The Tiger Who Came to Tea - book of the month.
The Tiger Who Came to Tea is a great story for exploring lots of different sensory resources. It is all about a little girl called Sophie and her mummy who are in their house when a Tiger arrives at the door wanting something to eat and drink. After eating and drinking everything in the house the Tiger leaves and Sophie and her Mummy have to explain it all to Sophie's father when he gets home. A good story to make children think what they would do if a Tiger knocked on their door. Would they let them in? What do they think they would like to eat and drink at their house? What would other members of the family say if there had been a Tiger visiting the house?
* Support children painting their hands and then printing their handprint, for babies you could paint their hand and then add the different parts of the tiger on yourself. Older children could finish drawing the tiger themselves. Encourage them to talk about what parts of the tiger they will need, you may need to remind them by showing them the picture of our tiger.
* Talk about what different foods you like and either cut out pictures for your child to choose and stick on a circle as a plate or let your child draw their own foods to put on their plates.
* Explore light and dark closing the curtains and looking at the difference it makes, if you have a torch try exploring the house in the dark with the torch. * Talk about the people who visit your house sometimes—could you make some face collages?
* Putting bath bombs in a tub of water and watching them fizz, feeling them fizz over their fingers is also fun.
Tiger Tea Party
Why not have your own tea party with your little one. Below are a few ideas to extend your basic tea party:
* Use pictures of different items of food for your non-verbal child to pick what they would like at their tea party.
* Use different cordials to pour together and make your own drinks, you can extend by talking about the different smells and the colour changing.
* Make sandwiches ready for you tea party, younger children will enjoy being able to feel the different food items. You could turn it into a taste game, younger children simply tasting the items, older children see if they can sort out which foods are sweet and which foods are sour.
* Baking cakes for your tea party is great fun. For younger children measure everything out into small bowls and support them tipping the ingredients in, for babies they could simple me allowed to feel what ingredients are in the bowl, for older children you can talk about measuring them out—ask them to put a certain number of scoops into the bowl (this is also good if you have more than one child as each child can take a turn scooping something into the bowl.
* Don’t forget after your tea party you will have to wash up with LOTS and LOTS of bubbles. At this point you could provide different washing materials, such as sponge, dishmop, cloths for children to feel different textures. Or if you have some straws see if your older children could blow some bubbles in the water, this is great for developing the mouth muscles linked to speech.