Enabling Environments: Let's explore... holidays

The summer holidays are almost here and with them comes the prospect of sunny days, light evenings and for many a six-week break filled with days at the beach, picnics in the park and trips abroad.

Holidays is a good role-play theme because most children will have been away somewhere, whether home or abroad, and will have these experiences to draw on.

This summer, set up role-play areas both indoors and outside that provide opportunities for the children to act out the entire holiday experience - from packing their bags and boarding a plane to checking into a hotel and playing on the beach.

BOOKED, PACKED AND AWAY

Involve the children in setting up each role-play area. Provide paper and card so they can make their own resources such as signs, labels, tickets, foreign money and passports. Ask the children for ideas about what they want or need.

• Travel agent Set out a table and chairs, paper, pens, a telephone, holiday brochures, a selection of tickets and an old computer with a keyboard. Stick a large map of the world on the wall and hang a calendar. Set up a bureau de change with some foreign money and traveller's cheques.
• Aeroplane Arrange rows of four chairs with a centre aisle. Provide uniforms and headphones for the pilots and a small trolley (a brick trolley will work), crockery, cutlery and food for the cabin staff. Give the passengers in-flight magazines, inflatable pillows and eye masks. Put a small plastic slide at the rear exit of the plane to use as an escape chute in the case of an emergency.
• Passenger ferry Make this outside using chairs to create an outline that incorporates seating. Set up a duty-free shop that sells toys, postcards, games and snacks. Use a large cardboard box to make a lifeboat and provide inflatable rings for emergencies.
• Eurostar Make the Channel Tunnel by tying two ropes running parallel to each other at child height to something sturdy and draping a large blanket over the top. Make a train out of pairs of small chairs leading into the tunnel. Display a train timetable on an easel nearby.
• Hotel room Set up a bed, drawers (a small plastic storage unit will do), telephone, dressing gown and miniature toiletries. Provide suitcases containing cameras, clothes suitable for a variety of holidays, hats, seaside toys, suncream, binoculars and books.

Adult role

• When the children are engaged in play, join them and ask them about their holiday experiences. Where have they travelled? Have they ever been on an aeroplane or boat? Has anyone been in the Channel Tunnel? What was it like?
• Talk about jobs in the travel industry. Can the children explain which role they have taken on? What equipment do they need to be able to do their jobs?
• Ask the children what they think would happen in the event of an emergency. What would the pilot/captain and cabin crew do? Where would the passengers go?
• Ask the children if there is anywhere they would really like to go. Take them to a map to find out if they can travel by sea, air or land. Look at pictures of their intended destination in brochures. Read a little information from guidebooks.

Extension ideas

• Create a whole role-play airport or shipping port with check-in and security. Use cardboard boxes to make an X-ray machine and provide some bathroom scales for weighing baggage.
• Set up a hotel front desk with a computer, telephone, signing-in book, pens, keys and key cards.
• Make a role-play beach in the outdoor area. Lay down some heavy-duty plastic sheeting and cover it with sand. Put out parasols, deck chairs, buckets, spades, beach balls and nets. Scatter boulders, pebbles and shells and fill water trays to create rock pools.
• Give the children real cameras to take photos while on their imaginary holidays. Print these and provide scrapbooks for the children to create holiday photo albums. Help the children to add captions to their photos.

Educational visits

Visit a real airport to find out more about what happens and how things work. The following have education departments and provide resources and activities aimed at the foundation stage:

• Manchester Airport, www.manchesterairport.co.uk/manweb.nsf/Content/concordeeducation
• Cardiff Airport, www.cardiff-airport.com/en/content/8/92/the-learning-programme.html
• Birmingham Airport, www.birminghamairport.co.uk/ meta/about-us/community-environment/education.aspx

Learning opportunities

• PSED Plays co-operatively and takes account of others' ideas about how to organise their activity.
• CL Uses past, present and future forms accurately to talk about events.
• L Uses phonic knowledge to write words in ways that match their spoken sounds.
• M Uses everyday language to talk about weight, distance, time and money.
• UW Recognises that a range of technology is used in the travel industry, including airports, harbours, travel agents and hotels.
• EAD Engages in imaginative role play based on first-hand experiences.

SONGS, RHYMES, GAMES

Seaside poems

Find poems that will appeal to young children in Seaside Poems by Jill Bennett and Nick Sharratt.

Down by the station

Find an animated version of the song Down by the Station, with trains, ferries and aeroplanes, on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVIeJ5Zv7cI.

Suitcase relay

Play this game with two small teams.

• Place two matching piles of clothing and holiday accessories next to each other at one end of a large space.
• Place two open suitcases at the other end of the space.
• Line up the children in two teams next to each suitcase.
• The children in each team must take turns to run to the piles of holiday items, grab something, run back, throw it in the suitcase and tag the next child in the line. The first team to fill and shut their suitcase is the winner.

MORE IDEAS

• Use holiday brochures for cutting and sticking.
• Use a rug as a magic carpet.
• Display a world map and use named stickers to mark where children go on holiday.
• Make sun safety posters: slip on a t-shirt, slop on some suncream, slap on a hat.
• Invite children to bring holiday photos in to show to the group.
• Taste ice-creams.

RESOURCES

• Pick up holiday brochures, posters and maps from travel agents.
• Keep and wash out used suncream and miniature toiletry bottles from previous holidays.
• Keep in-flight magazines, eye masks and free blankets and pillows supplied by airlines and ferry companies.
• Buy old guidebooks, bags and suitcases in charity shops.
• Find printable role-play signs, labels, tickets, foreign money and passports at www.twinkl.co.uk.
• Print pictures of holiday destinations from the internet on card and chop them up to make postcards.
• Pick up free timetables from bus and train stations and harbours.
• Save plastic cards (for example, from LoveFilm) then cover them with sticky labels to make hotel room key cards or debit cards.
• Buy cheap 15kg bags of children's play sand from Tesco or Argos.
• Role-play costumes are a little tricky to find, but there are pilot costumes on Amazon and eBay.

BOOKS

• Spot Goes on Holiday by Eric Hill - lift-the-flap fun with this popular puppy.
• Maisy Goes on Holiday by Lucy Cousins - Maisy packs her bags and goes on holiday to the seaside.
• What I Like: holidays by Liz Lennon - information books with photographs.
• Topsy and Tim go on an Aeroplane by Jean and Gareth Adamson and Belinda Worsley - the children meet airline staff and experience going on a plane for the first time.
• Look Inside an Airport by Rob Lloyd Jones and Stefano Tognetti - lift-the-flap book packed with information.
• Get Busy This Summer! by Stephen Waterhouse - a family of penguins go on their summer holidays.
• Kipper's Beach Ball by Mick Inkpen - Kipper finds a ball in his cornflakes so he and Tiger take it to the beach.

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Marianne Sargent is a writer specialising in early years education and a former foundation stage teacher and primary and early years lecturer