Home Visit 1

Using familiar logos from packets – played matching and pairs card games. Left child and parents scissors, glue and scrapbook to collect logos and print – and make more games at home.

Event 1

Environmental print hunt (walk and on tram) with photos taken previously of signs on route. Families worked and talked together to find the signs. The journey ended with a trip on the wheel in city centre, and then on to Millennium Galleries. All enjoyed the event and talked of the enthusiasm they and their children had for the project. There was a real sense of community and shared goals.

Home Visit 2

A bag with a selection of books, catalogues and magazines taken to home (matched to child’s interest and stage) and shared with family. Camera and scrapbook left with encouragement to take and collect photos of anyone reading/ different places and things to read.

Event 2

Walk to Central Library and met the children’s librarian. Parents and children chose books and sat down together to read. The librarian read a story to the group. There was a story about a scarecrow followed by the Gingerbread Man and then a craft session.  Children enrolled in library. Then a visit to a bookshop where children chose books for the nursery library. 

Home visit 3

A writing pack containing crayons, pens, paper, envelopes, notebooks, card, pencils, sharpener, rubber and post-its taken and explored at home.  Play writing tasks matched to child’s interests and level – shopping lists, notes on post-its with messages for family, letter to nursery key group.  Talked with parents about stages of early writing (REAL manual)

Event 3

Visit to local museum Weston Park. Walked around the grounds before being met and shown round by museum staff. The staff had prepared packs containing pencils, paper, event information and postcards to take home. Parents and children wrote the cards together and posted them. Many families had never been to the museum before and liked it so much that they plan to go again. The next day the postcards arrived and the children were very excited.

Home visit 4

Microphone, tape recorder, rhyme books and language photo cards – to encourage singing of songs and rhymes.  Talked about the importance of listening and talking, and telling stories. Recorded children singing and left recorder to encourage continuation.

Event 4

Visited a local park (Cholera Ground) and met the Ranger (Nell) who described bogarts who come out at night to protect the environment. Each child was given a piece of clay to make a bogart and a house for it to live in and Nell showed how twigs, feathers, leaves and grass could be used.  Parents and children worked together and then invented and told stories about how their bogarts moved, how they protected the park. Finished with a fruit picnic and played circle games.