Ideas For Using A Parachute Please.

[Guest]

Does anyone have any ideas for using a parachute to support phonics? I have an observed lesson coming up and would like to use the parachute as a fun activity to finish up the session.

Thanks for any help.

[Rufus]

You could roll a ball to a child if their name starts with 's' etc.

If your name starts with 'a' run under the parachute to the other side. You could also incorporate oral blending into this and say if your name starts with 'r' I would like you to h-o-p to the other side.

[Guest]

Umm...

 

You could do the running underneath if you have a...(d)...in your name (swapping places with other children)

 

Or get the children to shake the parachute if you say something correct (depending on what you are doing e.g. spelling CVC words, saying words beginning with c...) and lift it up high if you say something wrong (e.g. f..a..j isn't a CVC word or saying a word which doesn't begin with a c...)

 

Sorry , minds gone blank - it's been a long week!

[Guest]

Oops, I must have been typing my ideas at the same time as Rufus - great minds!!

[Susan]

Lovely idea but my concern would be that unless you use the parachute regularly and your children know how to behave with it, that this would take too much organisational time and detract from your original intention.

 

Good luck.

[finleysmaid]

how about making letters to put on the parachute then flip them off, call children to collect them and ask them to say which letter they have or sound they make.

[Panders]

I agree with Susan - we use the parachute regularly in pre-school - but just getting attention took some little while - and throughout, although they know we don't want them to go under the parachute they still do or they lay on top of the parachute, and because they get rather excited by it all there is a huge possibility that your original intention would be concentrated upon.

 

We use it sitting down to begin with and try hard to get their listening skills tuned in, so they sit on their knees we move it slowly and softly, we lift it up and wave to the children on the other side, then lift it up and make different faces - grumpy, happy, sad etc. Then we let them move the parachute as quickly as they can up and down, and finally to stand up and bounce a teddy on it, or roll a ball round (very tricky) we tend to use maths at this point so they can count up to 5 say, then we all lift the parachute together and teddy flies into the sky or whatever. We count up to 20 and down for 10 to zero.

 

We used to let them lay under the parachute and aduts bring it down on top of them but they used to kick up their feet etc. and hurt each other, same as going under the parachute they used to bump into each other and we spent more time "managing" behaviour than having fun.

 

Might work well with a medium sized parachute, say for 8 children only

[Guest]

Thank you everyone - lots of brilliant ideas. Like the one about putting letters on the parachute - I could put them on beanbags. Will have a practise first though! I have been getting the parachute out once a week to get over the initial excitement and our Head likes to see children having fun so I think it will be ok!

[Guest]

we use ours for singing, we all stand holding on to the side and do ring rong o roses, we also all sit down around the edge and hold on tight and sing row row row your boat, making circular actions. we take it in turns to run underneath and swap places with each other.