Sunshine area

Choose an area of your room that gets the most sun. Drape bright yellow fabric over any tables, cupboards and shelves. Collect postcards or pictures of sunny scenes cut out from magazines and holiday brochures. Display storybooks with a related ‘sun’ or ‘sunshine’ theme, for example, Little Miss Sunshine by Roger Hargreaves (Egmont). Find some jolly children’s songs, such as ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’ or ‘Thank you Mr Sun’ and make these available for the children to listen to when they are in the sunshine area.

Provide a variety of dressing-up clothes, accessories and props for role play about sunny days. Talk to the children about activities that we can do on sunny days, for example, play outside. Invite them to share their own experiences with the group.

Talk about the need to protect our skin and eyes on very sunny days. Reinforce the message by encouraging the children to wear sun-glasses and sun-hats during role play in the sunshine area. Tell the children that they should never look directly at the sun because if they do it can seriously damage their eyes.

Suggested resources

Yellow fabric; sun-hats; sun-glasses; empty suncream bottle; folded paper fans; sun-related songs; sun-related books; holiday brochures; postcards showing sunny places.