A times I come across really useful resources for Early Years, so I thought I’d add them here. It’s easy to have this page up when teaching and select them too!
Listening skills
BBC EYFS Listen and Play – traditional stories, nursery rhymes and listen and waggle, movement linked to listening.
Phase 1: Phonics play games
Fine and gross motor skills
Teachhandwriting.co.uk – I am not an advocate for handwriting in EYFS, however, this site has fantastic exercises for shoulder stability and strength, crossing the mid-line, wrist strength and flexibility, thumb and finger strength and dexterity, whole hand strength and dexterity. What I really like the exercises are described but there are also videos to follow.
Reading
Teach your monster to read: These catching songs cover the phase 2 graphemes, or RWI initial sets.
Epic Books – free access for teachers to a huge range of books aimed at all levels of Primary. These are wonderful when displayed on IWB. Topics are searchable so you can very quickly find a book on a topic the children ask about.
Vooks Books – free access for teachers to a range of books that come to life in video form! Again, there is a search function to find relevant topics for your class.
CBeebies Stories – English accent stories
Book Trust – free well known stories to read-a-long including Rumble in the Jungle
Story Time stories from the Book Trust, read by famous folk.
British Council – Excellent animated short stories, try Jack and the Beanstalk
Alphablocks – Brilliant for blending! The blocks individually say their phonemes then join together, jump and blend. I have practised this in class also with children which is a lot of fun!
Play School TV – This does not only cover phonics but is excellent for discussion also. The magical element of Greg’s work is just fantastic, entertaining and a great motivator. His books are well worth a read, plus check out his Facebook page, To The Message Centre.
Maths
Numberblocks – a brilliant program of cartoon numbers which come alive!
Interactive Whiteboard Games
ICT games – free IWB games for both Maths and English for KS1 and KS2, but the games selected below also are good for Early Years. You can clearly see the age level the game is aimed at when you click on a game. A few favourites include: Spooky Sounds, Phonics Pop, Tell A T-Rex, Poop Deck Pirates, Counting Caterpillar, Five Speckled Frogs, 5 fat sausages, sound sayer.
Topmarks – free IWB games, although a little more basic than above still have some goodies! Maths: Underwater counting to 10, Shape Monsters, Let’s compare. English: CVC word builder, Elmo’s games, includes a good shape one
Crickweb – a range of Maths, English and topic based games.
PhonicsPlay – a range of blending and segmentation games. I like this pick the picture game for reading.
CVC word game – find the missing sound: beginning/middle/end.
Topmarks phonics games.
Phonics bloom: tricky words
Circle Time games
A choice of Circle Time games: I love pass the smile, sleeping bear (I use giant) and parachute games.
Planning
Continuous Provision: Planning and Language
New to International Teaching with Jess Gosling 