Extending a topic - hats!

[Guest terrydoo73]

Last month we had a slight problem in our dressing up area - there wasn't enough there to entertain the boys and naturally they resorted to putting on the dresses which caused problems as the girls wanted them too! We made a decision to put out dresses and hats this month and the whole interest is in cowboys! How would I extend this topic as one or two just want to put on the hats and lie about on the sofas! Today we tried to encourage them to make horses using large rolls which you get posters in and adding a head/ribbon on the top but now we have run out of ideas! Any suggestions??

[Panders]

we had a day or two last term when one of the boys asked about cowboys, they made sheriff badges, I made up some wanted posters which was a bit of fun for them, their photographs downloaded into Kodak software which has a colouring book icon, so it changes the photo into a line drawing and we put those up. We had a couple of stories and we tried to get them to discuss what cowboys did and why they wore the things they did, like the hat, to protect them from the sun, but they could also drink out of it in an emergency, their spotty handkerchief around their neck was for wiping sweat of themselves but also to protect their horses eyes if they were caught in a bush fire etc. their "chaps" - those leather things that go over their jeans. You might try to make a lasso I suppose we didn't get round to that. We were also lucky with the weather and cooked up some beans for them to eat outside round the 'camp' fire.

[Guest terrydoo73]

Brilliant Panders - you see it does help to throw things like this out to see how you could extend an interest but it is hard sometimes to think on your feet! Never thought about the wanted poster or badges. We had an Early Years Specialist in today giving us some inhouse training and she harped on every time about having books to extend topics and I can understand where she was coming from - if you had a general book about cowboys you could show them what their jobs where not just about shooting down Indians! But then how can you really prepare to have books about everything that possibly might come up in day to day setting??

[sunnyday]

Brilliant Panders - you see it does help to throw things like this out to see how you could extend an interest but it is hard sometimes to think on your feet! Never thought about the wanted poster or badges. We had an Early Years Specialist in today giving us some inhouse training and she harped on every time about having books to extend topics and I can understand where she was coming from - if you had a general book about cowboys you could show them what their jobs where not just about shooting down Indians! But then how can you really prepare to have books about everything that possibly might come up in day to day setting??

 

Can you use a library Terrydoo?

 

I can borrow up to 30 books at a time with my pre-school card.......

[Guest terrydoo73]

Yes I do do this but have never found anything like this available - they always say if you have a title we can order it in for you! Last month I thought I was doing brilliantly with my selection of books - based on tv characters which had been quoted by our parents as children showed an interest in them at home! Not one of those books has really been looked at in any detail! Maybe I am looking in the wrong section??

[Panders]

Thing is Terrydoo - I have an enormous amount of books of our own, so many I have to store them in my loft! The stories cover many and varied subjects and so I am not generally at a loss to come up with something the next day if needs be. I also google lots of things to find out about interests the children may have. We also have things like large shopping bags, or you could use boxes I suppose, where we gather likely resources, so I have a pirate bag for example. This stays at work because pirates come around quite often here! Anyway one little boy came in with a piece of paper on Tuesday, daddy had written on it Treasure Map and drawn a scroll around the paper and stained it too. Mum said "we were hoping you might have something to stick on it" we got out the pirate bag and there were lots of resources - cardboard tube pirate telescopes, pirate wrapping paper, treasure maps we had made before, pirate bunting, none of things things cost very much, but the joy it brought to that little boy was immense. He borrowed our pirate ship over night and mum was thrilled. He made a map, he wanted a cannon, so we made one from a cardboard tube and a box, he had his telescope he decorated, a pirate hat and he collected stuff for a treasure chest. We had pirate stories that were in the bag too.

 

This was obviously infectious and a few of the others did some of the things he did, but by no means all of the children. Today, there was not one mention of pirates!

 

You just have to build up collections of things that are forever popular.

 

When you say that not one of the books about the children's fav. t.v. characters has been looked at in any detail, how often does an adult sit with the children and tell the stories and talk about the characters, do you have any small world things relating to the characters? We have playsets of Peppa Pig, Fireman Sam etc. which the children can play with as well as story books and we make things like Peppa Pig masks, or princess masks, Ben 10 bits and bobs, just the books on their own are not going to engage.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Panders

[Guest terrydoo73]

This is why I love this forum because there are so many brilliant ideas. Have tried my library this morning but unfortunately no books on cowboys. Am going to my local poundland store this afternoon to see if I can find something more to put in this box about cowboys. I am trying desperately to steer them away from guns hence my reasoning to find something about what real cowboys do ie round up cattle ride horses etc. I guess if I encouraged them to make some corals and put in cattle to each one that might create a bit of interest - any other suggestions welcome!