured lids.
Try finding and making patterns at home. For example, you could do it with things from the garden (leaf, stone, leaf, stone), clothing (sock, sock, shoe, sock, sock, shoe), toys (car, block, block, car, block, block), cutlery (spoon, fork, knife, spoon, fork, knife) or clapping patterns (clap, clap, stamp, stamp) for your child to join in with or copy. Have fun with patterns and see how your child starts to become more aware of patterns around you.
As always, you will see that the final photo describes one of the vital foundational skills that this type of activity is developing. You can see that by engaging with your child in fun activities, you are not just keeping them busy, but are helping to prepare them for ‘big school’.
We LOVE our Singakwenza masks! We are so grateful to the amazing donor who has ensured that our staff will stay safe during this time. Each person will have 3 different coloured masks to ensure that a clean one is worn every day to limit the spread of infection. “I protect you, you protect me” #masks4all
Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of, control and express emotions. Young children don’t know the words that describe how they feel when they experience emotions, so you have an important role in helping them to learn these. During this challenging time, our children often act out and are naughty, when in actual fact they are feeling scared or anxious. Playing games that encourage children to talk about how they feel, letting them listen to how you feel, and starting to accurately label what they are feeling helps them to become more empathetic people.
As always, the last picture gives you a description of one of the skills that you are helping your child to develop through this play, so that you can see how you are helping with your child’s development as well as bonding with your child.
You don’t have to have Lego or building blocks for your chid to be creative and imaginative. Use whatever clean recycling you have and let your child’s imagination run free. You also don’t need to use any glue, tape or scissors. Let them build, take apart and rebuild. We’d love to see pictures of some of your child’s constructions, so please share them in the comments.
As always, the last picture gives you a description of one of the skills that you are helping your child to develop through this play, so that you can see how you are helping with your child’s development as well as bonding with your child.
Did you know that babies can see colour as well as adults from around the age of 6 months? They can see it, but don’t understand that colour is a quality of an item (ie something that describes that item). So sometimes we will give the child a lid and tell her that it is a lid, another time we tell her it is plastic, another time we tell her it is round, another time we tell her it is small, another time we tell her it is red, another time we tell her it is hard…and so when we say, “What colour is this?” the child often just says the first colour name that pops into her head! To help children understand this, try to always say the quality and the name of the item eg. “This is a red lid” or “This is a round lid”. The ability to match colours comes before the ability to name colours, so matching activities are important from around the age of 2.
As always, the last picture gives you a description of one of the skills that you are helping your child to develop through this play, so that you can see how you are helping with your child’s development as well as bonding with your child.
