Red Nose Day: laughing and learning
Friday, February 8, 2013
With its focus on raising money by having a laugh, Red Nose Day gives pre-school children the chance to make a difference by doing what comes naturally. Aleks Leimanis, Schools and Youth Manager at Comic Relief, suggests approaches and resources to help practitioners plan powerful, purposeful learning experiences this Red Nose Day
Every Red Nose Day, the Comic Relief team is overwhelmed by the amazing response of early years settings. In 2011, schools and early years groups across the UK pulled out the stops to raise an amazing total of £8.8 million. This money is being used to transform the lives of vulnerable people around the world – from giving children in Africa an education, to supporting young families facing poverty in the UK.
But supporting Red Nose Day isn’t just worthwhile from a fundraising perspective. Growing numbers of early years settings are discovering that Red Nose Day also provides a suitable vehicle for meaningful learning and development that ties in well with the new EYFS areas. The fun of Red Nose Day instantly engages children – why not harness this to get them both laughing and learning?
LEARNING LINKS
With imagination and planning, you can ensure that the children’s Red Nose Day experience contributes to their learning across all the EYFS areas. Below are some ideas to get you started.
What's on hand to help?
Comic Relief’s Early Years Activity Pack provides ideas and resources to help you plan and run activities that will get your children creating, communicating, finding out and feeling good. Resources are inspired by a four-year-old girl called Ronika, who lives in the Mukuru slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Photosheets, posters and a simple poem have been designed to help young children engage with and relate to Ronika’s life. Suggested activities include thinking about what Ronika would need in a new home, making a model house that could be used as a collection box, and finding out more about the chores that Ronika has to do. Order your free pack and download resources at www.rednoseday.com/nurseryworld
Personal, social and emotional development
Develop children’s positive sense of themselves by making them realise that they are helping others by fundraising.
Encourage all of the children to join in with the fun on Red Nose Day to nurture their confidence, self-assurance and willingness to ‘have a go’.
Make the most of opportunities for group activities and encourage children to share, take turns and work together to raise as much money as possible.
Physical development
Organise a sponsored event that gives the children an opportunity to be physically active while raising money. You could keep things simple and opt for a sponsored walk, or branch out with a scoot-a-thon, roly-poly-a-thon or dance-a-thon.
Turn your space into a dance floor and charge a small fee for entrance to a mini-disco.
Talk with the children about the difficulties Ronika faces in staying healthy and the importance of clean drinking water, good food, warmth and cleanliness. Teach them about caring for themselves using the downloadable activity based on household chores.
Communication and language
Share the simple rhyming poem about Ronika’s life with the children.
Talk about the words Ronika uses to describe her home and show the children photographs from the pack to support their understanding. What words would they use to describe their own homes?
Give children opportunities to become more confident speakers by asking them to greet guests arriving for a Red Nose Day event, sell cakes to parents and friends, collect sponsorship, or perform in a fundraising show.
Literacy
Find other poems about children’s everyday lives that you could share with the children alongside Ronika’s poem.
Organise a sponsored read-a-thon to raise money. Could you read the children a set of stories on a red theme? Could they collect sponsorship to share a picture book with their parents every night for a fortnight?
Mathematics
Involve the children in counting the money they raise.
Talk with them about how Comic Relief uses different amounts of money (e.g. £65 pays for a Ugandan child to attend school for a whole year) to increase their understanding of numbers and value.
Make the CBeebies ‘I Can Cook’ recipe for Red Nose Cherry Batter Buns that’s on the Red Nose Day website and get the children measuring and weighing ingredients.
Understanding the world
Use the resources about Ronika to help the children understand how different people around the world live.
Help them find out about Kenya – where it is, the weather, animals that live there and languages spoken.
Talk to them about how people live in your own community. What are the similarities and differences with Ronika’s life?
Expressive arts and design
Ask the children to design a new home for Ronika. Use the downloadable PDF on the Red Nose Day website to help them make a model house that they could use to collect money.
Hold an arts and crafts session then organise an exhibition and invite parents and friends along to invest in the children’s masterpieces!
Put on a show – get your budding superstars to dance, sing or make music and collect donations from parents on the door.
Red Nose Day will take place on Friday 15th March. To order your free Early Years Activity Pack, full of balloons, stickers and posters, and to download resources, visit www.rednoseday.com/nurseryworld
