This week the children were excited to discover our new climbing frame in the garden.  This was bought with the fundraising money we received from our Christmas fayre – so a BIG thank-you to all of our families for your continued support.  This frame offers children an opportunity to climb and slide, as well as a cosy den space underneath, a Perspex board for mark making and a planter for growing plants.  This week we’ve observed lots of lovely turn taking, as well as our children helping one another onto the climbing equipment.
 
Being outside inspired us to start our garden clear up.  We end up with a lot of leaves during autumn, so we used brooms, rakes and wheel barrows to start to clear the leaves – this led to lots of lovely teamwork!  Unfortunately, when leaves are in a huge pile, it’s just too tempting not to kick and throw them!  So, despite our efforts, the garden is still awash with leaves – but at least we can try again another day!
 
It might not quite be beach weather just yet, but this week we still explored a beach theme!  We set up a tuff tray of seaweed, sand, water and shells.  The seaweed offers a really unusual texture and, together with the sand, water and shells, there was plenty of investigation and exploration.  Children enjoyed adding animals, and transporting the water between trays.  We also investigated what was in the seaweed bubbles as one child noted they couldn’t pop them!  We used scissors to cut the seaweed, which was certainly a different use of cutting skills.
 
With the interest in water from our beach theme, we decided to extend this further.  We set up a tuff tray with beakers of coloured water, measuring jugs and giant pipettes.  The children spent a lot of time transporting the water between different beakers and jugs, before then adding their own items; paint trays, baking trays and empty bottles from the junk modelling supplies.  They pretended to make soup and cupcakes amongst other ideas, demonstrating some lovely independent thinking.
 
Also popular this week; colour mixing, especially looking at making things ‘lighter’ using white paint, mask making and making, decorating and flying paper aeroplanes.
 
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: 
 
With the half term holiday next week, why not explore some of the ideas on our website for fun play ideas? 

http://www.squirrelspreschool.com/fun-activities.html

                                                          新年快乐
 
This week we have celebrated the Chinese New Year and focused on some of the traditions observed.  The children have had a go at making Chinese lanterns; these are often hung in the street during New Year celebrations.  We also made our own money and put this into red envelopes; this is a way to share your blessings, with the red being an auspicious colour that signifies good luck. We’ve also listened to Chinese music and tried to create our own dragon dance!  In addition, we’ve been looking at Chinese numerals and have had a go at recreating these using a sand tray, and tracing paper.  We’ve also made our own fire breathing dragons!  We made our dragons, and then added bicarbonate of soda, red food colouring, and vinegar, and watched as the ‘fire’ burst from the dragon’s mouth!
 
Ensuring that children are introduced to different festivals, cultures and celebrations is important to us; we feel that children should learn both about their similarities and differences with others.  By sharing in different traditions, children learn about the world around them with respect for all.
 
As well as celebrating the Chinese New Year, we’ve also enjoyed our usual range of play ideas!  The craft table got very messy mid-week when we simply offered children the paint still in its powder form, alongside water spray bottles!  Some choose to mix these in pots to create paint; others sprinkled the powder onto their paper and then added the water.  Some even did all of their mixing on the table and then put their paper on top and made ‘prints’.  Despite the inevitable mess – this is a great way for children to develop their own ideas and encourages creative thinking!
 
We also explored colour mixing in a different way.  We had trays of various liquid (milk, water and oil) and used giant pipettes to then add food colouring.  The colours reacted differently depending on the liquid; with the colours making a range of swirls and combining in different ways.
 
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:  We would love to know about celebrations that are important to our families and welcome you to share any stories or photos you may have.  Involve your child; can they remember what happens and why certain events take place? Do they wear any special clothes?  Do you visit special people or places? We would love to hear about it, so please share with us via blue books, or talking to your child’s key person.

This week we’ve continued to explore our theme of people who help us.  On Monday we had a fire themed tuff tray with shaving foam ‘fire’ awash with red and yellow powder paint; children used a spray bottle to dampen the flames as they put the ‘fire’ out!  This proved a popular activity; it explored textures with the foam and water, colours as the red and yellow mixed to orange, communication and language with children talking about the task, and understanding the world with children discussing a fire fighters role!
 
We’ve also explored a post office workers role by setting up our own post office role play.  Children were busy writing letters, putting these in envelopes and then posting them, a great way to encourage physical development and early writing skills.  We even used scissors to cut our own stamps from foam!
 
Finally, we created some ‘large art’ – we drew around one of the children and then turned this into someone who helps us.  The children decided it was a police woman and helped to create her uniform with various arts and craft supplies.
 
The children enjoyed making their own playdough this week – one of our college students introduced us to a new recipe and technique for making playdough; it started off much gloopier than our usual recipe and offered a great opportunity to discuss textures.  Plenty of rolling, squashing and squishing later, with plenty of opportunity to use those gross motor muscles to work the dough, it was the playdough we know and love!
 
Jolly Jo this week focused on developing throwing skills as we aimed to throw hoops onto cones and beanbags into baskets.  We also brought in numbers, counting our beanbags and asking who had the most. 
 
We’ve enjoyed plenty of listening games this week.  We played musical statues during Jolly Jo, listening for when the music stopped.  We also played ‘Simon says’, listening to the different instruction given.  In the garden we’ve continued with our daily mile, giving it a snowy theme, and played What’s the time Mr Wolf.
  
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: The children have enjoyed learning about people who help us, so why not discuss your own job role with your child? Whether a full time parent, shop worker, doctor etc. it can be fun to learn about what people do.