During the summer holidays, parents, carers and children are able to spend valuable time together. Some families will travel in this country or abroad to stay for a week or two with relatives or in holiday accommodation. Others will enjoy day trips and long weekends. Whether long or short, holiday trips offer great opportunities to develop the six areas of learning.
Early years practitioners can make the most of children's anticipation - or allay any of their fears or over-excitement before the trip - with a holiday project, and also help them to reflect on their experiences after they've come home.
Through the topic, you can show children how they can help their families to prepare for their trip, with activities to pack cases, bags and picnics. You can prepare them for new experiences, talking about different modes of transport and dramatising how they might travel.
Before the summer break, ask the children's families to take photographs and collect holiday mementoes such as leaflets, bus tickets, stubs from entrance tickets, shells and seaweed, and to encourage children to find out about the places they visit.
Part 1 12 April
A-L Have a nursery picnic
C-I Role play holiday picnics
Part 2 19 April
A-L Create a train track
C-I Recreate holiday journeys
Part 3 26 April
A-L Share holiday stories
C-I Recreate family memories
Activity 1
A-L Moveable feast
Organise a nursery picnic.
Planned learning intention
To use suitable tools and to explore colour, texture, shape and form while responding in a variety of ways to what they see, hear, smell, taste and touch
Adult:child ratio Whole group, then 1:4
Resources
Nursery World poster selection of stories that include holiday destinations such as Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell (Campbell Books, 4.99), You Can Swim Jim by Kaye Umansky and Margaret Chamberlain (Red Fox, 4.99), There it is! by Richard Fowler (Campbell Books, 3.99) and One Farm by Benedict Blathwayt (Hutchinson, 9.99; Red Fox, 4.99 from May) picnic food (see back of Nursery World poster for ideas), picnic boxes, cutlery, crockery, tablecloth, rug
Preparation
Share storybooks with the children that include holiday or day trip destinations.
Step by step
* Ask the children to sit in a circle. Look at the Nursery World poster and the 'holiday' story books. Have the children been to the seaside? the zoo? a farm? Encourage them to talk about their experiences. Who did they go with? Why did they go there? What did they do there? What was the weather like? Did they have a picnic? Suggest having a nursery picnic.
* Explain to the children why they must wash their hands and wear clean aprons while preparing food for their picnic.
* While preparing the picnic food, show the children and discuss.
* Throughout, encourage the children to say which foods and drinks they like and dislike and to choose any fillings, fruit, etc that they want for their picnic food.
* Ask them to describe the foods and say if they are 'hard', 'soft', 'bendy', 'sticky'. Let them smell the ingredients.
* Discuss the consistency of different foods.
* Encourage children to identify shapes in food, for example, the circles of sliced tomatoes, the triangles of cut sandwiches, the rectangles of sliced bread.
* Encourage the use of other mathematical language. Do the children want to 'half' and 'quarter' the sandwiches?
* Pack all the sandwiches into boxes. Which is biggest? Which has the most food in it?
* Count how many people need cups and plates. Let the children count them as they are packed into the bag.
* When everything is ready, go outside to share the picnic.
Stepping stones
* Children with little experience may benefit from working within a group of more confident peers. They may need adult help to choose their fillings while cooking. They may want to hold hands with a confident peer or an adult when outside.
* Children with some experience will need only a little adult guidance to pursue the activity in the correct sequence. They will participate happily outside.
* Children with more experience will have good vocabulary and an understanding of the task. They will organise their peers making the food and when having the picnic.
Extension ideas
* Encourage the children to look again at the collection of storybooks. Discuss the seaside, farm, zoo, swimming pool and play park. Pretend that the dolls want the children to take them on imaginary holidays, to the seaside (sand pit); farm (toy farm); zoo (model zoo); swimming pool (water bath); and play park (slides and climbing frame). Write notices, such as 'to the zoo' on card for the children to place by the activities.
* In preparation for playing the 'Pass the passport' circle game on the back of the Nursery World poster, discuss the need for passports when travelling abroad and show the children a real passport. Has it any stamps in it? Why? Encourage the children to dictate a list of things to pack when going on a day trip or holiday such as a raincoat, swimming costume, pyjamas, underwear, toothbrush, T-shirt, shorts, sandals.
Activity 2
C-I Takeaway food
Provide resources to encourage the children to develop holiday stories and prepare a picnic.
Resources
Resources from extension ideas (above), playdough in various colours, rolling pins, cutters, knives, wrapping paper, sticky labels, pencils, picnic bag, crockery, cutlery, tablecloth
Play suggestions
* The children can make up their own stories about visits and imaginary situations, playing with dolls in the sand, water bath, with farm and zoo animals and turning the home corner into an hotel, holiday apartment or caravan.
* Give the children time to experiment with the playdough. They will enjoy the experience of handling the material and tools before settling down to make their own play picnic food.
* Let them wrap up the picnic and 'write' on the labels. More able children will attempt to write their names and a few familiar letters as names for the dolls.
* Provide as many items as possible that are needed on a picnic to further develop children's play.
* If possible, let the children have free access to the outdoor play area so that the reticent children may explore moving between the two settings.
Possible learning outcomes
* Continues to be interested, excited and motivated to learn
* Develops independence and confidence using the selection of resources
* Participates confidently in new activities, initiates ideas and speaks in a familiar group
* Interacts with others, negotiates plans and activities and takes turns in conversation
* Writes on the labels holding a pencil effectively to form recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed
* Uses mathematical language to describe shape, size and number
* Handles tools and malleable materials safely and with increasing control
* Expresses ideas through imaginative role play.
