Fairground Topic

[Guest]

Hi All

 

I'm new(ish) here and launching right in with a plea for help I'm afraid. I've been googling for ages and am coming up with very little for a fairground topic (R/Y1). I'm hoping to engage some of our traveller children and it seemed like it could be a great topic, soooo...... Any ideas?? Stories, poems, planning, activities anything really, the internet has left me feeling less than inspired

 

Thanks in advance,

Clotho

[Panders]

I used to do Fairs/Fetes every spring at our pre-school. We had a great time, ending the topic with a morning set up as a fair with stalls etc. run by the children or adults. We made dodgem cars from cardboard boxes, we had side shows with throwing bean bags at numbered cans or skittles, skill type games, then games where the children had to hit an alien or something on the head with a plastic hammer which went round and round and up and down (sounds dreadful but they loved it) we made popcorn (we now have popcorn regularly as a snack time item), we made carousel horses which were horses heads drawn on to card, decorated by the children then stapled to the top wrapping paper tubes which we had made stripy by twisting florists ribbon round the tube and I downloaded some carousel type music and the children used to dance round and round with these horses going up and down, starting slowly and gaining speed then slowing down again. We had fairgroud type 3d jigsaws. I miss this topic really it was a nice end to the term. Hope you have some fun with it. I'll look out the topic and see if there is anything I can send you which was a little too advanced for pre-schoolers.

 

One year we were asked out of the blue to find a place for the week for a couple of traveller children from the visiting circus this was great fun as it coincided with this topic - dad was a tightrope walker and mum was a trapeze artist!!

 

Stories we had were Angelina at the Fair, My Naughty Little Sister, Dogger, The Sad Clown (think that was a Daisy & Tom story)

Edited October 20, 2010 by Panders

[Panders]

Some of the other things were making a clown figure using split pins on the legs and arms. Food, one lovely mars bar chocolate krispie recipe. Hoopla stall. I drew a big he man picture and we cut out the face and the children could stand behind the picture and put their face in the hole and have their photo taken. there were ideas to talk about the sights, sounds and smells of a fairground at night. From a K&U point of view there is an activity where the children are taught about the original reasons for fairs, The Hiring Fair, where tradesmen dressed appropriately to their trade would gather together to find jobs. A tombola stall for number recognition and matching, hiding the corresponding number in a straw for the children to 'buy' and then match to an item. Making posters to advertise their fair.

[Guest]

there must be lots of things you can do with this, i don't know if any of these are any good or spark something off for you??

PD with games like hook a duck (I've seen this done with an old plastic sand tray and some donated bath ducks) and throwing ping pong balls into pots (cut the top off milk cartons)? coconut shy etc make someone be the stall keeper and give out tokens to pay for turns at it. record the scores on blackboards or chalk on walls. is fairground food like hot dogs and candy floss healthy? what would be healthier?

CD - listen to 'fairground' type music (it's always that high-adrenaline minor key europop stuff but kids seem quite keen generally) and then move in different ways - move like the bumper cars, move like the waltzers, move slowly like an old big wheel, up and down like the hammer ride; you could do positional language with movement too; you could paint pictures of the rides on cardboard boxes (like the airbrushing they always have on the front of rides) or posters to advertise it

KUW - think about the smells / sights / sounds at the fairground, examine friction with a helter skelter (or other slope!), link to traveller life / life in caravan compared to life in one place, cultural comparison, maybe get a traveller parent in if you're very very lucky, fairgrounds in the past/today, draw maps of the fair ground and where all the stalls are??

PSRN - money, change, scoring games, position and direction

CLL - write flyers, talk for writing about experiences of fair ground, poems etc? lots of phonic opportunities 'ai' in fair, 'ar' in car, 'er' in helter skelter etc etc label the rides perhaps? zig zag books showing the order ch would go on the rides with time language (first I would go on the...then I would take a ride on....next I would....)

PSED - turns! understanding others! tolerance!

[Guest]

Thanks so much for the lovely ideas!

 

Feeling more enthusiastic again

 

Clotho