Take a look at our five day units

Let’s have a look at one of our Five Day Units to see how your children can learn through hands-on play and activities in the Play Academy.

All planned and full of flexibility

The Units in the Play Academy are all planned for you, and yet a full of flexibility.

We organise each unit into a five day kit – but you don’t have to use them Monday to Friday if that doesn’t suit you. You can fit them into your routine. Some people do one a week, some people spread them over two weeks so they can do days out in between, some people dip in and out through the year.

A timetable that suits you

I will be guiding you through the year, highlighting one unit each week, and you can go ahead and follow my programme if that’s what you want to, so all your timetabling is just done for you and you don’t really have to think about it again, but there’s never any pressure to do everything.

We have units that fit perfectly with the seasons of the year, such as our apples unit for the autumn and our daffodils unit for the spring. These units will help your children connect to nature and find their place in the cycle of the year. We also have units for major world festivals that you can do through the year, such as Diwali, Hanukkah, Chinese New Year, and the Nativity.

But you might like to also choose your own units, and you can totally do that. You can start with any unit and do them in any order. The Play Academy really is created to suit YOUR family needs.

So we also have a lot of ‘timeless’ units that would fit in at any time of the year such as our Space, Circles, Fairies, Dinosaurs so you can use them whenever you choose to.

One activity a day all your children can do together

Each unit is very carefully planned to be suitable for all children. They are written with children aged 5 – 10 in mind, with suggestions for adaptations and extensions included. That means – absolute magic! – all your children can do this together.

There is SO much benefit in children of mixed ages and abilities learning together – both for the older ones and the younger ones. And it means you won’t get run ragged trying to run three lessons at once, logging someone on to the computer while teaching someone else math and setting up play dough for someone else.

With The Play Academy, everyone comes together, for one activity a day. I have really found this to be so beneficial for my children – it’s really built connections between them, developing friendships, team work, and life-long memories.

Thematic learning

Rather than teach though un-natural separate school subjects, The Play Academy is based around themes that integrate skills.

So you’ll find math, literacy, language, science, world culture, art, nature study, fine motor skills, imagination, and play are all integrated in the units and work together to give your children the best possible education. That’s one that is engaging, it reflects how we learn in the real world, and lets your kids make strong links across subjects. And of course, based on NurtureStore’s philosophy, all the units are full of hands-on activities and lots of fun.

In our Dinosaur Unit for example, we’re not trying to cram dino facts into young brains, we’re doing so much more than that. We’re using our children’s love of dinosaurs as a pathway into them getting to develop the wide range of vital skills, all through hands-on fun and play.

Teaching that’s easy for you

Each unit has full instructions for you. They come with printables within the unit, so there’s no need to go searching for them.

Once you choose which unit you want to do, and download it, you’ll find everything there that you need. This makes your teaching a lot easier and it guides you through step-by-step. So you’ll know what materials you need to gather, how to introduce the unit and how to lead each activity within it. That frees up your time, brain-space and energy, so you can focus on what really matters, which is building those connections with your kids and supporting them through their learning.

You can decide if you want to print off the unit or you might like to use it on screen, that’s up to you. It’s all ad-free, including the on-screen version, so that’s great when you’re sharing it with your kids.

Take a look inside

As an example of how your children will be learning through hands-on activities, take a look at our Dinosaur Unit.

In our Dinosaur unit, your children can come together to do one activity a day. Younger and older children can learn together and as the activities are inclusive and open, everyone can work at their natural level.

Children who are stronger in one area than another can always work at their own pace – faster or slower – to suit them. Younger children can be inspired and developed by seeing what the older children are doing. And the older ones get to step-up and mentor the younger ones. We really embed our learning when we have the opportunity to teach it to others. Plus, the older kids get to play more, which is what a childhood should be about.

In our Dinosaur Unit you will see that your children can learn through doing, talking, playing, and making. They will be able to:

:: learn about dinosaurs, with a fun video to watch, and discussion questions to guide a conversation. This will boost their listening and language skills, encourage thinking skills, help them learn to evaluate what they already know about a subject, and to share what they already know to develop collaborative learning and working – all vital skills.

:: write about and draw their favourite dinosaur using the My Favourite Dinosaur journal page printable. Each child can write in as much detail as suits them.

:: make a dinosaur model, using a simple guide they can customise to make their dino as cute or scary as they like. This develops their fine motor skills and their creativity.

:: create a dinosaur small world for their model to live in. This encourages imagination, storytelling, narration and collaborative play. It also gives them a play-based way to put their learning and knowledge of dinosaurs into action. Listening in to their conversations as they play is an excellent way for you to observe them and see what they have learned.

:: play dinosaur literacy games. You’ll get a set of dino alphabet cards included in the Unit and I’ll give you suggestions for literacy games you can use them with, to suit your child’s age/stage. This lets you vary one activity to best suit a range of ages and stages. You might also have older children lead the literacy games for younger children – very good for the development of both of them.

:: and have fun with dinosaur sensory play. Take your pick from my suggestions, whether your kids love ice play, play dough or fancy an archeological dig! This is a fun way to round off the week and give your children the benefit of a supportive sensory environment. And depending on which activity you pick you can incorporate math and science as you measure and prepare the sensory materials and explore their properties as you play.

Click here to take a look at our Dinosaur Unit.

Join the Play Academy to get instant access to over 50 Units

It’s so fun for our children to have time to explore a whole unit of learning based around a topic they love and through hands-on activities and play.

How wonderful to have children running to see what activity you’re doing that day.

If this sounds like the kind of programme you’d like for you children, come and join the Play Academy here.

You’ll have instant access to over 50 all-planned-for-you Units.

You can follow my timetable or make your own.

You can view on screen (all ad-free) or download and print the Units, as you prefer.

You’ll also get access to our private community group, for chat and support.

Join the Play Academy here and your teaching will get a whole lot easier