Looking for a nice topic to begin the school year?
I like to introduce Aistear in September with the Gingerbread Man. This traditional tale is a nice introduction to using Aistear with the class and can easily be covered witihn the different play areas.
Socio-dramatic could be the home corner, where they retell the story. Alternatively it could be the Bakery where gingerbread men are made. Simple resources you would need are a tea set, cookie cutters, play-doh if you wanted. You could also have a toy kitchen to make the gingerbread man and retell the story.
In Small World puppets could be used to retell the story. You could also use animals to retell the story.
In Construction the children could build the house for the gingerbread man using different materials.
In Art I like to use Play-Doh with gingerbread man cookie cutters. Play-Doh is great for fine motor too which is often a key focus area in the early days with Junior Infants. Alternatively with Senior Infants you could make some play-doh with them or paint different pictures from the story.
Finally the sand area could also be the bakery. Simple resources for the sand area include a colander/sieve, baking cups and tins. Large spoons or small sand shovels.
To develop home-school links for this topic I made a Gingerbread Man story sack. A story sack contains the story book, character cut outs and an activity based on the story. I often include fine motor activities in my story sacks to highlight the importance of if for parents. Play-doh maths and character cut outs for this story are available from Twinkl.co.uk.
This is a great topic for earlier in the school year.
Aistear Múinteoir 