Welcome to this week’s blog.  This week we have considered ‘people who help us’, which is a theme we will revisit throughout this half term.  We have talked about various people and the jobs they might do, and we have been busy role-playing doctors.  The doctors’ surgery inspired various play ideas; children used their medical kits to ‘make people better’, others waited in the ‘waiting room’ and read books, whilst others were busy in the ‘reception area’ writing down patient details!
 
We have also enjoyed exploring musical instruments this week.  Children were able to explore the music box and ‘have a go’ with various instruments.  We then played a game where the instruments were played behind a screen and children had to focus on their listening skills to identify which instrument was being played.  We then enjoyed an adult-led music session where we explored concepts such as loud / quiet and fast / slow.  With musical instruments being so popular, we decided to revisit them in the garden on Friday, with children free to explore the instruments as they wished and discover the different sounds they could make.
 
Playdough remains a favourite for many of our children.  We were fortunate to receive new cutters this week; giving children new resources to explore – numbers, letters and different shapes, as well as a large play-mat to help inspire new ideas.  We also had a range of colours available, which has enabled children to mix the colours and watch as these have changed. 
 
Colour mixing was a theme explored at the craft table too. Children were encouraged to add the paint powder and then mix with water and observe what happened.  We started with red, mixed in white to make pink, and then added blue and turned it into a purple colour.  Simple tasks such as mixing powder paints is a wonderful opportunity for children to explore a range of ideas such as textures, colours and early science ideas such as how materials can change. 
 
We also enjoyed exploring gloop on Friday.  Gloop is a mix of cornflour and water; it acts as both a solid and a liquid depending on whether pressure is applied – it can therefore be squeezed into a solid shape, and then left to ‘melt’ back into a liquid.  The children were fascinated by this strange material and spent a messy morning exploring it and using lots of lovely descriptive words such as ‘soft’ ‘sticky’ and ‘melting’.
 
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
We have lots of fun ideas such as playdough and gloop on our website, why not have a go at some of these activities at home and see what fun you can have?  http://www.squirrelspreschool.com/fun-activities.html

This week we have had fun flying into space and talking about the exciting things we thought we might see!  After having donned our spacesuits, helmets and space-boots, we climbed aboard our space rocket and then zoomed off into space! We saw aliens, astronauts, rockets and the moon!  Many children were showing an interest in space, so we decided to follow this as a theme for the week.  This has inspired a range of craft ideas; paper plate aliens and spaceships, moons painted using thick gloopy paint, junk modelled rockets and air blown ‘blob’ aliens!  It’s been lovely to watch the children be shown a craft technique, but to then be able to interpret this as they wish and create their own ideas.
 
To make us feel as though we were in space, the children have enjoyed having the ‘dark den’ out all week.  The dark den has proved really popular, especially when we added our torches to the area and children began to explore the shadows they made! 
 
Story telling has been popular this week.  On Monday we used puppets to help us tell a story.  Some of our children have also brought in favourite books from home to share this week; this offers a lovely opportunity for us to read new books and to talk to children about their favourite stories.
 
We’ve explored our emotion stones this week.  We’ve been looking at faces and talking about how we think people are feeling, we’ve then talked about why people may feel a certain way; happy, sad, tired or scared.  This helps children understand how others may feel and supports their personal, social and emotion development.
 
Shapes have also been popular this week.  Our new felt wall has a number of Velcro shapes that children have been free to explore.  This has had children talking about shapes and then searching for similar shapes in the environment… we found lots of circle and square items… although we struggled to find many triangles!
 
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
This week, why not see what shapes you can find?  Walking to school you may see circle or triangle road signs, square windows, rectangle bricks and so on.  Younger children may simply enjoy talking about things they can see, older children may enjoy the challenge of having to actively search for shapes in their environment and to start naming these 2D shapes.  Let us know what you find!

Welcome back to the new term!  We hope all of our children have enjoyed a well-deserved break - many have been eager to tell us all about the new toys that they’ve had for Christmas, as well as the exciting things they’ve done.
 
We have explored lots of toys this week, with children helping choose what resources we should have out each day.  Trains, cars, pirates, happyland, and dinosaurs have all been popular.  We’ve also explored lots of different construction toys, including wooden bricks, briotec, knex and waffle bricks in the garden.
 
Numbers and shapes have been a fun focus area this week.  We have a new, very large, felt board with numbers and shapes that Velcro on; the children have enjoyed exploring these, ordering them, pulling them off and sticking them back on!  We’ve also got a new song where children have to find a certain number on the board – this has been really popular and asked for daily! It’s been a great way of introducing children to numbers in sequence, looking at the concept of ‘one more’, and helping children to learn to recognise numerals 1-5.
 
Our climbing frame came out on Thursday and Friday – this is always popular and offers children an opportunity to focus on their gross motor skills - climbing, sliding and developing balancing skills.  Jolly Jo also offers our children an opportunity to develop their gross motor skills – this week we enjoyed matching colours, music and dancing, as well as various parachute games.
 
To end the week, the children enjoyed baking a cottage loaf – they helped to weigh out the ingredients and mix them altogether.  The finished product was likened to an alien spaceship, although still tasted lovely when we shared it at snack time.
 
Finally, we’ve enjoyed going on a bear hunt!  This is always a favourite book, so we’ve selected it as our ‘book of the term’.  We enjoyed reading the story this week, with many children now joining in with the repeated phrases and actions.  We also enjoyed making bear faces at the craft table using paper plates and various craft provisions.
 
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
We’ve really enjoyed looking for numbers in our new song – focusing primarily on numbers 1-5.  Why not see whether you can find any numbers at home – on food packaging, a clock, or even the TV remote!  For our younger Squirrels, simply saying the number names can help them become familiar with them, whereas our older children may be ready to start to actively look for specific numbers in their environment.