Monthly play roundup: August

We’ve just come through the last month of winter. We had a really wet August with long stretches of rainy days and just a sliver of sunshine peeking through here and there. We rounded off the season with a rather nasty bug and I got very croaky right at the end. But I think we can finally expect to see more sunshiny days from hereon. So here’s a quick recap of what we got up to last month…

‘F’ for Fish
Some favourite books we were reading this month were somehow related to fish and ocean creatures. Particular this and this. We practiced writing the letter ‘F’ for fish, made some fishy themed fruit snacks for morning tea, played a fishing game, and made our own magnetic fishing game.

Number Sentences
We had a go at forming some basic number sentences. We used our hands and fingers as a starting point to practice adding and subtracting small numbers. From there, we made some paper hands with foldable fingers and cut out numbers to form more number sentences of our own.

The Big Bad Wolf
We’re all big fans of the Big Bad Wolf at our place. We think he is more of a misunderstood character. We particular enjoyed reading books featuring him like this and this. We extended on this interest by focusing on some classic fairy tales in which the Big Bad Wolf played a key role.

I used this printable to make the characters for the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and we played out the story with some straws, sticks, and blocks for bricks.

We made some paper plate wolf masks and donned some coloured capes for a dramatic reenactment of the classic tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.

Noodle Magic
Inspired by this book, we had a go at making our own homemade noodles from scratch. We made them based on this recipe. They turned out quite nice actually in spite of the various odd and uneven shapes. We enjoyed them with some chicken and sweet potato soup for lunch.

Phases of the moon
Extending on a conversation we had about the moon (“Can ducks fly to the moon, Aunty Serene?”) we did a bit of science and talked about space and how the moon changes shape every night. This book was a good lead in to kick-start further discussion on the subject. We then made a moon phase viewer with some black construction paper and white card.

We made a moon phase viewer for our art and craft activity today #familydaycare #learningaboutthemoon

A post shared by Serenely (@livingserenely) on Aug 14, 2017 at 12:58am PDT

DIY Little People
A fun little addition to our play area this month were these DIY Little People: made from a paper-towel-roll, with washi tape clothing and pom-pom hair. Somehow they ended up fitting perfectly into the Little People car and truck play sets, which was a nice bonus!

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If you enjoyed this post, you can check out  last month’s roundup of activities and more of my other play and learning ideas. Stay tuned for next month’s roundup!