During our Winter topic we have started to look at lots of winter animals and cold weather activities.  Here you will find some activities you could explore together at home.

Here are some winter signs you could practise together at home. 

Watch Katy & Benji's video on how to make your own fake snow.  This is a lovely sensory experience to make and play with. You could use paintbrush or your fingers to make marks in the snow. Could you build a snowman or a polar bear or perhaps hide small toys and try and find them again? 

Another lovely activity is to freeze some toy animals, leaves, acorns, berries or other small objects in ice. You can then explore the change and how it feels. This is also a great problem solving task of trying to set them free again. How could you do this quickly?  

 

 

 

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We're Going on a Polar Bear Hunt

In Blue class we have been working on a Sensory story called 'We're going on a Polar Bear hunt'. We use props and beats to tell the story whilst wonderful snow falls around us on the walls in the sensory room. Why not try and have a go at telling the story at home! 

Here is what you could use to help you tell the story...

You could also play this snowy video whilst you tell the story to make you feel like you are in the middle of a snowy adventure!  

Blue class are very good at joining in with the signs and actions too, so let's teach everybody at home the signs too! 

One Snowy Night 

One of the other stories we would have been enjoying in school is 'One Snowy Night' by Nick Butterworth. This is a lovely story all about Percy the park keeper and lots of animals during a cold, snowy winter. There is an animated version to enjoy here

There are some colouring pages and eye spy pages to complete after watching the story that you can download below. 

Looking after Wildlife 

After watching the story of Percy the Park keeper perhaps you could do something kind for wildlife too. There are some lovely resources, activities and information sheets here: 

https://www.wildlifewatch.org.uk/seasonal-wildlife/winter

Learn all about how we can help look after wildlife like birds and hedgehogs during winter. Winter is  difficult time of year for a lot of wild animals when the weather is colder and food is much harder to find so perhaps you might like to explore one of the activities such as making a simple bird feeder or maybe even a DIY hedgehog house like this one.

Learn how to sign 'hedgehog' here:

 Bird Feeder

Or perhaps you might like to make your own bird feeder using recycled materials following these instructions.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/make-a-bird-feeder-from-recycled-materials

Materials

Paper toilet roll, pencil, string, vegetable fat or lard and bird seed.

Let’s get creative!

I wonder if you could have a go at making something together at home this week. There are some ideas here, but you might have an idea of your own too. Just use whatever you have available at home such as cardboard tubes, paper plates, card (even from a cereal box works fine!) tissue paper, cotton wool or even just torn up kitchen paper. Please send us a picture to show us what you come up with, we can’t wait to see!

Time to get moving!

Even when we can't leave the house we can still find different ways to exercise. You could play a movement game pretending to be different winter animals, waddle like a penguin, flap your arms like an owl...what other ways of moving can you think of? 

Or why don't you check out Cosmic kids yoga on youtube or dance along to some funny songs together. 

 

Another great idea is to make your own snowballs to play with inside you could try and knock paper cups over with them or throw them into a target bucket for points!

  

We hope that you enjoy some of these ideas linked to our winter topic, have fun, but most importantly, stay safe!