Our topic in nursery until December is fairytales.

We have decided to concentrate on Sleeping Beauty and have ideas for role play, small world, construction and creative, but my ideas have now run out!!

Has anyone done a topic on fairytales before?

Any ideas would be really helpful!!

Thank you,

Scalliesal

can you give us an idea of what you are doing ?

Not quite sure what you meant but heres some ideas off the top of my head - sorry i seem to type as they come out!


making crowns and tiaras etc... think mrspancake.com has lots of castle/fairytale themed things
kent ngfl website has an activity you can make a castle on
Let children record themselves telling a fairytale and listen back to it
Alternative fairy tales e.g. Lauren Child's version of fairytales - Dont be afraid of the storybook wolves?


Snow White - Talk about the names of the dwarves and think about expressions etc... Bring in a small hoover, mop etc and let the children clean your room in nursery (they love to do it and you get a nice clean room - we hope!) Colours collages, Think about forests, which animals live in the forest - could bring in autumn and hibernation here too so maybe walk to the park to find signs of autumn???

Princess and the Pea - Thinking about materials, make a bed area in role play and see how many pieces of material it takes for children to not feel a ball or something similar, Role play marriages, make pea soup!?

Jack and the Beanstalk - Rhyming words - fee fi fo fum, grow your own beans in plastic cups and keep a bean diary, sizes giant/big jack/small, (when we did this topic I borrowed some chickens from a mum and we kept them at school for a week for children to collect eggs - it was lovely! We mad egg sandwiches with bread the children had made and I also painted one egg golden which provided so many learning experiences and opportunities!)


hope these might help or get some more ideas going!?

Dont want to be a spoilsport or anything! but I was under the 'huge' impression that we do not have topics anymore, I think it is a real shame as so much learning and fun can come out of topics as has been demonstrated from the last post. As a setting we do try to 'roll' with interests from a child which may very well be 'fairy tales', 'the beach', 'tractors' etc but when you have 90 children on register this is difficult. Would love to have a 'topic' such as 'fairy tales' which would last for 2 - 3 weeks where children can input any suggestions they wish. We do 'talking/thinking books from childrens interests, suggestions etc but these only last a couple of days then drift off and go nowhere which I think is a great shame. Has anyone any ideas how to have a theme/topic and how to run with it. Sorry if I have rambled on a bit.

We have the umbrella 'Traditional Stories' for next half term and we know we are going to start with Gingerbread man. We have penciled in 3 Billy Goats Gruff, Red Riding Hood, Christmas Story and possibly Elves and Shoemaker . Thats as far as it goes the rest should come from the learning wall. We only have planned telling the Gingerbread man on the Monday and Baking them Wednesday so far. It is possible to to do both. We had 'Sing me a song' last half term and pencilled in Hickory Dickory Dock to start. The children took it with catching the mouse so we had a week were I took 'the Mouse trap' board game in which lead to domino rally then to falling down then to Humpty and helping him land safely. Our intake need the starting stimulus so as long as its loose and the resulting planning is child led I think there is room for both.

Hi,

I'm only in my 2nd year so still finding my feet etc but what we have been doing is looking over observations at the end of the week and look for similar interests.

This term we found that 6 children (out of 15 - i'm on split intake still) were playing superheroes! We brainstorm - sorry thought shower!!! some ideas ourselves and attach a copy of the observations to these. Then we have a session with the children and ask them what they would like to do/learn and keep a copy to add to our brainstorm.

My TA and myself then plan for a 2 week period and assess as we go along if the children are still wanting to do this 'topic'. At the moment we also write down the children's questions from our session and add them to a display of a question tree, eventually we will build up to the children answering these questions themselves.

It is difficult to put into practise what the EYFS want but I agree with you that it's important for the children to experience it for a sustained time! ope this helps a little

That sounds lovely - it's so great when you can follow the children's ideas and they realy do see that you value their ideas. Do you mind me asking what your learning all is?

This thread should help explain it

learning walls

Since I wrote this thread my partner who I worked on this with great success has gone upward and forward onto better things :I've been out of nursery a year and return to it with a 1 year newly qualified teacher . We are still trying with difficulty to establish a working partnership and the wall is not running how it did. It's become more of a review than forward planning. She wasn't involved with the original whole school input-but hey ho

Thanks Biccy, have loved reading that thread - I think his is what I wnated to start with my Question Tree so I shall be extending the title to 'Question Tree and Learning Wall'! I hope you will find that your working partnership improves shortly. I'm sure once your colleague follows your enthusiasm and good practise they will come round to your wonderful way of thinking! I cant see how anyone who works with children and gets caught up n their excitement would think anything would work better!

Sorry I didn't make it clear at all!!

We are working under the topic title of Fairytales.
We have a Sleeping Beauty palace in the role play area and small figures including kings and queens etc in a castle small world area.
In the construction area we are using cardboard boxes and tubes, which we have turned inside out, to make castles, palaces and towers etc.

What I ment to ask was does any one have any ideas of how to incorporate fairy tales into the other aspects of continuous provision within the classroom?
Can any one think of other fairy tales or stories we could incorporate into the topic? I was looking for something a bit different to do in the third week of term, perhaps a modern take on a classic story? My mind is blank!!

To continue the discussion of 'topics'
All these ideas came from the children at the end of last term. It all started with a child bringing in a copy of the story from home.

Myself and my nursery nurse do a very rough plan for the half term with suggestions and any necessary activities which we have identified for specific children. I plan activities for Monday and Tuesday and then fill in the rest of the week as we go along, listening to children's ideas, wants and thoughts.

Thanks for your help and input,

Scalliesal

There are very many versions of classic tales up-dated, some of our favourites are the Mr. Wolf stories, quite wicked endings, there's Mr. Wolf and the enormous Turnip, Mr. wolf and the three bears and Mr. Wolf's pancakes, which is rather nice as he has trouble writing and doing maths etc. to help him make pancakes - there is also one about the 3 bears which is hilarious with the bears trashing what they think is goldilocks' cottage, but it turns out to be Mr. Wolf's thats's called Beware of the Bears, lots of rhyming in it. There's Scared of a Bear, about a little girl who can't find anyone to play with her and wanders into the wood and finds a cub and brings it home, and of course mummy bear comes to find the cub. I quite like Mini Grey's The Princess and the Pea - could your children make mattresses in different textures or fabrics for a princess?

Have you done the ring game There was a princess long ago, that's sleeping beauty.