'In the HOOD' with FDD.... Tips for creative learning at home for pre-schoolers

'In the HOOD' with FDD.... Tips for creative learning at home for pre-schoolers

A BIG Hello to our beautiful FDD Tribe!

Wow! Wasn’t that a different kind of Easter break!

We trust you had some quality family time over Easter even though we found ourselves amidst restrictions and isolation gahhh!

For us personally, you may have seen on our Insta stories that we swapped out the usual beach front getaway and set up our camping palace in the back yard.

We made a decision to make the moments count and ended up having a great time sitting by the fire, roasting marshmallows, playing card games and making a hole in the fence so that we could wave to the neighbours and pass some goodies back and forth! The neighbour’s dog now seems to think he has x2 families as he roams between the two houses and my kids are certainly not disappointed about that!!

What made it super special is that both our neighbours either side of us set up camp as well, so it kinda felt like we were at a campsite… well… a socially distanced campsite anyway ha!

Well with no further ado, I’m pretty keen to introduce you to our next ‘Girl Next Door’. I want to introduce you to the beautiful Carleigh.

Carleigh is an early childhood teacher and is incredibly gifted at making education FUN! There has been so many times where I’ve peered over the fence (along with my boy, Boston) just to get a glimpse of what they are up to today (no I’m not a creepy neighbour!) and honestly by 11am, whilst most of us would be cheering that we’ve just been able to get the kids dressed and out of their jammies, Carleigh is well on the way through a list of activities for her boys and honestly… her kids are a testament to her input! They absolutely love it and wow… it is inspiring!

So…. over to you Carleigh!

Hello everyone! I'm Carleigh and I am a primary school teacher, currently on leave with my beautiful babies who are now 4 and 2... (tear tear)...
I am very excited to be apart of the FDD blog this week and hope I can help out in this exceptionally hard time of ‘ iso life.’
I love exposing my boys to fun learning each day and as daunting as it sounds the word ‘learning’ really can be simple with minimal supplies needed. Please also remember that it’s ok if an activity doesn’t go to plan / they are only engaged for 2-5 mins.
I find leaving the activity out on the table can encourage them to come back later and finish it off.
I hope you find some of these activities helpful and your little ones have the same love for learning as we do! It can take time and routine but I promise you it’s enjoyable and very rewarding to see!
Please find below some of our favourite activities at the moment:
 
1. TEEN NUMBER HUNT
What you’ll need: 
- Paper 
- Pen 
- Bingo dotters or coloured pens
             
Teen Number Hunt     
     
 What to do: 
1.  Choose numbers that you are wanting to work on with your child.
2. Scatter them around an A4 page
3. Choose colours for each number
4. Watch as your child searches to accomplish their number hunt. 
* This number activity helps your child to identify numbers by searching and scanning. 
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2. UPPER & LOWER CASE MATCH
What you’ll need: 
Paper 
Coloured pens 
Upper & Lower Case Match
What to do: 
1. Choose letters of the alphabet upper and lowercase that you are working on with your child. This doesn’t have to be the whole alphabet at once as this can be overwhelming.
2. Scatter these letters around the page
3. Watch as your child is able to draw a line from each upper case to lower case letter. 
*This activity enables children to become familiar with their upper and lower case letters by actively engaging in a fun connecting the letter activity, whilst also working on their pencil grip and ability to draw lines between the letters.
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3. NUMBER RECOGNITION/ STICK
What you’ll need: 
Large piece of paper 
Coloured pens 
Sticky dots (I use these a lot. You can get them from the supermarket, from a discount store or Officeworks.
Number Recognition Stick
What to do : 
1. Draw some flowers or another picture that your child is interested in on your page. 
2. Write a number in the middle of the flower.
3. Ask your child to identify the number and then place the same amount of stickers around the flower to make the petals. 
4. Discuss spacing and how you could make sure all of the stickers will fit around the bigger numbers. 
*This activity is great for fine motor skills, with the stickers as well as number recognition and one to one counting. 
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4. FILL IN THE GAPS
What you’ll need: 
Paper
Pen
Dot stickers
 
Fill in the Gaps
What do do: 
1. Choose numbers or letters or both that you would like to work on with your child.
2. Skip some letters / numbers for your child to add in with the dots. 
*This activity is a great sequencing activity for your child’s brain to understand
what’s missing.
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5. MISCELLANEOUS BINGO 
What you’ll need: 
Paper
Bingo dotters / pens to circle 
 
Miscellaneous Bingo
 
What to do:  
1. Randomly select anything for your child to be able to find on a page.
2. Call out what you would like them to find and watch as their little eyes search the page to find the item.
3. Make it harder by adding something on the page the haven’t seen before      (numbers spelt out in words perhaps ) 
4.This allows for a great conversation
*This activity once again is great for scanning and identifying / listening  to instructions. Also their brain is working hard to identify the different symbols to find. 

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Wowsers! Well seriously…. I am inspired all over again! A very BIG Thank You to Carleigh for sharing her wisdom and expertise! I’m sure you would all agree with me that that was absolute GOLD!

We were recently chatting over the fence about how both of our boys will miss a good part of their kindergarten year in preparation for school (as I know a lot of us are facing challenges with kids of all ages at the moment) so I am relieved to know that I can pop my head over the fence for some inspo to keep the kids moving forward ha!

If you’d like to pop over and see what Carleigh is up to… make sure you jump on instagram and give her a follow!

You can find her here:

www.instagram.com/carleigh_fraser

I love watching her stories & what they get up to as a family.  The way she organically incorporates her creative & educational activities into her everyday life really makes it easy to take in to your own home! And for people like me (who find this kinda stuff challenging) it is a really big help!!

We’ve still got x2 more exciting blogs to come in this series… so stay tuned! Coming up next, we’ll be talking to a Mama navigating a new season with her kids! It's honest, it's real and it's raw.... and I loooove it!

Until next time!!

Bek x


1 comment


  • Shazza

    Great job Mumma! Love love the activities you have set up for your boys! I have tried them with my preschooler and she loves them!! Keep them coming! You’re doing a fantastic job❤️


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