Tuesday 15 October 2013

Halloween's a comin'...

http://goo.gl/AY6J4L
I'm in the midst of planning my Halloween art projects at the moment and have come across an amazing blog called 'Artventurous'. It has loads of great art ideas for those moments where the creative juices just aren't flowing!
Check out the blog to see some nice Halloween art lessons, including my personal favourites: In a Dark, Dark Wood and 3D Witch Faces.

http://artventurous.blogspot.ie/2012/10/in-dark-dark-wood.html

If you are looking for more Halloween lesson ideas and have not checked out my post Halloween Havoc!, I'd love you to have a look and let me know how some of them work out for you!

Monday 7 October 2013

Play Areas in Infant Classrooms

While I have posted about literary and maths centers in infants before, I haven't posted about play/oral language centers yet and have had some requests to do so!

As with most infant teachers, I prefer to use a rota with the various groups in my classroom during play. I have a chart up on the door of the classroom with the group names written on it and the activities which are laminated, cut out and have Velcro on the back of them, stuck on beside each named group. I rotate the activities each morning so that the children are playing with something different each day and get a turn at every station.

The activities I include on my chart are listed below along with the clip art I use to represent each on my poster.

1. Lego and Jigsaws:
                                                    
2. Dolls (clothes, cot, bottle, etc) and cars:
 3. Doctor's Kit:

4. Restaurant/kitchen: 
 5. Shop:
 6. Sandpit (Only three children are allowed at this activity at one time so it is usually combined with another activity):

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Hope you find this post useful for giving you some ideas of what you could include on your play rota. If you have any other great ideas for play areas in the classroom, I'd love to hear them in the comments section below.