Free Play Ideas: Groupings of animals - (help the children identify the animals families)
Dress Ups - (talk about different roles that family members play)
Cars/transportation - (place that they may go with their families, making a home)
Table top Activities:- Colouring of pictures about families
- Sacrament Manners Matching game
(this reinforces what they have learnt having just come in from Sacrament, and encourages them to remember to be reverent during Nursery), Tilly and Brooklyn loved talking about the things we do at church, "we say prayers" "bread and water" "we say shhhh!!! when it gets noisy".
Clean Up time is always so great, each one of our Nursery children love to clean up, we sing our clean up songs (Clean Up, Cleaning our Nursery is fun to do) they all got a "happy feet" sticker for being so busy and quicky cleaning the Nursery.
After music, we get ready for snack time, Manaaki who is one of our older children in Nursery has taken on a "chef's" role and helps the Nursery teachers to prepare our snack; counting the children (ticking off their names), counting out the plates and cups, setting the tables....he did such a great job...he's our new Nursery Master Chef!
Usually, when the children are eating I read a story....today we read "I Udderly love you" about a family of cows who love their little chalf. I introduced the story by talking about our lesson about families and that this story was about a family of what? (Cows...Manaaki added:-) I had a Daddy Cow, Mummy Cow and a little baby cow.....they children were curious and attentive, it is the cutest story about how the parents love the little calf unconditional (when we are happy or sad)....so if you hear the children talking about cows today I promise they were learning the gospel in a fun and interesting way!
Transitioning from snacks to lesson time can be a little challenging as some children are still eating and others finish quick smart, we encourage them to put their leftovers in the bin and clean their dishes putting them in the snack basket and while we await the other children we blow bubbles, or balloon, or something interactive while we await all the children to gather on the mat.
We generally do singing time of our own, and are learning head shoulders knees and toes, hands upon our heads, I love mother she loves me, Open, shut them (which always precedes our lesson), the lesson was introduced by a large portrait of my own family, the children were very interested and Chase quickly recognised me in the picture, we talked about the people in our families, and used a dice with members of the family on it, and asked them if they had brothers and sisters...
( Manaaki said proudly "I am a brother"), (Brooklyn said "I have a mum her name is Des"), (Tilly said I have a family), I talked about our Heavenly Father and brother Jesus Christ and that he sent us to families so we can learn each other.
This was the best part of the day to hear about your families!
Over the next month, I am putting together a "I Love my Family" poster for our Nursery so please email or bring a long a picture for us to talk about before our lesson times, we really enjoyed it!
