Chinese Year of the Water Snake

To celebrate the Chinese Year of the Water Snake we have been making snake pictures today.  I started off by drawing a snake outline on card and then cut it out.  Then I used it as a template to make more snakes.  I gave each child a snake and the paint trays filled with poster paint and glitter paint and let them loose with paint brushes and sponges.  Then we let the pictures dry whilst the child that has a nap went to bed.  After a few hours we got the collage material tin (containing buttons, feathers, sequins, stickers and tissue paper) out and PVA glue so everyone could decorate the snakes.  The children enjoyed talking about shapes, colours, textures etc and the sensory experience of gluing the different pieces on their snakes.  The snake pictures turned out brilliant and everyone had a lot of fun making them.

This links in with the EYFS in the following ways :

Mathematics - Shapes, Space & Measures - by opening up discussion about shapes, size and similarities.

Expressive Arts & Design - Exploring & Using Media & Materials - allowing experimentation with colours and mixing & a range of different media.

Communication & Language  - promoting conversation and widening vocabulary.

Personal, Social & Emotional Development - building self confidence by allowing independent choice.

Understanding of the World - talking about animals and a different culture.       

I saw these great printable tangram puzzles on actvity village this morning.

I printed the tangram template in colour and then laminated before printing a selection of the puzzles on grayscale (to preserve printer ink!) and laminated them.  I also printed the black and white template.  Before giving them to Ethan me and my husband had a go.  Some of the puzzles are very tricky but there is great satisfaction in completing them.  I see this resource as something which Ethan and all the other children can play with for a long time.  To begin with I asked Ethan to identify the shapes and he was able to learn a new one in parallelogram.  Then I showed him how they all made a square when fitted together and they could also by made into other things.  Ethan was able to get some of the shapes in the right place on the puzzles but the main point of the activity today was to introduce the concept and allow him to explore the shapes and make connections with minimal intervention.  When Ethan had finished having a go at each puzzle he correctly placed all the shapes back on the black and white template in the right places.

         
This links in with the EYFS in the following ways :

Communication & Language  - promoting conversation and widening vocabulary (colours, shapes and talking through thought processes).

Mathematics - Shapes, Space & Measures - by opening up discussion about shapes, size and similarities & using shapes appropriately for tasks.  Numbers - Counting shapes.