Working with early years children we are told to follow their interests and centre their play and development around the things that they are already currently enjoying.
Whilst I agree that this works well, what we also have to remember is that children will only ever be interested in what they know and its up-to us to introduce then to new things and spark new interests.
A great way to introduce new interests is to use themes, plan a few activities covering all the areas of development around the theme of your choice and see what your children make of it.
The areas of development being:
Personal, social and emotional development
Communication skills
Physical development
Literacy
Mathematics
Expressive Arts and Design
Understanding the world
Fun Themes
Here is my list of favourite themes to use with your little learners:
- Buildings – take a walk to observe the buildings in your community
- Shops – imaginative play setting up a flower shop or ice cream shop are always enjoyed here. Plus a trip to the grocery store or post office can offer great learning opportunities
- Weather
- Autumn
- Spring
- Summer
- Winter
- All about me – a circle time chatting about likes and dislikes is a fun way to get to know about each other.
- Alphabet fun – Tracing letters is great for enhancing fine motor skills
- Farm animals – Why not plan a visit to your local farm and see some animals in real life?
- Zoo animals
- Dinosaurs
- Under the sea
- Construction play – Is there a construction site you can visit? If not some digger toys and pebbles can still offer hours of fun
- Colours
- Holidays – take a pretend camping trip in the garden
- Gardening
- Healthy Eating (and oral care) – get the pretend food out and have a tea party, try not to condemn any foods through, remember to teach variety and moderation.
- Shapes – A scavenger hunt exploring different shapes around us can be fun
- Life cycles
- Mini beasts – young children are often fascinated by mini beasts, why not try a scavenger hunt and see how many you can find.
- Plant earth
- Number fun – its never too early to start working on those problem-solving skills
- Opposites
- Bodies
- Hair salon – You can get doll heads with plenty of hair to allow the children to get creative in this role!
- People that help us
- Mummies and daddies – Kids love taking care of babies, get the baby dolls out and help children give them a bath, dress them, feed and burp them.
- Pirates
- British values
- Road safety
- Senses
- Snow and Ice – Small objects set in frozen ice is one of the best ways of encouraging children to explore this cold activity, try providing some small tools or pipits of warm water are another good way to free the toys.
- Outer space – cardboard boxes make great spaceships
- Super heroes – there’s plenty of action figure s available to help with this one
- Fairy tales – fairy tale books are a great place to start with this theme then see where the child’s imagination take them
- Starting School
- Transport
- Exercise – Running, jumping, climbing are great for developing good gross motor skills as well as being a lot of fun
- Doctors and Nurses – create your own doctor’s office with some dressing up clothes and accessories, encourage the children to try playing the different roles
- Celebrations around the world
- Christmas
- Easter
- Halloween – Do you have space for a pumpkin patch? Our children love plating their pumpkin seeds in the spring and watching them grow over the summer!
Book Themes
Books also make great themes, our favourites include:
- The 3 little pigs
- Red riding hood
- The hungry caterpillar
- The gingerbread man
- Goldilocks and the 3 bears
- Were going on a bear hunt
- Dear zoo
- The Gruffalo
- There was an old lady who swallowed a fly
- The elves and the shoe maker
Fun Activities
Although I’ve added some simple ideas to a few of the themes above there is much more that can be explored, for each theme i would recommend trying around 5 activities including:
Reading a story that relates
Chatting in general about the theme
Plan an outing of some kind
Encourage role play/pretend play
Make something creative
Use a computer to enhance learning
Try to add an activity including some counting or shape speech.
Free play
Whilst themes are a great opportunity for introducing new learning and interests its vital to remember that unstructured play is an important part of a child’s life. So with this in mind ensure you allow lots of time for free play.
I hope you’ve found some new ideas here and have fun exploring a few with your children, if you also enjoy nursery rhymes then check out my favourites here.
