We hope you enjoy doing some of these activities with your children!

• Threading using beads, pasta, cheerios on straws, string or liquorice laces.

• Make musical instruments using cups, plates, pots, tin foil, cling film etc and fill with rice, pasta, lentils, cous cous. Listen to the sounds they make, sing songs, shake fast/slow or loud/quiet.

• Water play in the sink, washing up bowl or bath. Add containers and bottles and talk about full/empty and more/less, add a tea set, dolls to wash, pots and pans, clean toys.

• Wash the car, walls, house with bubbly water and sponges. ‘Paint’ the house with water and brushes.

• Fill a tray with salt/flour/sugar and draw shapes, patterns, faces, letters, numbers etc using fingers or paint brushes.

• Draw and write with pens, pencils, crayons, chalks. Make cards, pictures, books, giant pictures on old wallpaper, pictures on the floor outside with chalks.

• Mix cornflour with a little water and watch how it changes consistency. Stir with a spoon, add food colour, watch it drop from the spoon, pick it up with your hand.

• Sensory play with jelly, couscous, rice, pasta, angel delight, flour, sugar, shaving foam (any items you can find) and add pots, containers, spoons or cars, play figures etc.

• Make playdough using our recipe and then make pretend cupcakes, use cutters, sticks and leaves, make people and animals.

• Do some baking, recipes are easy to find online. Bake cupcakes, gingerbread men, sandwiches, cornflake cakes, ice biscuits, pizzas, flapjacks, fruit kebabs/salad.

• Painting with brushes, fingers, hands, feet, potatoes, vegetables and fruit, cars and trains, leaf printing.

• Cutting skills with child scissors – draw patterns for children to cut along, cook spaghetti and cut it with scissors, cut out pictures.

• Fill ziplock bags with paint and do them up. Use your finger to draw patterns on the bag.

• Use old boxes, tubes, lids, pots etc to make houses, castles, space ships etc.

• Play imaginary games such as Mums and Dads, Shops, Cafes, Superheroes, Vets.

• Read lots of books, listen to story CDs, make up stories, act out stories.

• Play in the garden – Plant seeds, make mud pies, go on bug hunts, play ball games (catch, throw, kick, roll balls), set up obstacle courses, play ‘Whats the time Mr Wolf?’, play ‘can you…. crawl like a dog, slither like a snake, fly like a butterfly…’ , do a treasure hunt.

• Play ‘I spy’ – look for objects of certain colours.

• Dance to different types of music, use scarves to wave around.

• Make a den using sheets, pillows, cushions.

• Play ‘Hide and Seek’ or ‘Find the object’.

Some good websites –

• Twinkl.co.uk

• Cbeebies.co.uk

• Teachearlyyears.com

Playdough Recipe

• 2 cups of flour

• ½ cup of salt

• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

• 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar

• Approx 1 ½ cups of warm water with food colouring of choice added

Mix all the ingredients together in a pan over a low heat. Once bound together remove from the heat and knead.

Our Favourite Songs

• Wind the bobbin up

• Roley poley

• Wheels on the bus

• Incy wincy spider

• Row, row, row your boat

• If you’re happy and you know it

• Head, shoulders, knees and toes

• 10 fat sausages

• Baa baa black sheep

• Miss Polly had a dolly

• Twinkle twinkle little star

• Dingle dangle scarecrow

• Driving along on a big red bus

• Down in the jungle

• Walking through the jungle

• Old Macdonald had a farm

• Little green frog

• Tiny turtle

• Zoom, zoom, zoom

• 5 little ducks

• 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed

• 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive

• 5 little men in a flying saucer

• Little Peter rabbit

• Sleeping bunnies/dinosaurs/crocodiles