10 in the Bed

There were ten in the bed and the little one said - roll over, roll over, so they all rolled over and one fell out...

This is one of our family's favourite rhymes, it's great fun to sing it when we are all in the bed together as a family on the weekend mornings to 'roll over' and make Daddy fall out.

This lovely Ten in the Bed book illustrating the song is published by Child's Play is bright and colourful and features ten children snuggled in bed. The book includes a cardboard wheel for the reader to turn at every page to tip one child at a time out of bed which is a great visual aid to show children the concept of taking one away each time.

Another brilliant visual prompt for this song are these lovely 10 in the Bed Song Mitts. Designed to fit an adult’s hand, song teaching mitts are perfect for using with young children and will provide hours of fun. This pair of glove puppets come with a song card in case you need help with the words and will help children join in the rhyme and learn counting skills.

Grandma bought the boys Penny Dale's book Ten in the Bed and it has quickly become a firm favourite. This lovely adaptation features 'the little one' and his soft toys all squashed into bed (sound familiar?). One by one, nine friends roll over and fall out of his bed with a bang, a thump, or a plop until... "I’m cold! I miss you!" the boy says, and back in the bed they all go and snuggle down to sleep. This book has lovely colourful illustrations with lots of detail and things to spot.





Other activities to go with this song:

• talk about bedtime, what you need, what happens
• sequence a set of 'bedtime routine' photos / pictures
• match together things in the bedtime routine - milk and biscuit, pyjama top and trousers, toothbrush and tooth paste, pillow and duvet
• sequence the numbers 1-10 (and 10-1)
• make up a 'bed' on the floor and act out the song

Got any more ideas? please comment on this post and share them wih us.

Worm Week

Did you know that this week (23rd-29th March 2009) is Worm Week?

Organised by the charity Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust, Worm Week is a great way to get children interested in nature. Most children could identify a ‘worm’ but would not necessarily know much about them – what they eat, how they live, how they produce young and why they are important to humans and other animals.

Earthworms play a crucial role in the production of our food. They live underground in the soil, feeding on decaying materials and turning them into fertile soil which is perfect for growing healthy crops and plants. Worms also play a vital role in the food chain providing food for lots of other animals such as birds and hedgehogs.

Buglife has produced a number of worm resources - check out worm craft activities, Teaching Resources - Worksheet 1- Body Parts of an Earthworm, Worksheet 2 - Life Cycle of an Earthworm, Worksheet 3 - Earthworm in a Food Chain, Worksheet 4 - Worm Charming Investigation Recording Sheet (plus a Earthworm Factsheet containing the answers!).

Do let us know about the fun you've had finding the worms in your garden!

Wikki Stix Activity Ideas

What are Wikki Stix?

Wikki Stix are waxy sticks which look a bit like pipe-cleaners. They are made from a combination of a strand of acrylic, hand-knitting yarn and a microcrystalline, food-grade, non-toxic wax. Wikki Stix stick to smooth surfaces (like the Wikki Stick boards included in the Activity pack or onto white boards) and to each other. They are a colourful, tactile, sensory and engaging product that can be used in many different ways.

Who can use Wikki Stix?

Wikki Stix can be used by children and adults alike. Their non-toxic nature means that they are safe even for children who may try to eat them however their use should be supervised. Wikki Stix are also great for children with various disabilities – they are fun for children to manipulate and can be used to help children develop their fine motor skills, their clean mouldable nature makes them an ideal ‘fidget’ toy and their ability to make 3D pictures makes them a great resource for children with sight difficulties.

How to use Wikki Stix

There are endless uses for Wikki Stix so use your imagination to see what you can create however we have included some ideas here:

During pre-writing activities, Wikki Stix can be used to create patterns and mazes to draw between. They can also be used make raised edges to colouring pictures to make colouring inside the lines easier. In handwriting exercises, Wikki Stix can be used to make a raised border margin to show where to start and stop on the edges of the paper, or to make raised lines to prompt letter placement and size. Wikki Stix can also be used to create boxes to write letters / numbers within. Different colour Wikki Stix can be also used to add prompts of where to start and where to stop. Wrapping a Wikki Stix around the base of a pencil can also be used as a grip and a reminder of how to hold the pencil. Placing a Wikki Stix under the top of the paper will help prevent slippage during writing and drawing activities.

Wikki Stix are also good for kinaesthetic learning activities. Once patterns / letter and numbers have been created they can be traced with the finger to practice the formation. A fun game is to try to identify letters, numbers or shapes by touch alone.

Playing with Wikki Stix can help develop a range of creative skills. They can be moulded to form shapes, letters, numbers and pictures. As they are easy to peel up and reposition modelling with Wikki Stix is virtually ‘mistake-free’ which helps build self-esteem. Wikki Stix are a quiet and creative fidget tool, providing a calming effect which may help children better focus on classroom activities. Wikki Stix may help generate verbal interaction, as children create while using them. This may also be helpful in the development of social skills, through tactilely engaging play.

In literacy activities, Wikki Stix can be used to highlight parts of words or a sentence. A Wikki Stix cut into shorter lengths can be used to show the division of words into syllables. Different colours of Wikki Stix can be used to code types of words in a sentence for example red = adjectives, blue = nouns and green = verbs or divisions of compound words. Wikki Stix can be used to loop or underline responses for example; words that rhyme, have a certain ending or include certain sounds.

In numeracy activities, Wikki Stix can be used to teach concepts of long and short, as well as maths symbols. They can be used as counters, to demonstrate place value and also for patterning and sequencing.

Wikki Stix can also be used to improve independence and self-help skills. Wikki Stix can outline the area where an item should be placed, for example a cup on the table or toothbrush on the shelf. A Wikki Stix threaded through the hole on a zip and twisted makes it easier to pull up and down with the Wikki to hold onto improving independent dressing skills.

Buy Wikki Stix!

Wikki Stix are part of a range of Fine Motor Activities available from Littlesheep Learning.

The Communication Cookbook

BT and the children's communication charity I CAN have developed The Communication Cookbook, a resource book of activities to support children’s language and communication development.

The Communication Cookbook it focuses on 5 essential ingredients that support children’s communication skills, and contains simple recipes to help parents and teachers to develop these in skills in children.

These five essential ingredients are:

• Attention and Listening
• Vocabulary
• Building Sentences
• Story Telling
• Conversations

Download your copy of The Communication Cookbook here and find out how to help your child learn to communicate.

Encouraging Reading

As this year is the National Year for Reading and next week includes World Book Day, I thought I would write a post about how parents can encourage their children to read. Most parents (and grandparents) want their children to do well at school and want to support their learning so here are some ideas to help. The trick is to find ways of fitting this into busy schedules and to keep it fun. Even very young children can benefit from 'sharing books' − discussing pictures, looking at words, talking about the story and characters.

When trying to start reading activities with your children it is important:

• keep it short
• choose the time carefully − not while your child's favourite TV programme is on or when they are tired etc
• do it regularly − 10 minutes every day or three times a week is better than trying to fit in a 'long session' at the weekend
• make it enjoyable
• understand the task and the learning purpose
• use rewards.

Some ideas for reading activities:

• use the local library for free access to a variety of different books to stop you getting bored of the same ones (unfortunately young children do like repitition so be prepared to need to read the same book every day for weeks!).
• play reading games including; I spy, bingo, letter and word lotto, word jigsaw games for example, Nonsenses and Pass the Word
• put a word of the week on the fridge, you could use word flashcards or magnetic words / letters
• find time to listen to your child read and read to them.
• ensure that incidental reading is part of everyday activities; reading recipes, DIY instructions and travel brochures can all provide opportunities for reading in the home over and above books and comics
• read the same book as your older independent reading child and then then talk with them about the characters, the plot and their favourite parts.

Five Little Ducks

Everyone knows the rhyme 5 Little Ducks went swimming one day and this is an excellent rhyme to use to start teaching children about counting and about ducks. Here are some ideas!

Activity ideas:
Different activities will be suitable for children of different ages so you may be able to revisit this list over a number of years!

• Go and feed the ducks
• Play with bath ducks in water
• Share rhymes about ducks (see suggestions below)
• Share books about ducks (see suggestions below)
• Play with the 5 Little Ducks Teaching Song Mitt
• Draw and colour pictures of ducks
• Talk about the noise ducks make - you could play listening games and listen for the duck
• Talk about where ducks live
• Talk about the lifecycle of ducks from eggs, to ducklings to grown up ducks

Songs and Rhymes
The most popular duck rhyme has to be 5 Little Ducks went swimming one day (start with 3 for younger children!), this is a rhyme that varies everywhere it is sung but here is our version!

Five little ducks went swimming one day,
Over the pond and far away,
Mummy Duck said "quack, quack, quack, quack",
But only four little ducks came back.

Repeat with four little ducks, then three, then two, then one until 'no little ducks came swimming back'. Then we sing:

Daddy duck went swimming one day ,
Over the pond and far away,
Mummy Duck said "quack, quack, quack, quack",
And all the ducks came swimming back.

Another rhyme is:

Five little ducks that I once knew,
Three were fat and skinny were two,
But the one little duck,
With the feather on his back,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack.

Down to the river they would go,
Wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble, to and fro,
But the one little duck,
With the feather on his back,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack.

Back from the river they would come,
Wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble, ho, hum, hum,
But the one little duck,
With the feather on his back,
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack.

Lastly,

Isn't it a bit of luck
That I was born a baby duck
With yellow socks and yellow shoes
I can go wherever I choose?
Quack, quack, quack quack

Books

There are many books based on the 5 Little Ducks song, my favourite is

• Five Little Ducks by Penny Ives

Other 'duck' books include:

• One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root and Jane Chapman
• Nine Ducks Nine by Sarah Hayes
• Duck (Read & Learn: Life Cycles) by Richard Spilsbury
• From Egg to Duck (How Things Grow) by Sally Morgan
• I am a Duck by Linda Bygrave