At Heanor Nursery, we love using books to spark creativity, imagination, and learning. This week, our focus was The Smeds and The Smoos by Julia Donaldson, a delightful story about aliens, acceptance, and friendship. The children immersed themselves in activities inspired by this vibrant and engaging tale, exploring important themes while having lots of fun along the way!
For our babies and toddlers, we created small-world setups based on the book’s whimsical world of aliens. The children explored miniature alien characters, spaceships, and planets, bringing the story to life in their own way.
This hands-on activity encouraged sensory exploration and imaginative play, both key aspects of their development. Babies and toddlers enjoyed listening to the story as they interacted with the setups, developing their attention and listening skills while beginning to link words to objects.
Through their play, the children also practiced their communication skills, whether babbling, pointing, or using simple words to describe what they were doing – all valuable milestones in the EYFS framework.
Preschool children dove into an exciting tuff tray setup inspired by The Smeds and The Smoos. The tray included colourful sensory materials like cloud dough, rice, and playdough to represent the alien worlds, as well as small alien figures and props to reenact the story.
The children loved repeating key phrases and lines from the book, enhancing their language development and building confidence in expressing themselves. They also explored storytelling and sequencing as they reenacted parts of the book, practicing key literacy skills by recalling events and characters.
The tuff tray encouraged collaborative play, as the children worked together to bring the story to life. This supported their personal, social, and emotional development by fostering teamwork, communication, and empathy – mirroring the book’s themes of friendship and understanding.
The Smeds and The Smoos provided a wonderful opportunity to introduce new vocabulary to the children. Words like “aliens,” “spaceship,” “planet,” and “friendship” were woven into our activities, helping the children expand their language and comprehension.
The story also sparked discussions about differences, similarities, and acceptance, encouraging the children to reflect on the importance of kindness and inclusivity. These conversations are vital for supporting their understanding of the world.
Through this engaging focus on The Smeds and The Smoos, the children at Heanor Nursery not only enjoyed a week of imaginative play and creativity but also developed valuable skills across multiple areas of learning. From language and literacy to social skills and understanding the world, this story provided endless opportunities for growth and exploration.
We are so proud of how the children embraced the book’s themes of friendship and acceptance, showing kindness and teamwork in all their activities.
