How a Play-based Curriculum Can Help Kids Reach Their Full Potential | ExpatWoman.com
 

How a Play-based Curriculum Can Help Kids Reach Their Full Potential

Let your kids reach their full potential while having fun.

Posted on

3 August 2017

Last updated on 2 January 2018
How a Play-based Curriculum Can Help Kids Reach Their Full Potential
Monroe’s nursery is a British nursery, following the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum (EYFS). This is a play based curriculum enabling each child to reach their full potential whilst having fun.

There are seven areas to this curriculum, 
  • Personal, Social and Emotional Development
  • Communication and Language
  • Expressive art and design
  • Literacy
  • Numeracy
  • Physical Development 
  • Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Let’s take a closer look at what we as professional Early Years practitioners and you as parents can do to help your child’s Expressive art and design.

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Exploring and Using Media and Materials

This area covers singing, making music and dancing. It also covers exploring paint and glue to make things and cutting and sticking with a variety of different materials. 

The children are encouraged to explore materials. 
 
You can help your child here by: 
 
Providing them with glue, paint and scissors to explore with your supervision. It is often a good idea to paint and stick outside if you don’t want mess inside. A washable PVC table cloth is a good investment to cover your table and can be easily wiped clean after use.
 
Put music on for your child to dance to and sing to.
 
Sing nursery rhymes and songs together. Encouraging art activities. Have paints out and paint with your child inside or outside. Have a special collage box with materials, scissors, paper, wool, card, feathers etc in and get it out sometimes and support your child cutting and sticking and creating with it.            

Exploring and Using Media and Materials                 

Being Imaginative

This is about the children creating their own pictures and models and getting involved in an imaginative play.
 
You can support your child here by: 
 
Making things with your child. There are lots of children’s art books around with good ideas in. 
 
Collecting natural things from outside such as stones, feathers, leaves, grass, flowers and stick them on to paper to make a picture. Collecting mud on a paper plate and creating an island by placing twigs and grass and stones on to it. 
 
Making musical instruments out of yoghurt pots and placing rice or cotton wool balls or popcorn inside it and seeing which makes the best noise. What happens to the noise if you fill it to the very top? 

Explore and make with play dough.
 
Explore and make with empty, clean packets and containers. You could make a dragon, or a castle, or a car, the list is endless.
 
Making small worlds with plastic animals and using these to make up stories. A washing up bowl with water and blue food colouring in can become the ocean with a plastic shark and fish and dolphin and boat in the bowl for story creating. An area of grass in the garden can become a jungle with little people and a folded piece of cardboard to be a tent and plastic wild animals to hide in the grass and plants. 
 
Make dens with your child draping a sheet over a table and going inside. This could be a cave or a castle or anything your child chooses it to be. 

playdough
                                 
You can make your own playdough for your child to create with.

Ingredients 
  • 1 cup of plain flour 
  • 1 cup of water (add food colouring if you want a colour) 
  • ½ cup of salt 
  • 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 
  • 1 table spoon of oil

Instructions 
 
Mix flour, salt and cream of tartar together add the water and oil and stir. Cook in a pan stirring it till it forms a ball that isn’t sticky or cooks in the microwave. 
 
If cooking in the microwave, place it in a microwavable container and heat for 2 minutes then stir. After this heat for 20 seconds at a time stirring each time until it has formed a non-sticky dough. Allow it to cool. This mixture can be played with time and time again if stored in the fridge in a sealed container in between uses. If left out in the air it will eventually harden.
 
 

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