Koral's Early Years Activities

• Ideal for children up to 5 years of age. Below are some display ideas, registration ideas, activities for the children and how you can decorate your classroom for this theme. 

*Activity Idea: Hand/Footprint Sea Creatures*

~Equipment Ideas~

You can use paper, card, paper plates and any other basic background for these activities, as the art produced at the end can be put on display, or into the child’s art file for them to take home at the end of the session or term, depending on how the setting runs. 

• Poster paint - to paint the child’s hand (be aware of allergies/reactions) • Plain card or paper • Tissue paper - strips of shades of green for seaweed and blue for ocean • Sequins - to add a bit of sparkle to the ocean • Googly eyes - for the sea creature Each child can make their own hand print to make a fish or their feet to make a starfish as shown above. Enabling the child to make the choice of colour, body part, type of creature is all that is required for this activity, and encouraging them to make their own choices is a main factor of developing as an individual. 

~ Reflective Questions ~

• What colour/colours is your sea creature? • What body part are you using to make your sea creature? • Is your sea creature happy or sad? • Does your sea creature have eyes? How many does it have? • Does your sea creature live in a reef? What colour is [it] the reef?

~ Early Years Foundation Stage ~

22-36 Months

Personal, Social and Emotional Development (Self-confidence and Self-awareness)

A Unique Child • Expresses own preferences and interests.

Positive Relationships • Teach children to use and care for materials, and then trust them to do so independently

Enabling Environments • Discuss with staff and parents how each child responds to activities, adults and their peers. • Build on this to plan future activities and experiences for each child. • As children differ in their degree of self-assurance, plan to convey to each child that you appreciate them and their efforts. • Vary activities so that children are introduced to different materials. • Make materials easily accessible at child height, to ensure everybody can make choices.

30-50 Months

Personal, Social and Emotional Development (Self-confidence and Self-awareness)

A Unique Child • Can select and use activities and resources with help. • Welcomes and values praise for what they have done. • Enjoys responsibility of carrying out small tasks.

Positive Relationships • Teach children to use and care for materials, and then trust them to do so independently

• Textures are very important for developing the senses of children, especially when they are at such a young age of 0-2 years. 

*Activity Idea: Paper Plate Sensory Shapes*

~Equipment Ideas~

• White paper plates • Yarn, wool, string of varying colours and textures (Some wool may be soft or bumpy, so gather as much of a variety as possible • Paint - multiple colours to match the wool or yarn etc or opposing colours to make it stand out • Scissors (adult use only) • Glitter / Sequins / Sand etc • PVA Glue

~ Reflective Questions ~

• What can you see? • What can you feel? • What shape can you see? (if you cut a shape out of the paper plate) • What colour/colours can you see? • What else is on the plate? (referring to glitter/sequins/sand etc) • How does it feel? (Is it… soft/hard/rough/smooth/bumpy/flat?)

~ Early Years Foundation Stage ~

Birth-11 Months

Physical Development: Moving and Handling

A Unique Child: • Reaches out for, touches and begins to hold objects. • Explores objects with mouth, often picking up an object and holding it to the mouth.

Positive Relationships: • Help babies to become aware of their own bodies through touch and movement, e.g. clapping the baby’s hands together, gently shaking baby’s foot.

Enabling Environments: • Encourage babies to explore the space near them by putting interesting things beside them, such as crinkly paper, or light, soft material.

8-20 Months

Physical Development: Moving and Handling

A Unique Child: • Enjoys the sensory experience of making marks in damp sand, paste or paint.

Positive Relationships: •Encourage babies to use resources they can grasp, squeeze and throw.

Enabling Environments: • Provide novelty in the environment that encourages babies to use all of their senses and move indoors and outdoors.

Expressive Arts and Design: Exploring and Understanding

A Unique Child: • Explores and experiments with a range of media through sensory exploration, and using whole body.

Positive Relationships: • Encourage babies to make marks and to squeeze and feel media such as paint, gloop (cornflour and water), dough and bubbles. • Introduce children to language to describe sounds and rhythm, e.g., loud and soft, fast and slow.

Enabling Environments: • Provide materials to encourage large motor movements, e.g. sprinkling, throwing or spreading paint, glue, torn paper or other materials. • Provide a wide range of materials, resources and sensory experiences to enable children to explore colour, texture and space.

16-26 Months

Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Self-confidence and Self-awareness):

A Unique Child: • Explores new toys and environments, but ‘checks in’ regularly with familiar adult as and when needed.

Positive Relationships: • Make sure the child can explore from the secure, close by presence of their key person. • Share children’s pleasure when they do something for themselves.

Enabling Environments: • Making choices is important for all children. Consider ways in which you provide for children with disabilities to make choices, and express preferences about their carers and activities. • Share with children photographs of their activities, talking with them about what the did and how they felt.

22-36 Months

Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Self-confidence and Self-awareness

A Unique Child: • Expresses own preferences and interests.

Positive Relationships: • Teach children to use and care for materials, and then trust them to do so independently. • Ensure that key practitioners offer extra support to children in new situations.

Enabling Environments: • Discuss with staff and parents how each child responds to activities, adults and their peers. Build on this to plan future activities and experiences for each child. • Consult with parents about children’s varying levels of confidence in different situations. Record individual achievements which reflect significant progress for every child. • Vary activities so that children are introduced to different materials. • Make materials easily accessible at child height, to ensure everybody can make choices.

Mathematics: Shape. Space and Measure

A Unique Child: • Notices simple shapes and patterns in pictures.

Positive Relationships: • Talk about and help children to recognise patterns. • Draw children’s attention to the patterns e.g. square/ oblong/square which emerges as you fold or unfold a tablecloth or napkin.

Enabling Environments: • Collect pictures that illustrate the use of shapes and patterns from a variety of cultures, e.g. Arabic designs.

30-50 Months

Expressive Arts and Design: Exploring and Understanding

A Unique Child • Beginning to be interested in and describe the texture of things.

Positive Relationships •Support children’s responses to different textures, e.g. touching sections of a texture display with their fingers, or feeling it with their cheeks to get a sense of different properties.  • Introduce vocabulary to enable children to talk about their observations and experiences, e.g. ’smooth’ ‘shiny’ ‘rough’ ‘prickly’ ‘flat’ ‘patterned’ ‘jagged’, ‘bumpy’ ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. 

Enabling Environments • Introduce children to a wide range of music, painting and sculpture.  • Encourage children to take time to think about painting or sculpture that is unfamiliar to them before they talk about it or express an opinion. 

40-60+ Months

Expressive Arts and Design: Exploring and Using Media and Materials

A Unique Child • Experiments to create different textures. • Manipulates materials to achieve a planned effect. • Selects appropriate resources and adapts work where necessary. • Selects tools and techniques needed to shape, assemble and join materials they are using.

Positive Relationships • Talk to children about ways of finding out what they can do with different media and what happens when they put different things together such as sand, paint and sawdust.

• Ideal for children between 0-2 years of age, however can be incorporated into activities for children up to 5 years of age. 

*Activity Idea: Mirrors in Sensory Area*

~ Equipment Ideas ~

Anything you can find that is reflective will work for this, you could even make your own mirrors for the younger children taking part, with the use of some cardboard shapes and tin foil, anything is possible! Below are some examples you could use for the activity. 

• Mirrors - place on walls for young children to lay next to and look at, to see what is around them • Silver reflective trays - place on the floor - you could add textures, such as sand, flour etc to make in to a mark making activity, or they could use it as a hide and seek tray to show only certain part of their face.  • Blank CDs - Hang with string in a modile formation so the children can see themselves at different heights • Tin Foil - cut out some cardbord shapes adn wrap them in tin foil to make your own mirrors. crease the foil in various places to make distorted mirrors.  • Spoons - looking at yourself in a spoon is interesting as one side shows the reflection upside down, whereas the other shows the reflection the right way up. 

~ Reflective Questions ~

Ideally the following questions are examples aimed at children between 1 and 3 years of age, as they are more talkative and can answer you with the answer, whether it is correct or not, if you create a stimulating environment as detailed below, the child is very likely to enjoy the activity. 

• Who can you see? • Where are your eyes? • Where is your nose? • Where is your mouth? • Where are your teeth? • Where is your tongue? You could also add in a new factor, such as colour... • What colour is your hair? • What colour are your eyes?

~ Early Years Foundation Stage ~

8-20 Months

Personal, Social and Emotional Development (Self-confidence and Self-awareness):

A Unique Child: • Enjoys finding own nose, eyes or tummy as part of naming games.

Positive Relationships: • Playfully help babies to recognise that they are separate and different from others, e.g. pointing to their own nose and eyes etc. 

Enabling Environments: • Place mirrors where children can see their own reflection. Talk with them about what they can see. 

Communication and Language (Understanding)

A Unique Child: • Developing the ability to follow others’ body language, including pointing and gestures. •Responds to the different things said when in a familiar context with a specific person, e.g. where’s your nose?

Positive Relationships: • Interpret and give meaning to the things children show interest in, e.g. when they point to an object or a feature, tell them what it is, e.g. glasses. • Use and repeat single words so the child can gradually link the word to its meaning.