Updated: Nov 25, 2021
Children in nursery will be learning to:
Develop their phonological awareness, so that they can recognise words with the same initial sound, such as money and mother (Literacy).
Plastic eggs/inserts from Kinder eggs
Items to fill the shakers with e.g. coins, pasta
Prepare this activity by filling the eggs with noisy materials (e.g. rice, peas, pebbles, marbles, shells, coins). Fill the eggs so there are pairs with the same contents. If you don't have plastic eggs, you could tape two pieces of an egg carton together to make a shaker.
Ask your child to shake the shakers and see if they can identify what is inside from the sound the items make. To make this easy you could leave some of the contents out of the eggs for them to see. Can they guess which one has coins inside? Open the egg to see if they are correct.
Can they find the matching shakers? They should shake one of the eggs then shake the rest of the eggs until they think they have found a shaker that makes the same sound. Once they think they have matched all of the pairs, open them up to see if they were correct.
This activity helps children to listen to and appreciate the difference between sounds made with the shakers which helps them when they start to learn different letter sounds. When they begin to spell words in reception, they will need to be able to identify what letter sounds they can hear.
If you have a go at this activity and share any photos on social media I would love to see them. Please tag @miniwritersclub and let me know how you get on.
Anna