Fairy Tales and Sensory Play

The King and The Princess and the Pea


Fairy Tales are always popular topics with all age ranges. The archaic language, the mystical places and characters, the specific rhythm of the story; gold, silver and – probably most importantly - the good ending! All this makes for a magic that is impossible not to be touched by. The children, in Lower Nursery, were introduced to many of the classical Fairy Tales, such as “Rumpelstiltskin”, “Mother Holly”, “Hansel and Gretel”, “The Princess and the Pea”and “The Goose that Laid Golden Eggs”. Soon, they realised that most Fairy Tales start with, “Once upon a time…” and you could often hear that beginning when the children were pretending to read to each other. As well as the literacy aspect of our topic, the children were invited to explore different creative tasks. They painted geese with wonderful golden eggs and real feathers and made a wonderfully comfortable bed with plenty of mattresses for the Princess and the Pea. Not surprisingly, the children’s role play expanded immensely. So, if you enter Lower Nursery, at the moment, don’t be surprised to find a room full of kings and princesses…




As mentioned earlier, ‘Fairy Tales’ has been our theme for the term but here in Lower Nursery, we love to get messy! Sensory Play forms a large part of the children’s experiences, as it helps them to develop in all six areas of the Foundation Stage. Are they keen to experiment with new materials? (P.S.E.D) What does the gloop feel like? (C.D) How can you mould and shape the play-dough? (P.D) What are Gloop and Play-dough made from? How do we make it and where do the ingredients come from? (K.U.W). Is the dough heavy or light? What happens when you roll it? Look how big it’s getting! (M.D) Of course, the children naturally talk about what they are doing and we’ve even made up some stories with our play-dough characters! (C.L.L) The children have really enjoyed making ‘gloop’ and play-doh, and then trying it out… What happens when we play with Gloop? What does it look like, and what does it remind us of? Amongst lots of good ideas, some of the children answered these questions with: ‘It’s like very runny milk!’ ‘If you tip the tray, it’s like the waves in the sea, swishing about’. Play-dough is a firm favourite, too. The children have especially enjoyed making scented and textured play-dough, using materials such as the rind and juice of a lemon or an orange.

To bring us back to our main theme of Fairy Tales, the children very much enjoyed listening to the tale of ‘The Goose that laid the Golden Eggs’. We used different materials and textures to create some wonderful pictures of the goose, and used ‘some tickly feathers’, some ‘crackly tissue paper’ and ‘some very squidgy bright golden paint’, to quote the children…

gloop