Home corner
Everything - including the kitchen sink - is now available from early years suppliers to support your early years topic on My home.
The sink, new to Hope's range of home-corner products (19.95, tel: 08702 414400), comes with a working tap (just fill the back of the sink and press the button) and 17 pieces including sink drainer, cutlery, plates and sink drawer.
Where space is tight, the kitchen cube, (Hope, 249.95, see below) has a sink, cooker and cupboards and takes up floor space of just 70 x 62cm.
If it's a complete and highly realistic kitchen that you are after, check out the Premier range, exclusive to NES Arnold (tel: 0870 6000 192). The range includes everything from a washing machine (107.95) and microwave (94.95) to a double sink (139.95).
Simple coloured or natural wood panels offer lots of flexibility over the shape of your home corner and the theme of your role-play area. Coloured panels with windows, doors or shelves cost from 49.95 to 93.95, while natural ones range in price from 49.95 to 92.75, all from NES Arnold. Galt's (tel: 08702 424477) range includes panels with numbers, the alphabet and a clock (price range 57.95 to 69.95).
Sturdy and versatile home-corner furniture in natural wood is also available from Community Playthings (tel: 0800 387457). The range includes high cabinets (100), a stove (110), a dishwasher (120) and a fridge (130).
An extensive range of household gadgets and utensils is available from the main suppliers. New to Hope's range is a 48-piece bulk baking set (21.95), with everything you need for baking from mixing bowls and rolling pins to pastry wheels and whisks. Galt has added a natural wood ironing board (Pounds 24.95), vacuum cleaner (31.95) and toaster (19.95) to its range.
And if food supplies are running low in your home-corner kitchen, stock up with cut-and-play fruit and vegetables (Hope, 17.95 per set or 29.90 for two).
Make sure that the 'babies' in your home corner are realistic and include different ethnic backgrounds. Newborn baby dolls, black and white, are available from Hope (9.95 each).
Small-world play
Settings shouldn't neglect small-world play. There are numerous doll's houses on the market. Galt's wooden house (36 x 58 x 63cm, 94.95) is sturdy and well built. Galt also has a new range of doll's bedroom furniture at Pounds 18.95 per set, with living room, kitchen and dining room furnitureat Pounds 17.95. As for small-world people, my favourite is Playmobil. The Playmobil1-2-3 family set contains two families of five members each (NES Arnold, Pounds 9.95).
Bricks
Have plenty of bricks, large and small, for children to build their own houses. Jigsaw bricks (15 x 20 x 5cm) have side-joining pieces so that children can build round corners (NES Arnold, 74.95 for a set of 28 bricks and 28 side pieces). Community Playthings has a pre-school set of hollow blocks (790 for 52 pieces in six shapes).
Puzzles
All Kinds of Families is a set of eight ten-piece puzzles available from Step by Step at 59.95 (tel: 0845 300 1089). Included is a range of people of different ages, races and family backgrounds. For a simple puzzle, try My first jigsaw house from Wesco (5.90, tel: 01376 503590).
Books
There is a wide choice of contemporary and traditional stories that will contribute to a topic on My home. There is perhaps no better story dealing with the concept of home than Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Red Fox, 5.99).
It opens with Max behaving badly in his house and sees him transported to another place where he can live out his wild fantasies. Yet he yearns, eventually, to be back home, 'where someone loves him best of all', which is where he finds himself safely at the end of the book.
The time it took Tom by Nick Sharratt and Stephen Tucker (Scholastic, Pounds 9.99) contains a wonderful list of household furnishings and can provide an excellent stimulus for 'painting' and 'decorating' with water (see Activity 4, page 13).
Lazy Lion by Mwenge Hadithi (Hodder, 4.99) focuses on animal homes in the wild, and The Wolf is Coming by Elizabeth MacDonald (Picture Lions, Pounds 4.99) highlights the homes of domestic animals on the farm.
On The Way Home by Jill Murphy (Macmillan, 4.99) is a great stimulus for inventing stories about children's journeys from home to nursery (see Activity 1, page 14). Claire has grazed her knee and gives each friend that she meets on her way home a different version of how it happened. Was she knocked over by a crocodile or dropped by a dragon or did she cut it while escaping from a wolf, a giant, a gorilla, or a witch...?
Reinforce children's awareness of addresses and posting letters throughThe Jolly Postman by Janet and Allan Ahlberg (Heinemann, 10.99).
Traditional tales can play an important part in a topic on My home (see page 17). Anthony Browne has produced an excellent retelling of the gory tale Hansel and Gretel (Walker Books, 4.99), using a traditional style for the text, accompanied by powerful contemporary illustrations.
Software
The popular Blob charcter has been revamped for his 12th birthday. Blob 1 and 2 for Windows, by Widgit (35.25 including VAT from REM, tel: 01458 254700), is a combination of two programmes with ten games, one of which involves helping Blob along a pathway to his home. This CD-Rom (or floppy) is excellent for promoting early keyboard skills, ideal for children with special needs and offers lots of scope for differentiation.
Cameras
Photographs are an indispensable part of a topic on homes, so now might be a good time to invest in a camera for the nursery. For ideas on what to buy and how to get the best results, see Nursery World's eight-page pullout on photography (Nursery World, 1 March 2001).
