Themes for planning - ideas please!!

[Keeley77]

Can anyone advise of any Themes they use for their planning?

Such as;

Under the Sea
People who help us
Transport

also where do you guys get your resources and activity ideas to go with the themes??

Many thanks

[RuthJ]

We do activities relating to the seasons, national days and children's interests.

We're looking at spring at the moment. We've been on spring walks to look at the daffodils, crocus, lambs etc. we've got some tadpoles from my father-in-law's pond that we're watching develop each week.

Craft ideas I get from this forum, google, pinterest.

My son (3) is into maps at the moment, so we've drawn maps of our route to school, a map of the places important to him in relation to our house, and we're currently making a paper mâché earth that coincided with Earth Day, but also links to the map interest.

Hth.

[nikkiv]

We do a big theme with loads of little bits coming off of it, so we are doing spring, this week making fluffy lambs for the wall display, wil do some bits on baby animals and make some masks! Seedlings / growing / planting so growing our own veggies, doing height charts of ourselves, they are making spring flower garlands for the wall display from egg boxes, we've got pictures of the buds on the. Tree in the garden and our taking pictures each week to see how they have changed, we've just got our butterfly garden so will then do hungry caterpillar!

Along with the veggies we will do some healthy eating, sounds manic but its not I do like a spider chart with the children when we start a theme and run with what they want to do. I get ideas from other childminders, here, google, my sons nursery or mindees classes I am an ideas their and then add some of my own mad ones :)

[loocyloo]

i do colours, numbers, seasons, healthy eating, homes, the world, space, bugs, transport ...

but usually these get amended to follow the childrens interests. before easter i was planning for 'spring/easter' ... LOL well, weather wasn't spring like to start with and a couple of mindees started getting very into letters and writing; which the others then picked up on and followed ... so we did lots on this.

if we are 'obsessed' with a particular book or song ( aliens love underpants was a big favourite a few weeks ago ) i then find some activities/songs etc to link to the book.

if i'm looking for ideas, then i usually google or look at ******/sparklebox/******/activity village/DTLK for ideas, as well as reading the forum!

[lisaflynn]

Here's a list of a few themes for you:-

Farm animals
Jungles animals
Mini beasts
Colours and shapes
Numbers
Around the world
Transport
People who help us
Disney
All about me ( this is great fun, get the children to do self portraits, draw a picture of there family, house ect, fav food, fav toy ect)
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Christmas
Ester
Halloween
Bonfire night
Look at some other cultures and there celebrations
Under the sea
Chinese New Year
Oceans and pirates

Hope some of these help x

[sarah707]

If you are just introducing themes - usually best for over 3s who are ready for more structured activities - then you need to keep it simple to start with.

Go with the seasons, the weather, nature, things the children know about from home and enjoy.

Explain what you are doing to parents and involve them as much as possible.

You can slowly build it up once you see what they enjoy doing :D

[cherry]

Have a look on the ****** website there are a lot of ideas there.

[VeggieSausage]

we are doing a general spring theme this month so plan includes:

Read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other books including factual ones
Make a caterpillar/ butterfly/ cocoon (winding wool around cardboard)
Spring flower nature walk / drive and walk to see lambs etc
Music and movement - we swayed like daffodils (yes we did!), gambled like lambs etc
Planting seeds and counting seeds
Lots of other stuff but I make sure that there are activities that encompass each area of learning
Colour in butterfly pics
Writing our names on our pictures and doing names using spring colours - yellow/ light green etc

I may or may not get through all the activities / or each child may not do all of them but a selection as it depends on the hours and times of children and also we may get way laid with beautiful weather which means we much prefer going to the park that doing other things etc....we go with the flow but as I have 3 x over 3s and after schools I do put a theme in place.....