Monday 7 January 2013

New Role Play Area

The Space Station

I think role play areas are my favourite! I do like creating these lovely spaces for the children to work in.

This term, it’s a space station!

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It’s not quite finished yet,  but I think my TA has done such a fantastic job building it that I wanted to show you what it looks like already!

I have more photos of the details!

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Discovery tables are ace! They are only a few £’s from the catalogues that go round and you can put anything in them. You may think that they just take up a lot of space for what they are but they are fantastic for small activities, like these!

The signs behind the activities say, ‘Specimen Jars’ and ‘Alien Eyes.’ The specimen jars are old lemonade bottles filled with water and glitter. The children can shake them, and inspect using the magnifying glass. The alien eyes are a number of different visual toys the children can look through to experience what it would be like to have alien eyes. The children love these activities, and talk about them.

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Build an alien! The children can use the construction toys to make anything they want, really. It’s a space station and anything goes! The activity is called ‘Build an Alien’ but really it’s construction and use of fine motor control that we are trying to encourage.

photo (35) copyI’m not a huge fan of filling all available space with things printed off Twinkl or Sparklebox, but there are some beautiful pictures of celestial objects on these places, and it’s a good opportunity to inspire children’s play and communication skills by seeing these things.

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It is essential to inspire writing opportunities for children in the role play area. This is where they can make the most of their creativity and do independent writing. Include word banks and examples of words for them to copy and read.

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I created two writing stations in my role play area as the children are starting to enjoy writing more and more, and they are at the point where they need to be working on their fine motor skills and letter formation.

I also try to encourage as much speaking and listening as I can, so including old telephones or speaking tubes are excellent ways to encourage lots of topic based language.

That’s all I have so far! But if you check back I will post updated photos later!

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