We are back after a week of school holidays, and ready for the last term! This week our theme was Celebrations, and we mainly focussed our discussions and activities on birthday celebrations and weddings.
Our Crafts
This balloon collage craft was great for practicing scissors skills: I made oval prints on the back of old gift wrap(using a toilet paper tube and ink pad), and the students had to cut them out. They had to count how many balloons they have, stick them down and then cut strings for each balloon. Fine motor skills were used to stick the string down onto a thin glue line, going from the balloons to come together in a bunch. (The word bunch were a new word learned, thus language development too!)
What is a party without cakes, or cupcakes? We made these cupcakes from cupcake liners, painted them with water colours, then added a straw as the “candle” and cut a wick from orange cardboard. So easy!
For this craft we used water balloons(just because I had them, but normal balloons could work too), dipped them into paint(we used blue and yellow paint to see what happens when it mixes too), and pressed the balloons all over a large paper(unprinted newsletter paper). After it dried, we added the words “Happy Birthday”/ “Lekker Verjaar”(Afrikaans) on the paper, making it a perfect personal gift wrapping paper for a loved one!
These crown were a quick activity at the end of the day, one could make it more pretty if you have more time. The children just decorated a long rectangle piece of cardboard, we stapled the two ends together, and voila: a birthday crown!
Pretend Play
For our pretend play area I set up a cupcake shop. I’ve used the cupcake stand we had for my daughter’s party earlier this year,together with some silicone cupcake moulds and a game I’ve found in my store room. This was great fun for the students, playing some were the customers, one took the “orders”, one was the “baker” and one the “sales person”. The game calls for using mathematical skills, language/communication skills, pretend- play skills and so much more, while having fun!
Sensory Activities
We played with coloured rice: first exploring the texture, then making cupcakes, and also playing pretend wedding with the dolls.
Playdough activities included making cupcakes too, and using bottle tops and sticks to create anything imaginable!
Simple Science
For an experiment we used the water balloons again(here you also can use regular balloons). I filled two with water, (of which I froze the one), and the third one only contained air. The kids could feel the difference in the weight, we discussed the difference between gas, liquid and solids, and then we dropped them into water to see what happens. Afterwards we broke the balloons open to view what was inside too. Simple science= simple hands-on learning that will be remembered!
Another great week with lots of learning fun! Next week we will continue with this theme, but focus more on celebrations such as New Year, Valentine’s Day, Easter etc.
If you want to see more on our class themes and activities of last term, you can find it all here!
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