Spot’s First Easter
Spots First Easter – Eric Hill
Week 1
This week we have started on our new year of Easy Peasy Pods and are very excited to be running this programme for a 3rd year! We have lots of exciting books and activities planned for the year and can’t wait to share our fun with everyone!
For our first book of the year we are starting with Spot’s First Easter, a great book to get us in the mood for spring and Easter.
We started our session by reading through the story with the mums and their little ones, joining Spot the dog and his friend Helen Hippo on an Easter egg hunt! We had great fun reading through the story as Spot is a character that most people are familiar with and the children had fun exploring the book as the different lift the flap sections made it fun and interactive for them and also enabled them to join in with Spot’s Easter egg hunt!
For our activities this week we have spent some time decorating our parent and child room and getting it in the mood for spring. We have made lots of fun and colourful things such as flowers for the wall, cloud and bird mobiles, a big sun for the wall along with bees and other creatures. Our parents and their children had a lot of fun getting creative and enjoyed making the room look a little more lively.
We will be continuing on with lots of different Easter themed activities throughout this book such as making Easter cards and baskets, an Easter egg hunt and even some messy play.
Week 2
This week for Spot’s First Easter we have used our Easy Peasy Pods sessions to do a bit of sensory play.
We read through the book again to start off our session so the children can help Spot with his Easter Egg hunt and get them in the mood for a hunt of their own. We then set out our messy trays with some hidden carrot sticks, rabbit’s tails and bunny droppings (Wotsits, marshmallows and raisins) hidden amongst some colourful shredded paper to help give it more of an Easter feel. We also hid some mini Easter Eggs amongst the paper as an extra treat.
The children had a lot of fun hunting through the paper and finding all the hidden treats and by the end of the session we had some very happy children. For our youngest resident this was a chance to explore the senses and she had a lot of fun laying in a nest of paper and feeling this with her hands.
We have been having a lot of fun with this book and are looking forward to enjoying some more Easter crafts over the next 3 weeks.
Week 3
This week in Easy Peasy Pods we decided to do something a little different due to having such nice weather and have been doing some water play. This was an activity that was requested by our residents and we had lots of fun.
After reading through the book with the children we got out our messy tray and filled this with some water. We also got out some bath toys so the children could play with these in the water which they found very amusing filling the toys and squirting water at each other. We all had great fun splashing around and plan on using water play in some of our other activities.
Week 4
This week in Easy Peasy Pods we have been continuing with our Easter Crafts and have been making some bunny ear headbands. We have been having fun getting crafty over the last few weeks and decided to make bunny ears so we can be our very own Easter bunny.
Our residents enjoyed getting creative and decorating their headbands with different colours and designs. Once these were assembled the children though it was great fun to wear them.
Next week is our last week of reading Spot’s First Easter and we will be making some flash cards to help with the children’s speech development.
Week 5
This week has been our last week of reading Easy Peasy Pods and for our activity we have been making some flash cards. A number of our children in the parent and child provision are reaching the age where they are starting to say their first words so we thought it would be a good idea to make some flash cards of key words within the book to help encourage their speech development.
Our residents had a lot of fun getting creative with making their cards and even the mums who are still pregnant or with young babies made some to put away for their children.
Next week we will be starting on our next book Whatever Next and have lots of fun activities planned.