What we’ve been up to at our family day care this month

One of the things I mentioned in my new year post was to try and share more of the play and learning activities we do at our family day care. So to kick things off in this department, here is a little roundup post of some of the activity highlights we got up to this past month…

Chinese New Year

Over Chinese New Year, I put together a Chinese New Year sensory bin based the colour theme of red, yellow and gold. I filled the box with various sensory items like pom-poms, bean bags, golden beads, red packets and tangerines. I also used the red packets for a simple puzzle craft activity. I cut the red packets into sections for the children to assemble into a Chinese New Year theme paper collage.

*Chinese New Year sensory play inspiration from Things to Share & Remember

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Where is the Green Sheep

Extending on a couple of the children’s interests in the story book ‘Where is the Green Sheep’ by Mem Fox, I made this coloured sheep felt play set for our felt board. We used them to play a ‘Find The Green Sheep’ game, colour matching games and sing sheep nursery rhymes using the coloured sheep with some of our other felt board characters.

We made our own green sheep by winding green yarn around some cardboard, drawing on some features and adding a couple of mini pegs for legs. This craft activity allowed the children to practice their hand-arm coordination as they wound the yard round and round the cardboard.

*’Where is the Green Sheep’ activities inspiration from One Little Librarian and Seagulls & Sandcastles

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Hairdresser Shop

One the favourite books we’ve been reading recently is ‘Busy Hairdresser’ by Rebecca Finn. Plus one of my little girls happened to visit the hairdresser to get a haircut. So we decided to set up our own pretend hairdresser shop, complete with capes, towels, washcloths, combs, brushes, play scissors and washi-fied pegs for hairclips.

As you can see, all the children really got into the whole imaginative play and enjoyed taking turns to be the hairdresser and the customer having their hair done.

Hairdresser shop constructed using jumbo-sized building blocks* which we bought at Big W (*Affiliate Link)

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Jelly Dough

A new sensory material we tried out was this jelly dough made with Metamucil, water and food colouring. The children enjoyed exploring the slimy, jelly-like texture of the ‘dough’. We combined it with some water play and the children came up with lots of interesting concoctions by mixing the jelly dough and water together.