Having created their first successful album ‘Happy Healthy Songs’, Melody Treehouse have now produced a delightful collection of songs to support the exploration of nature and minibeasts through song, movement and dance.

Wildlife Garden Songs are a collection of 15 songs designed to help practitioners teach children about the natural environment and the creatures who inhabit this world.

Once again, Melody Treehouse has created songs on unexpected, but very important themes. We really liked the song about a compost heap, passing on a very important environmental lesson. You can listen to a selection of songs here.

These songs can be used in conjunction with a garden or wildlife project and focus on the importance of the balance of nature. The songs also support other areas of learning including counting, positional words, physical development and PSED.  Melody Treehouse have also included instrumental versions of the songs for sing along sessions.

Songs are an ideal way of supporting children’s learning, and alongside their investigations and exloration you can use these songs to reinforce the names, habitats and movement of all the creatures they will find in the outdoor area. Woven throughout the songs are the use of concepts, number, and positional vocabulary, ideal for supporting the EYFS curriculum and beyond. Because all StoryPhones MP3 players have rechargeable batteries, these lovely songs make an ideal partner with our players.

Often on our travels we meet wonderful, creative people developing and designing brilliant resources and ideas and occassionally we like to share them on our blog. 

We met Helen from a company called Infinite Edge at an Early Years Event in Sunderland recently and I was so impressed by their designs for outdoor spaces, trim trails and play structures. It was the clever combination of structure, colour, light and shade that caught my eye. I could just imagine a child standing under one of Helen and Sam’s canopies trying to catch colours in their hands as the sun created patterns through the canopies, climbing and exploring throught the logs and structures or trailing fingers in the water courses.

The combination of design, structure and colour inspires children to play and explore using the natural environment. Helen and her colleague, Sam, are particularly interested in the use of space and its potential for expanding learning opportunities. They use materials in new and unusual ways, landscaping playgrounds, providing interactive equipment, outdoor classrooms, story-telling areas, stages and much more. The children often have opportunities to be involved in the planning and building, helping to create their own outdoor spaces.

If you would like to know more about Infinite Edge and their beautiful outdoor spaces, you can visit their website here or email helen@infinite-edge.co.uk.

Since 1999, UNESCO has celebrated World Poetry Day on the 21st March. Poetry is a celebration of language and the creative, inventive way we all use it. Countries and different cultures around the world use words in the form of poetry to express their thoughts and ideas, happiness, sorrow, fear and laughter.

Celebrate World Poetry Day by sharing a poem by reading or listening. There are lots of websites where you can download poems to read or listen along to. Alternativley, you and your children can write your own poem.

Resources For World Poetry Day

The Children’s Poetry Archive - created by Andrew Motion and Richard Carrington. There are hundreds of children’s poems and what’s really nice is that you can listen to them too! That’s what people have been doing with poetry for thousands of years!

Scottish Poetry Library - an archive of poems with a section dedicated to children’s poems.

Scholastic – This site has lots of resouces, many free to download. A good starting point if you and your children want to create your own poems. Once you’ve written your poems you can record them and create your own audio collection!

What are you doing for World Book Day this year? You could share a book by listening together to an audio story. Audio stories bring the written word alive with voices, music, sounds and songs. Listening together to a story can be  as pleasurable and memorable an experience as sharing a book. You can listen to old favourites or explore a new story, often if children have listened to a story first it spurs them to find the book and read it for themselves.

StoryPhones has a free audio story for you to download and share with your children on World Book Day. The Four Dragons is a lovely tale from China and tells the story of how four dragons defy the Jade Emperor to help bring rain to a drought stricken land.

Download the audio story The Four Dragons.

Download the story and ideas The Four Dragons PDF.

You can find out more about World Book Day from their wonderful website. If you are based in Wales you might like to visit the World Book Day website for Wales.

However you choose to enjoy and share a book on World Book Day, have fun!

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!

St David is the patron saint of Wales and his special day is always celebrated on March 1st. St David is very important to the Welsh people and his day is celebrated with parades and special events. If you are planning any activities for this day with your children, there are some good websites offering free resources such as audio stories, songs and posters.

Our good friends at Storynory have a lovely story telling of the life of St David and this can be downloaded for free and imported into the StoryPhones software. It’s ideal for listening out loud and very suitable for KS1 and KS2 children. If you would like to download the story of St David or find out more about all Storynory’s free audio stories you can visit their website here.

The Early Learning HQ and NGFL Cymru also have resources to download or listen to. If you would like to learn more about these please click on their names to visit their websites.

National Storytelling week is starting on Saturday 28th January. Listening to and telling stories is one of the most ancient ways of communicating and we all still do this today even in our modern 21st Century world. How many times have our children arrived at school or nursery desperate to tell you their story about their trip to the park, or their birthday party. We can be story tellers too, whether you are retelling a traditional tale or creating one of your own, the magic of listening draws children into the story and feeds their imagination. Storytelling is painting pictures with words.

If you are taking part in National Storytelling Week, you may like to record the stories your children tell so they can listen back to them and share them with their friends. If your are planning a story telling session, the National Storytelling Society have lots of ideas to help you. Their website has a list of activties and ideas and includes information about events taking place around the country. You can find out more at http://www.sfs.org.uk/nsw

To celebrate National Storytelling Week, you can download a free audio story of the Lambton Worm, a traditional tale from the North East of England. This story is available from the StoryPhones website.

Introducing children to a new language in a fun, lively way through songs and music will sow the seeds for future language learning.

Languagenut have developed a whole series of songs and games designed to introduce children to new languages and all of these resources are available through their wonderfully vibrant website. Languagenut have songs and games available for a wide range of languages including German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and more.

StoryPhones is now able to provide Languagenut’s French songs as MP3 downloads. You can purchase these either as sets, or as individual songs. The songs have all be composed especially for Languagenut, they’re beautifully recorded and simple and easy to learn. Once your children are familiar with the songs, you can use the accompanying instrumental tracks to sing along to by yourselves. You can sing along out loud using the Remote Console or Little Listener, or load the songs onto the Headsets. Don’t be surprised to hear lots of little voices singing along in French.

The songs introduce children to the vocabulary of everyday life including school, sport, food and the weather.

If you would like to know more about Languagenut’s wonderful songs and games then you can visit their website here.

National Non-Fiction day is a celebration of non-fiction books and shows children that non-fiction books can be just as fun, exciting and absorbing as a story book! The day is organised by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups and Scholastic Children’s Books.

There are some fabulous non-fiction books available, beautifully written and illustrated. The National Non-Fiction Day website has a wealth of information available including a fantastic list of non-fiction books. This list recommends non-fiction books for all ages from a wide and varied range of topics including machines, people, animals, history, the Earth and Space. The website also has free downloads and information about authors and illustrators, everything you need to get your National Non-Fiction day started . If you would like to visit the website then please click here.

We have all of the Walker Nature Story Book titles available as MP3 downloads in the BookShelf download store. These books are a wonderful way of introducing young children to the world of non-fiction. Written in picture book format, the downloads include a ‘listen along’ and ‘read along ‘version of the story, an accompanying fact track and a song. As with all Walker audio books, these are beautifully produced and will captivate any listening child (and adult)!

It’s National Poetry Day on Thursday. I love poetry, I enjoy the way poets play with words and rhyme to create a story, image or emotion. Quite a few years ago when I was a supply teacher I used to carry a poetry folder around with me. The children knew all about the folder and we always used to have a poetry session at some point in the day. After a while, certain poems became firm favourites and were always requested.  The most popular ones were about crocodiles and knickers (although not in the same poem!)

National Poetry Day is a celebration of poetry for all ages. You can visit the official website to find out more about the day and to download ideas and poems.

If you are looking for new poems The Children’s Poetry Archive is a brilliant site. It’s crammed with beautifully written poems. You can also listen to recordings of these poems read by the poets themselves. I particularly liked the poem ‘The Seashell’ beautifully read by the poet, James Berry and to my great delight, Spike Milligan reading ‘In The Land of The Bumbly Boo’. My nursery children loved this poem, their favourite part was shouting the last line of the poem. There’s a such a range of poems for different themes or you can search by form such as rhymes or limericks.

Poems For … also has children’s poems to download. You will need to register and once you’ve done this you can download the poems. The children’s poems are in the ‘poems for … all ages’ section. They print as posters and you can place them around your building, outside too.

Of course, children are poets themselves and you can record their poems to share with others.

Children’s Book Week is a campaign led by The Book Trust and is all about encouraging children to read for pleasure. Having started my reading journey with Enid Blyton and Ladybird books, I have had the privilege to teach and to raise my family in an era when children’s literature has gone from strength to strength. There is a huge and wonderful selection of books available and now through technology, these are easily accessible for all children. Children’s Book Week is the opportunity to curl up with a story and disappear into the world of imagination or information. So whether you and your children are enjoying stories by reading a book, listening to an audio story, reading an ebook or taking part in storytelling, we hope everyone has fun.

There is a lot of information on the web about Children’s Book Week. Here are some sites we have found which you may like to visit.

The Book Trust’s Children’s Book Week Campaign

You will find free resources to download including posters, ideas and more useful links.

Playing by the Book

Zoe Toft regularly blogs about children’s books. She has lots of good ideas about ways of encouraging children to love reading. Zoe has some very good suggestions for Children’s Book Week.

Storyworks

Mary Medlicott is a story teller and author of several books including ‘The Little Book of Story Telling’ published by A & C Black. Her website has some brilliant resources and ideas to help get your storytelling started. Mary has just started a new blog to coincide with Children’s Book Week with the aim of encouraging people to become storytellers themselves. Mary’s first blog is full of very good ideas and thoughts and I am looking forward to reading her new posts.