The Little Red Hen

Today I had my friends girls over for a morning of activities based on The Little Read Hen, we read the story, made some bread, talked about what yeast does and the different types of bread you can get, which ones we have tried, liked and or made.

While the bread was rising we watched Come Outside Bread, as we watched this I talked about how flour was made, a long time ago people would of used a quern to grind their bread, then later windmills or water mills would of been used before the factories that we saw in the program. I found some photos of a quern and we talked about how long it would of taken to grind flour compared to the factories today. Could of also talked about in how in some parts of the world people still grind their flour by hand. We then watched this short film that looks a bit more at the process of wheat to flour and then looked at some resources that we got from grain chain, one was little packets of wheat as it goes through the different process, which they found fascinating.

They then enjoyed creating their own farm yard and playing with their set up.

They also spent time drawing pictures based on the illustrations from the book we read.

and finally the cooked rolls, the girls have asked to come again and have another session with me, which is great, I really love doing small group sessions like these.

Just love the way one simple story could have so much potential for different idea :-

• making different types of bread
• looking at bread from different countries
• history of making flour, farming etc
• the lifecycle of wheat, for older chidlren the pros and cons of different types of farming, genetics
• how windmills and watermills work, cogs and gears

to list few, I am sure there are lots more ideas but these are just a few on what we touched on today, who knows were it could lead.

Flextangles

I've had this activity bookmarked for ages, just waiting for the right time to try it out and hoping it would work as well as the video shows. They worked brilliantly, I used thin card and then my glue gun to stick them together with but like the look of the Elmer's rubber cement, that they used, so might have to invest in some. The older children loved thinking up different patterns to colour, there is something very therapeutic about these and yes I've enjoyed playing with them too.

                             

Obstacle Course

Having read Going On A Bear Hunt lots of times and will probably carry on reading it lots, as it's a firm favourite here. Anyway today I wanted the children to think about going over, under and through things etc so I set up a mini obstacle course and teddy showed them what to do first. A great way to explore different ways to move, balance and to understand instructions.

So first teddy went through the tunnel,

then under the tables,

round the cones.

Climbing up, sitting on and then climbing down.

Going in something.

Balancing along a rope.

Stepping over some boxes, trying to keep our balance as we did it.

                            

A great hit with my littleones, we then spent time listening as I gave out different instructions e.g. to go in something, I had one in a box, one in a car, one in a tunnel, which was brilliant because it meant they all understood what being in something meant and didn't all head back to the box, that we had used for the first part of the game. Love hearing all the giggles as they tried to go through and under things etc.

Kitchen Roll Art

We had friend's visit the other week and they had fun creating pictures on kitchen roll, following the different dot patterns on the paper. The younger ones struggled to draw on the kitchen roll so they had some sheets of paper to draw on instead.

We then pegged them out on a clothes horse in the garden

they then took a spray bottle of water and sprayed their art work to see what would happen. They were really intrigued with the way the ink spread and run and the difference between the ink on paper and the ink on kitchen roll.

                            

Australia

We have family in Australia and my husband lived out there for a while as a child. Then realised that all the children had some sort of link with Australia or had friends about to go on holiday there, so thought it was a perfect time to do a theme on Australia.

We loved Diary of a Wombat, it's so funny, lovely illustrations had my children in fits of giggles and it got funnier the more time your read it too! We then enjoyed watching this clip on wombats, it is done my the children of Steve Irwin. We discovered they had done lots of videos, so we watched a few of the different animal ones that you might find in Australia, this wasn't all in one go but at different times throughout our theme.

I love reading and sharing books with the children,these are some of the books we used this time.

We spent some time looking at aboriginal art on the computer and the cards I had made up, the children then tried to create their own art, using cotton buds instead of paint brushes, with excellent results.

We watched some clips of Aboriginal dances, with some interesting attempts to do the dances themselves. Listened to some didgeridoo music, then listened to some more songs, nice list of songs can be found here including Waltzing Matilda

After reading Rainbow Bird, we used water colours to create rainbow patterns.

With the older children, well all the children but this was aimed more at the older ones, we looked at Australia and matched up where the different places were. The cards came from Montessori Print Shop these are a free download,  I also bought these which are lovely pictures of Australian animals and some facts about them.

Found were England was and were Australia was on the globe.

Used this book to look at Sydney Opera House, how it was built and some of the close up pictures of the architecture.