St George's day

[KatieFS]

Last minute planning for after schoolies for this special but under celebrated day!
Any suggestions for something we could do? Craft stuff etc

[Rubybubbles]

Red and white tissue paper to make a st George's cross

Printable a

Dragons and knights small world

[cupcakencookie]

***** has some nice St Georges Day crafts - dot to dots and colouring pages etc x

[Kirstylob]

Not exactly or strictly related to St George, but as he was the patron saint of England we are going traditional English and making Scones! Good activity and you can eat it, win win!

[natlou82]

Ooh I like the scone making! I was thinking of doing a traditional English activity :-)

[FloraDora]

I start with next steps and then link activities in on the theme that will support them.

So far my plans are:

To support learning to blow - a craft dragon out of a toilet paper tube with thin rectangle strips stuck to top of end - when you blow through it it blows out like fire - they can decorate tube however they want but collage bits, paint and pom poms and goggle eyes will be in the craft box.

Literacy, joining in with rhyme and repeated phrase , listening to stories - focus will be on 2 books : The knight and the dragon and the Usbourne St George and the dragon - the first will also introduce words like fierce, scared, fearless which will give us a way in to discussing our feelings and situations that make us scared.
To encourage visual looking, I have a LO who needs to develop this more we will have a print of two famous George and dragon pictures from the National Gallery displayed this week and I've made a game of can you find to go with them, I use actual things, princess, dragon, cave, knight, sword and horse for younger children and pictures for older ones. The first thing I do with new art pictures is to cover it and then see if they can remember what is in the picture, they love doing this now and often invite me to play this when they draw a picture. They may draw /paint their own picture which we can add to the art gallery door called St George and the dragon this week.
Small world play with Playmobil dragon and Knights and castle and role play with some material that should lend itself to armour and Dragons will encourage communication, new vocabularly and talk. My older LO is developing his joining construction pieces together so the lego castle base and lots of grey bricks should support this with the lego Knights and horses and dragon.
We have loads of Knights and Dragons so throughout the week I'll encourage maths around these, but one LO is looking at the properties of shape so my DH has cut out some big balsa wood shapes that we'll use outside to make a gigantic loose material picture of a dragon. The plan of the activity will be to use the shapes for the body of the dragon using Raphael's famous picture to look at for which shape would be best to represent body, tail, tail end , head etc.. Then we'll put him in a forest by adding leaves and petals and twigs and stones and moss, they are used to making pictures like this so hopefully it will grab their interest.
We will light the fire pit and sit around it Forest school like and talk about why everyone was scared of the dragon, hot flames, colour etc.. And then if the weather holds up we'll cook some bread twizzles on long hazel sticks over the fire as it calms down. One LO is scared of fire as parents have put the fear there, she is getting better and cross fingers this weak with all the brave talk she will sit with me by it for longer.
Cooking will be shield shape biscuits, I have a LO who needs to develop her strength in her fingers so squeezing the icing tubes will be good for this when they decorate their shield.
Because my oldest nursery child is learning about the computer technolgy as opposed to the iPad which he is a whizz on - I am going to encourage him to take portraits of the others throughout the week and using photoshop he can draw on a helmet like armour and print off our 'brave Knights' I'll attach a speech bubble and write on the brave things they have done this week.
This planning has caused me a real brain ache, with little help from the Internet as googling just brings up the things I loath the most - worksheets and colouring sheets that have too much detail!

I expect one LO will just keep asking for the babies though, which is fine, I put out these opportunities but sometimes it just doesn't stimulate them and they want their familiar activities instead.

[loocyloo]

:-) lots of lovely ideas there floradora. ( I too have one who just wants the babies! )
Have fun.
Excepting one day when I already have different plans, mine are all so little that I don't particularly do anything themed. I might however add Knights and dragons to the sensory tray and share the story.

[bunyip]

Last minute planning for after schoolies for this special but under celebrated day!
Any suggestions for something we could do? Craft stuff etc

I wouldn't call it "under-celebrated" (my council tax has to pay the bill for a jingoistic celebration by National Front types who don't know the first thing about St George) - maybe "incorrectly-celebrated" would be nearer the mark.

Why not make it a celebration of diversity by looking at the many countries who share "Ingerland's" saint, who was certainly unaware of the existence of England (because it didn't exist) and actually came from Turkey.

[FloraDora]

You do make me smile Bunyip!
We are patron Saint enthusiasts in our household as when my boys were younger I used it as a way in to talk about our heritage - I was the only person in my family to be born in England, my siblings and parents are Scotish and my mothers family were Irish, I was born on St Patrick's day, my Irish Grandfathers ( Patrick) birthday and so my middle name is Patricia, we have no Welsh however. My DH is centuries old English, our research showed that his surname is rarely found over the time that they have been logging, outside Stoke on Trent! So, you can imagine we had a bit of fun on Saint's days and went all patriotic to our heritage ( rugby and football also caused some discussion as to who the lads could play for).
When you delve into the history you do wonder why the particular people were chosen, but I think it is great to recognise them.
We spent a month in America some time ago, staying with friends and living as they do, they lived on the border of NewYork state and Conneticut - lots of wooden homes with flagpoles, meetings that started with singing the National Anthem etc.. Yet they welcomed my British friends when they settled there and us too. I quite liked their patriotism, it would be nice if we did it more here, without the UKIP mantra of stop letting in immigrants.
For instance, my cul de sac is made up of people born in India, America, Israel, Spain, Thailand, Scotland, England and Wales it would be nice to see the range of flags on our flagpoles. When my boys were younger they had a flagpole on their climbing frame and we hung the Union Jack for a while, apparantly some neighbours chuntered at this ( behind our backs) then it changed to a pirate flag ..skull and cross bones....which, according to hearsay, they were happy with!!

Let's celebrate Thursday as much as we do StAndrews, St David'd and ( my favourite) St Patrick's.

[cookiesncream]

I have hung some England flags up and decorated our "celebration tree" in red and white ribbons. And the first comment I got from a parent was, "oh, is the football on?"