Startwell have created a fun 6 week summer challenge which has a food and physical challenge each week of the summer holidays. The challenges all link in the Startwell characters and messages and should be easy to complete at home. Please share the summer challenge with your families or complete together as a setting. Could children receive a certificate for completing the challenges?
Click here to download the 6 Week Summer Challenge Poster.
Startwell have created a fun 6 week summer challenge linked to the Olympics which has a food and physical challenge each week of the summer holidays. The challenges all link in the Startwell characters and messages and should be easy to complete at home. Please share the summer challenge with your families or complete together as a setting. Could children receive a certificate for completing the challenges? You can view the below as a pdf here.
Startwell have created a fun 6 week summer challenge which has a food and physical challenge each week of the summer holidays. The challenges all link in the Startwell characters and messages and should be easy to complete at home. Please share the summer challenge with your families or complete together as a setting. Could children receive a certificate for completing the challenges?
Click here to look at/print the Summer Challenges!
Here are some activities that you can try at home if you need ideas for things to do with your little ones during Summer!
First Week Challenges:
Go on a Summer Walk
Make a list of what you want to see on your summer walk and as you see them, tick them off! The focussed skill here is peeling and cutting.
Prepare some Healthy Food
Prepare one of the healthy recipes from the Startwell Website. Why not prepare a rainbow salad? remember it’s important to eat a rainbow to get a range pf vitamins and minerals! Enjoy this refreshing snack outdoors in the warmer weather. Focussed skill: peeling and cutting.
Second Week Challenges:
Crazy Cricket
It is Summertime, so why not get outside and practice your cricket? We want you to practice your throwing, hitting and catching. Focus on the skill of hand-eye coordination.
Role-Play Shop
Set up a shop at home with play foods or items from your cupboards. Look at the different types of fruit and vegetables available. Can the children name them? Talk about size, texture and even taste. Focus on recognising the ingredients.
Third Week Challenges:
Den Making
Go to the woods and make your own den or if the weather is bad make an inside fort. Encourage 5your children to build, create and challenge their decisions. Focussed skill: constructing on a larger scale.
Food Science
Which fruit and vegetables float/sink? Add food colour to them in water – which change colour? We have lots of Food Science activities pinned on the startwell Birmingham Pinterest Page. Focus on exploring foods, picking up and releasing.
Fourth Week Challenges:
Grass Play
Mow the lawn and ask the children to create anything they want with the grass clippings – you can even have teams and do mini competitions! Focussed skill here is transporting and transferring.
Grow Your Own Food
Give some food growing a go! You can develop lots of great skills growing food, but we want you to focus on pouring. Food won’t grow unless we water them. What different household items can the children use to water the growing foods? Focussed skill here is pouring!
Fifth Week Challenges:
Mini-Olympics
The Olympics are here! So let’s set up our own mini-Olympics outside with different events/stations – running jumping and throwing. Focus on the locomotor skills of running, and jumping; and the manipulating skill of throwing.
Food Hunt
Make a list of food items you have available and call them out at random for the children to find. Hide them outdoors if you can! Once foods have been found, have a discussion about which are the appropriate portion sizes for children and for adults. Focussed skill: following rules or instructions.
Sixth Week Challenges:
Water Painting
Collect a range of old paint brushes/rollers/sponges etc… and fill up a painting tray or bucket with water and create your own marks, patterns etc. on a wall outside! It’s a great activity that involves little mess and dries away in the sun ready for a new blank canvas. This activity will focus on fine and gross motor control.
Find, Read, and Get Active with Food-Based Stories
Look on your bookshelves and see if you can find any healthy or food related stories. For example, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Hungry Caterpillar, Handas Suprise. Make them into active stories and do actions together. Focus on developing knowledge and awareness of different food.
For a printable version of the challenges click here.
This lockdown you may be finding that more of your families are struggling to keep active and spending more time indoors in front of screens. We have created some fun Startwell lockdown challenges that families can do at home. Please share these ideas with your families.
Are you ready to take on the Startwell Challenges? Work through the challenges and tick them off once they are complete!
Physical Challenges
– Complete an obstacle course in the house, garden or at the park and make your heart go ‘boom’ with 180 Katie. Make sure to include: hopping, jumping, skipping, and running.
– Put on your favourite music and see if you and your children can dance for the whole track without sitting down – show them some new moves to try by role modelling!
– Choose one of your favourite books and see if you can make it an ‘active story’ as you act it out.
– Do some yoga and stretched before bedtime. Stretch tall like a tree and a star, sit like a flower and curl up small like a ball.
Food Challenges
– Eat a rainbow of fruit and vegetables every day this week:
– Cook/prepare one of the ‘Family Recipes‘ from the Startwell website. Try a winter warmer recipe such as the walnut and raising bread or roasted vegetable topped muffins.
– As a family, brush your teeth together for two minutes twice a day for a week. Talk about keeping our teeth healthy like Smiley Shen.
– Place different fruit and vegetables in a bad and without looking see if you can describe the food and get others to guess what it is. Use different sized fruit and veg e.g. big, medium, and small and talk about me-sized portions.
For a printable-friendly pdf version of these challenges, please click here.
It’s Heart Awareness Week
It’s heart awareness week. Do your children know where their hearts are? Can they feel them before and after exercise and talk about the effects? If not can you help them? Do a keep fit or dancing session at home to make you all hot and sweaty and to keep our hearts healthy. Check out youtube or put on a few favourite tracks.
Focus: Working out the heart and working towards teh 180 minutes of exercise.
World Environment Day 5th June
Here are some eco-friendly activities:
Use fruit peelings for sensory play – Make a fruit smoothie and encourage children to explore the different textures of the fruit peelings e.g. banana skin, mango skin and strawberry tops.
Recycle food packaging – use empty healthy food packaging and ask children to sort cardboard from plastic e.g. Weetabix, plain yoghurt, milk carton, egg carton, breadstick box, water bottle, hummus pot.
Recycle Food Waste – use a compost bin or find a patch of bare soil and encourage children to collect recyclable food waste such as fruit and vegetable peelings, seeds and cores and eggshells to use as compost.
Focus: sensory play and food sorting
It’s Bike Week
Can you access your garden? If so, it’s a great time to practice riding on ride on trikes, bikes and learn how to balance and pedal. If not, can you make a space in the kitchen to give it a go? Check out https://www.cyclinguk.org/bikeweek for information and online activities.
Focus: Stimulates baby’s sensory and motor skills.
Brush Your Teeth Twice a Day for 2 Minutes
Smile like Suzy and brush your teeth twice a day for two minutes! Remember that under 7 years old need help from a parent to brush their teeth. Measure the two minutes by using a:
Focus: oral health, wet and dry, water play.
Balloon Tennis
Balloon games are great for indoors, use a rolled up newspaper to hit the balloon back and forth across the room. Can you do feet or heads only?
Focus: having fun and being active
Exploring Seeds
Collect different seeds from differen fruits and evetables you eat to get your 5 a day. Store them on a tray or in a container and at the end of the week look at the different shapes, sizes and colours they come in. Can you plant and regrow them? or make a musical shaker using them?
Focus: investigating the inside of fruit and vegetables
National Yoga Awareness
Keep it simple and introduce a few balance and yoga moved to your day, check out our Pinterest pages for yoga cards or try a few basic balance movements such as crouching, standing straight, lunge position, or downward facing dog.
Focus: balance and yoga
National Picnic Week
Encourage children to make their own wraps and sandwiches this week:
Focus: encouraging independence, chopping and spreading
Throwing Games
Using balloons, bean bags, balls or rolled up socks, teah the children how to throw under and overarm. Can they throw and hit a target, aim it into a box or a bin?
Focus: catching and aiming
Fruit Skewers
Encourage children to prepare their own snacks and try making fruit skewers. Use soft fruits that are easy to chop and thread e.g. bananas, strawberries, kiwis and melons.
Focus: chopping and threading.
For a pdf/printer friendly version of this information, please click here.
It’s Sun Awareness Week
Get a piece of card/paper and some pegs. Ask the children to decorate a circle as the Sun using paint/cragyons or yellow sticky bits and cut it out. Can the children squeeze the pegs and add them onto the plate or circle to make a sun. For older children add numbers to the pegs to see if they can put them on in order. Talk to the children about sun cream and staying safe.
Focus: Fine motor skills and strengthening muscles in the hand.
Yummy Yoghurt Melts
Make some homemade yoghurt melts using plain yoghurt and mashed fresh fruit e.g. strawberry, banana, apricots. Pour the yoghurt into a ziplock bag, cut a tip off and carefully put drops on a tray on top of parchment paper.
Freeze your homemade yoghurt melts for a couple of hours and they will be ready! Enjoy these as a healthy snack when taking a break from playing in the warmer weather.
Focus: Healthy snacks, chopping, mixing, squeezing.
5 Minute Madness
Staying safe indoors can make people feel frustrated. Let’s have a 5 minute madness session every hour on the hour where you and the children use all of the space available to run, jump, scream, shout and release as much energy as possible. Don’t forget to set that time!
Focus: Having fun and working towards the 180 minutes of exercise and being active.
Eat a Rainbow
Different coloured fruits and vegetables give us different nutrients. Try to eat a rainbow of different colours. You could focus on one colour per day or aim for a rainbow each day:
Focus: Having fun and socialising.
Role model healthy meal time behaviours by eating together around a table. Try to involve the children by asking them to:
Focus: Encouraging independence at meal times, eating together/using cutlery.
Pick a Paper Flower Game
Cut out some flower shapes and attach them to lollipop sticks or spoons. On the back of each flower add an action to be completed. Such as: dance for 1 track, jumpy for 2 minutes etc. Take turns to pick and complete the action
Focus: Being Active
National Children’s Gardening Week: Regrow Food in Water
Re-growing food is really easy! Just cut off the bottom of the stalk and place in a small bowl of water. Here’s a list of food that can regrow:
Once the veggies have grown, ask children to chop up the produce and add to a salad.
Focus: Experimenting, farm to fork, chopping.
For a pdf/printer friendly version of this information, please click here.
Complete an Easter Bunny Obstacle Course
Number some paper squares 1-10 or 20 and draw a bunny on 1 side. On the other side write an action.
Focus: Co-ordination and being Active
Fight Germs with Fruits and Vegetables!
Challenge your family to eat more fruit and vegetables by creating a 5 a day chart! Add everyone onto the chart – children, parents and grandparents! Put it on the fridge or by the fruit bowl to keep the challenge alive!
Fay 5 a day says there are a number of ways to get your 5 a day:
1.Fresh
2.Frozen
3.Dried
4.Tinned (in pure fruit juice or water)
Focus: Fruits and veg are protective foods, working together
Complete a Teddy/Easter Bunny Hunt
Where is teddy/bunny hiding? Take it in turns with your child/key children to hide the teddy/bunny in your garden or house and then give them hints to help them find him. Think of developing positional language such as on, under, behind etc
Think of developing positional language such as on, under, behind etc
Focus: Listening, having Fun and being Active
Make Health Snack Bunny Faces
Here’s what you need:
Assemble the bunny faces by pushing the baby carrots into the top of the cheese for ears. Place the rest of the pieces on to make a bunny face and enjoy as one of your 2 snacks!
Focus: snack preparation, food creativity
Den Making
Why not make your own den or fort. Encourage the children to build, create and challenge their decisions.
Focus: Constructing on a large scale
Teddy Bear Picnic
Find 3 different sized teddy’s, 3 different sized bowls, make a healthy lunch e.g. tuna pasta salad and invite the teddy’s to lunch. Talk to the children about Micky me size meals and explain that portion sizes are different for each of the bears e.g. small, medium and large.
Focus: having fun, basic portion sizes
Dance and Stop Game
Put on some favourite music and dance until it’s paused or stopped then stand really still and go again. This will help to get the heart rate up so pick some fast songs and encourage fast movements.
Focus: Working towards the 180 minutes of exercise for under 5’s needed every day
Fruit Pizzas
Practice spreading and chopping skills by making fun fruit pizzas! All you need are crispbreads, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, kiwi and low fat cream cheese. Spread an even amount of crème cheese onto each crispbread. Chop the fruit into small pieces and top the crispbreads.
Focus: spreading and chopping skills
For a pdf/printer friendly version of this information, please click here.
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