Autumn Term 2020 The Naughty Bus
Continuing on the Transport theme for this half term, this week we are looking at The Naughty Bus.
Notes from the Author: I wanted to make this a book that would be visually and mentally stimulating and in which children could recognise themselves and the ways in which they like to play. Floor play is where children learn to exercise their imagination, where they create their own characters and stories, and where they explore the ideas they have about inter-personal relationships and the world about them. I think children need to be encouraged to do more of it. So the text I've used is in the form of speech only, to reflect how children play and the photographs are shot at child's eye level to make the scenes easy to 'read'. I hope adults will enjoy it too, so they'll want to read it with their children and work out together what on earth is going on - and who's the naughty one - the bus or the boy?
We always enjoy sharing this book with the children and it always leads to such wonderful imaginative play.
Physical Development
As part of this development area children begin to understand the importance of routines related to looking after themselves.
We always explore the importance of healthy teeth during this week.
You can help your child to keep their teeth healthy by
- Brushing their teeth together twice a day
- Helping your child to choose healthy snacks
- Encouraging your child to only drink water or milk between meals from a cup
- Keeping sugary snacks to a minimum and only as part of a balanced meal
- Taking your child to the dentist for regular check ups
Expressive Arts and Design
Allow your child to venture into the world of imagination by providing them with a range of vehicles and characters after sharing the story. If you have a toy bus at home it would be great to hear about what adventures their bus gets up to!
Understanding the World
In the story we see lots of important routines and jobs that happen in our houses, such as washing up and making meals. It is important that children understand what jobs we have to do as parents to keep our houses in order and it is never too early to give your children special jobs to do to help in the houses. At Nursery snack time we already ask the children to collect their own plate and cup, help prepare the snack and clean away their plate. They do a brilliant job of this at Nursery so it would be wonderful if you could encourage this at home too.
Literacy
Phonics- This week’s activity involves using your voice to make sounds.
Show your children how they can make sounds with their voices, for example:
■ Make your voice go down a slide – wheee!
■ Make your voice bounce like a ball – boing, boing
■ Sound really disappointed – oh
■ Hiss like a snake – ssssss
■ Keep everyone quiet – shshshsh
■ Gently moo like a cow – mmmoooo
■ Look astonished – oooooo!
■ Be a steam train – chchchchch
■ Buzz like a bumble bee – zzzzzzz
■ Be a clock – tick tock
In the story there are some examples of using voice sounds can you listen out for them?
Mathematics
At the beginning of the story we hear about the bus driving straight past the waiting bus queue. How many people were in the queue. If your child has some toy characters at home this would be a great opportunity to have a go at trying 1:1 counting. This developmental skill involves counting each object in a set once, and only once with one touch per object.
Encourage your child to line up the characters (like in the story) this will help them to keep track of the characters they have counted.
Point to each object in the set as you say each number word aloud starting at number 1. 1,2,3,4….. When you get to the last object ‘5’ say ‘We have 5 altogether.’
