Theme Table

Hi everyone,

Am totally new to this site, is a great help. Struggling a bit with the nvq 2 . has anyone got any good ideas for a theme table (needs to cover the five senses). am thinking fruit, but that seems a bit boring?

Thanks

[Ruthierhyme]

Hi and welcome to the site.

Fruit sounds great, you could use an individual fruit or a selection.

As an example for apples to cover the senses

Hearing - Crunch, speech and vocabulary - apple names.
Listen and comment as the children bite into the fruit.
Touch - feel and texture, shiny skin, spiky stalk, leaves, pips, shape
Let the Children explore and examine the fruit
Taste -
Is it sweet, hard to bite, soft, juicy ..
Sight - colours, outline/shape
Notice together the colour, shape, position of the apples - where the stalk is, core, skin, flesh, pips
Smell - cut open and allow the children to smell the fruit.

An apple can cover all the learning areas by using a theme table,
Creative development - have a bowl of role play apples, baskets and aprons for the children to become apple growers & sellers ..
Knowledge and understanding of the world - where apples grow: on trees in orchards.. demonstrate this by providing books/visual images and talking about experiences.
Personal social & emotional development - how the children share the table resources, turn take with tasting & playing with the resources, seeing how everyone likes the table layout and the apples, if they enjoy eating/tasting apple and how - raw, cooked, purree, sliced, whole, peeled, diced.
Communication, language and literacy - Books, stories and text used to explain what the table theme is.
Physical development - pincer grip picking up smaller items - pips, apple pieces.
Problem solving, Reasoning and Numeracy - math: counting and number recognition, where and how do pips fit into an apple and how do they hang on trees..

Resources could be a selection of real apple varieties - Orange pippin.com is a nice website.
Books about apples - gardening books and fictional
Green, red, brown and white colour scheme.
Growing pips - soil, small pots and labels

You can also look at healthy eating and foods that are good for us.

Hope this helps, enjoy the site

xx

[cabin]

Fruit sounds good.
Sometimes 'we' may think a thing is a bit boring and old hat - but for young children this can often be a totally new and exciting experience.

xx

Thanks great help

[SomeoneSpecial]

to make it more exciting for you you could do a range of fruit including ones that some of the children might not have had before.

not sure what age your children are but activities could also be observational drawing, slicing into quaters/halfs, for younger children messy free play for example putting mashed banana into a big bowl/tray and giving the children spoons and pots etc

hth x