It can be tough for young children to cope during the warmer months and the recent heat waves have been very challenging for everyone across the country try to work, go to school, and go about their day-to-day activities. It has been especially hard on young children in nurseries dealing with the heat. As they are unable to go outside during the hottest hours of the day, teachers have had to find new and exciting ways to keep the children both stimulated and cool at the same time indoors.
Here at Willows Pre-School, we are very lucky you have air conditioning in our classrooms; so, keeping the children inside more than usual has been a “breeze!”. To prevent the children from feeling couped up indoors, we have come up with some extra fun activities to keep them engaged! Recently, we have made some ice paintings: using diluted paint in ice cube trays and frozen overnight, we ditched the paint brushes ad used the ice cubes to create coloured effects on paper while watching the colours melt together to create new colours. Another activity we have done to not only stay cool but to promote healthy eating, was making our own ice lollies. Our youngest children used handheld juicers to squeeze all the delicious juice out of some oranges and pour them into ice lolly moulds, ready to be tasted the following day as sweet orange ice lollies.
Our preschool children were inspired by the story Rainbow Fish written by Marcus Pfister. In a shaded corner of the garden, the children filled a water tray with water, pompoms, and large sequins before sitting around the tray and dipping their feet into the cool, shimmering water and talking about the story and why sharing (the main theme of the book) is so important. They then used the sequins to decorate their legs in different patterns and became their own version of the rainbow fish while splashing their feet!
With more heatwaves on the horizon, our staff are continually coming up with new, exciting ways for the children to get the most out of their time here at Willows whilst also staying safe and cool in extreme weather conditions.
