The wonderful prospect of entertaining children for a whole day/holiday can be daunting for all but the very bravest among us. i.e. teachers! However, this precious time needs to be planned to run smoothly. This section gives you a few worthwhile activities to call upon so that you can have a day to remember for the right reasons!

Spring Is In The Air

This little collection of activities is all about growth and hatching ideas:

Build a newspaper tower as high as you can, using nothing but rolled newspaper sheets, sticky tape or masking tape. Encourage children to talk about their ideas and even to draw a plan. Top tip: Triangles are strong shapes. Squares are not!

Buy some closed daffodils and get the poster paints out. Paint a series of pictures to show the different stages over a few days as the flowers emerge. This encourages good observational skills. Give the children the primary colours and get them to mix and match the colours they see. You could even try to print using household objects such as sponges, card and pastry cutters.

Top tip: Using black sugar paper will make the colours really stand out.

Hard boil some eggs and paint them with decorations or make them into little characters. Stick on sequins, jewels and googly eyes to make them look crazy.

Wash the car!

Now it is getting warmer, get dressed up for wet weather and work together to clean the car. Here is a great opportunity for mathematical language and fun to boot! Fill up buckets and different containers and estimate how many small containers it will take to fill larger ones. Enjoy pouring, splashing, trickling, splishing and frothing the soapy water, squeezing the sponges and polishing the hubcaps. It's all about language development. Try to use as many of these words as possible.