10 Top Tips for Helping Children to Settle into a New Academic Year
With September just around the corner and the summer nearly over, we thought we would share our top ten tips for helping children to settle into their new class or room this September.
With September just around the corner and the summer nearly over, we thought we would share our top ten tips for helping children to settle into their new class or room this September. Whether you have completed visits to other settings, home visits, all about me books, or settle sessions. Or feel like you haven’t quite done enough yet. There are still practical things that we can do in the first few days to help children to settle quickly into the new year.
1. Make sure that all children have a named peg (or photo on a peg) for their first day to help them feel settled and like they belong.
2. Set-up an activity or guide them to an area of the room based on what you know about their likes and interests. For example, on the get to know you teacher day, Amelia’s mum said she loves to play with babies at home. On her first day make sure that the babies are out in the role-play area for her to play with.
3. For children who have English as an Additional Language make sure that you know keywords in their home language or have pictorial cards to help them communicate. For example, toilet, home, snack, food, drink. To ensure that they are able to communicate their basic needs with you.
4. Spend time in the first few days establishing the routine with your children. Use a visual time table to help the children know what is coming next in the day.
5. Try and ensure the same person if possible greets them in their first week, offering consistency and a familiar face.
6. Take time to agree class or room rules alongside the children, giving them ownership for the space as co-owners. Not an adults space that they are stepping into.
7. Spend time with children 1 on 1 and in small groups to help establish good positive relationships early on. For example, it might be sharing a book together or sitting and drawing together.
8. For children with special educational needs or disabilities, ensure that you have planned and prepared as a team how you are going to meet their needs. If they need additional support with tasks - what will that look like? Who will lead this?
9. Ensure that you have an environment, resources and interactions that promote emotional literacy. For example, emotion resources, opportunities to talk with children about how they might be feeling. Some children may not have the vocabulary yet and might need resources to help them communicate with others there feelings.
10. Get the parents to send in a photo from home of something that the children have done over the summer holiday’s. This can be a great talking point and then can be displayed or made into a book of our summer holiday’s.
What are your top tips for helping children to settle into a new room or class this September? We would love to hear them.
International Tiger Day
International Tiger Day happens on the 29th July 2023. It is a chance to celebrate Tigers, and educate around conservation and natural habitats. This blog post explores ways early years settings can get involved in this day.
What is International Tiger Day?
International Tiger Day is a global celebration that happens every year since 2010, to raise awareness about tiger conservation and natural habitats. People around the world celebrate International Tiger Day in a variety of ways, from information sharing too big events. As a company we are passionate believers that children are our future and that we need to teach them about the incredible world that we live in from a very young age. This is why we are supporting International Tiger Day as a company.
When is International Tiger Day?
International Tiger day is celebrated on the 29th July 2023.
Why Celebrate International Tiger Day?
There are many reasons why people celebrate International Tiger Day and below are some of them:
· In 2010 when International Tiger Day was launched, 97% of all wild tigers had disappeared (National Today)
· To protect endangered species and to tackle illegal poaching (National Today)
· To empower the future generation with knowledge about tiger conservation and natural habitats.
· Because children within their early year’s settings are interested in tigers or animals.
· To teach children about our ecosystem.
Ways of Celebrating International Tiger Day in the Early Years?
Raise money to sponsor a tiger as a setting:
One of the things that you can do as a setting is hold a fundraising event to raise money to either sponsor a tiger a setting or support a tiger conservation project. There are lots of things you can do to fundraise money and below are just 5 ideas:
1. Hold a cake sale.
2. Save 20 p’s in a smarties tube – just send smartie tubes home.
3. Pre-loved clothes sale – ask parents to donate their outgrown preloved clothes and sell them to parents that need them for a donation.
4. Sell produce to parents from the nursery’s allotment or vegetable patch.
5. Have a summer fete with hook the duck, splat the rat and traditional games.
Five of our favourite tiger books:
The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr
Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright by Fiona Walters
The Last Tiger by Becky Davies
Never Touch a Tiger! By Rosie Greening
That’s Not my Tiger by Fiona Watt
Three activities to go with the story The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr:
Set up a tea-making tuff tray with cups, saucers, milk, sugar, jugs, tea pots, tea bags and coffees. For the children to develop their physical skills and communication and language through imaginative play. It also gives lots of opportunities for natural mathematics through exploration e.g. exploring capacity such as full, half-full and empty. Or counting how many spoons full of sugar you would like.
Have a tiger tea party and make invites for your friends and make some yummy treats such as cupcakes and sandwiches. Through setting up a tea party and cooking/making food with the children you can cover all areas of the early years foundation stage in a fun and interactive way. From problem-solving how many chairs you need around the table, to practising physical skills as they mark-make their invites, pour ingredients or learning to retell what happened in the story. The possibilities are really endless.
Make tiger masks so that you can be the tiger who came to tea. Whilst doing this activity you might want to look and talk about the patterns on tigers, how are they different to other animals? Can you get the toy small world animals out and look closely?
(Photo Credit: Chestnut Nursery School 2021 - The Tiger Who Came to Tea - Tea Party).
Paint pictures of tigers and have a tiger art gallery:
Use photos and toy tigers as a stimulus to encourage children to have a go at painting their own picture of a tiger. Host a tiger art gallery exhibiting all the children’s amazing artwork.
(Photo credits left to right: Queensway Infant Academy and Nursery (2023), Ducklings Nursery at Middleton Manchester (2021) and Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Loughton (2021).
India:
70% of the tiger population is in India (National Today), so why not do a mini topic looking at India with the children. Here are five inspirational ideas to get you going on a journey to India:
1. Make passports and tickets, as well as setting up a role play airport and catch a plane to India.
2. Use non-fiction texts to find out information about tigers in India and set up a little news station for the children to share the information they find.
3. Look at different maps and globes and find India.
4. Set up a tuff tray of a tiger habitat and have pictures and information to go with it about tigers in India.
5. Share with children the folktale from India – The Tiger Child. You can find a video of the story here.
We would love to hear how your setting celebrated International Tiger Day. Why not leave us a comment below and let us know?
Creative Ways of Using Phonics Flashcards
We are probably all guilty of having a pack or two of phonics flashcards in our classroom, nursery or preschool; even though this may be considered by some a dated practice and a form of traditional education that is no longer perceived as developmentally appropriate practice. Over recent years we have learnt a lot about how children learn and develop, we know that children are active learners, who learn through play and exploration and hands-on experiences.
The great theorist Piaget believed that children construct knowledge around them through developing mental structures (schemas) that we develop and change through our experience and interaction with the world around us. Where children either accommodate (adapt current ideas to include new ones) or assimilate (create new ideas) as a result of new knowledge and experiences. (McCloed 2018). Piaget was famously quoted to say that “Children have real understanding only of things in which they event!” He felt that it was important to allow children to explore and construct knowledge through play and being given the opportunities to develop their ideas for themselves. They do not learn and develop through being told, but by experiencing and doing is where true learning comes.
Similarly, Vygotsky theorised that children are always a foot taller than themselves in play. He recognised that when children are playing and exploring, they show a greater depth and understanding of learning. They use more in-depth language, higher social skills and skills that are far beyond their normal activities. This is why when we are using our phonics flashcards, we want to make it playful and engaging for children, although, we recognise that this is not true play rather just playful. As true play is uninterrupted, child-led and doesn’t have a planned outcome. Nevertheless, though I do believe that by making our use of phonics flashcards playful, interactive, hands-on and more engaging there is a higher level of learning then simply showing children a flashcard and getting them to repeat the sound.
So, let’s get creative and dust of the phonics flashcards and develop some interactive activities/hands on experiences for children.
1. Letter formation in small trays – use phonics flashcards alongside small trays of items such as salt, coloured sand, coloured rice, paint or PVA glue. Encourage children to copy the formation of the letters in their small individual tray, you can be creative and use a wide range of things to mark-make from fingers, paintbrushes, cars, trains, sticks, fir cones, to feathers.
2. Hide and seek phonics flashcards – hide phonics flashcards around your indoor or outdoor area and go on a sound hunt. Get the children to say the sound they have found, or model the sound to them.
3. Phonics flashcard snap – turn your phonics flashcards into a turn taking game of snap. Great for developing turn-taking and concentration skills.
4. Phonics flashcard memory game – turn your phonics flashcards into a memory game. Take it in turns to find pairs that match. Again, perfect for developing turn-taking skills, concentration skills, learning rules and boundaries of games and developing those all-important memory skills.
5. Phonics Flashcards Walk – Hole punch the flashcards and put them on some string that can go around children’s necks comfortable. Go on a walk and see how many times your children can find the sound they are wearing. You can introduce mathematics doing simple tally charts. Or ICT by taking photographs of them with the sound that they are wearing.
6. Hunt the phonics flashcards in the sand pit – hide the phonics flashcards in the sandpit so the children have to dig and find them. Saying the sound as they find them.
7. Phonics flashcards movement game – Pop the different phonics flashcards around the room or outdoor area where children can see them and get them to move in different ways. For example, can you jump to the ‘s’? This is great for developing skills to listen and follow instructions and moving in different ways.
8. Phonics flashcards pass the parcel – Play pass the parcel with the phonics flashcards, pop the flashcards in a basket or box and pass it around the circle as the music plays. When the music stops the child holding the basket or box has to pick a flashcard and say the sound.
9. Phonics flashcards fishing – Staple the flashcards and put them in a tray of rice coloured blue. Use magnets to fish out your phonics flashcards.
10. I spy letters – Place your flashcards under a rectangle-based glass dish. Put a jar upside down in the glass dish, place in some coloured water of your choosing. Do not lift up the glass jar and it will create a viewing of what is below. Slide the jar around and see what sounds you can find hidden under the water.
11. Phonics flashcards bottle lid hockey - put a large piece of paper on the floor and divide the paper into sections. On either side of each section (up the left hand side and right hand side) place a phonics flashcard with some of the sounds you are learning. On each bottle lid write a vowel or diagraph you are learning such as ‘oo’. The children choose a bottle lid and push it along the paper to see how far it can go. They then read the sounds, for example c - a -t makes cat and have a list to write real and nonsense words.
12. Phonics flashcards hoop leap - Place a phonics flashcard in each hoop e.g. s - a - t and as children jump from one hoop to another they blend the sounds and say the word. You can also get them to make their own words and decide whether they are a nonsense word or a real word.
Growing together offers online 45-minute webinars on overview to phase one phonics and playful phase two phonics. We also offer packages where you can train your whole team (up to 30 people) online for £175 and we provide you with a three-hour training session on phonics (which can be split up across different days). To look at our current online training options please click here or email pauline@growingtogetherearlyyears.co.uk.
Written by Pauline Milsted
Director of Growing Together Developing Early Years