We are really focussing on the children who are leaving us this July being “school ready”.  Many of you will have attending our getting ready for school session recently, or will have read the information that we put in the childrens trays.  The areas that we have been concentrating on are health and hygiene, which covers using the toilet independently, washing hands and using a handkerchief or tissue.  Other very important skills include putting on their own shoes and socks, changing for PE, carrying a tray (useful at school lunchtime), name recognition, holding a pencil correctly and saying please and thank you.

This week many of the children have been making headbands so they could pretend to be “Ninjas”.  This idea came from a couple of boys who asked to have some blue material to make one.  As the week progressed there were many variations on this theme and the children discovered that these headbands gave them super powers and enabled them to disappear, fly round the garden, crawl through small holes and become invisible.

Jolly Jo's sports sessions have been as lively as ever, and games have included a pirate game where cannon balls were fired at ships (excellent to support co-ordination), passing a rugby ball over the head and under the legs (using positional language) and the Lily pad game where the children become frogs on lily pads and is based loosely on musical chairs (excellent for those all important listening skills).

The children are becoming very skilled at developing their own games. We try to encourage them to think for themselves and to come up with new ideas.  This week they made their own assault course in the garden to take them around the crocodile swamp.  This was created using balancing beams and a slide and some tyres.  They were not allowed to touch the ground in case the crocodile swam to get them.  When they reached the safety of dry land they made a pretend bonfire with twigs and leaves and had a snack.

Other activities have included making a swamp for the small plastic dinosaurs, drawing dinosaurs and monsters and making models with clay.

Words we have learned this week:

Assault course

Lilly pad

Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:

Make your own assault course – this could either be outside using objects to balance on, or a smipler idea could be to make a map to follow saying 3 steps forward, hop to one side, go under a skipping rope etc

 

The children have been making “special person” cards this week in celebration of fathers day.  At Squirrels we acknowledge that families are blended from many different special people. The children were encouraged to make a card for their dads or anyone else that they felt held a special place in their lives.  

The past week has been particularly special because we invited dads and grandads into the session to join in with the fun.  We were delighted to welcome the brave dads who came in to help and hope that they enjoyed their time with us.  The children love to show their family members what they do at Squirrels, and parents/grandparents are always welcome to add their names to the parent help rota.  

We are managing to spend most of our time in the garden now that the weather has finally remembered that it is summer!  On Monday the children decided to build a large ship in the garden from the small fencing and a variety of props.  They put on lifejackets (high visibility builders jackets) and walked the plank before swimming back to the boat.  We had snack on deck, and then the “bad pirates” arrived.  Canon balls were launched (throwing balls into a hoop).  

On Tuesday Jolly Jo had the children rushing around playing all kinds of games.  Throwing and chasing a rugby ball is interesting because you never know which way it is going to jump, and the children have to try and predict this.  Many of these games are repeated through the week in the garden so all of the children have the opportunity to benefit from the fun.  

Making paper planes has been popular this week (thank you Avas mum!).  Flying competitions have been taking place most days to see who can fly their planes the furthest.

On Wednesday the children decided to put on a show.  Tickets were made and sold for handmade money. Signs were put up saying “No bugs”, after all, who wants to meet a bug when they are at the theatre.  The shows included singing, dancing and telling jokes.  Ice creams were made from cones of card and tissue paper and an ice cream stall was created to sell them. 

Other activities this week have included, hairdressing salon, doctors surgery, threading, lots of fun in the mud kitchen, footprints and acting out the story of Goldilocks.  

Words we have learned this week:

Lifejacket

Stall (for ice creams)

Ideas to continue this weeks fun at home:

Encourage your child to put on a show, it is great fun to watch their ideas form.

We have been continuing our bug theme this week in the garden.  The children were helped to make a wormery in a 2 litre plastic bottle and they spent some time trying to find worms to introduce to their new home.  We hope to be able to watch the patterns created by the worms in the soil and sand.  The children then decided to make houses for other garden creatures.  We made a snail house and introduced spiders to spiders webs.  The children created many other structures from sticks, mud and wood to try and attract new bugs. Some larger homes were made from the big coloured waffle bricks and these were able to provide homes for soft toys, bugs and of course three and four year old children!  

All of these bug activities have given the children the opportunity to problem solve, discuss nature, understand growth and decay, and to look at the environment in which we live.  

Bugs have also provided many other opportunities to develop skills.  For children to be able to write and use small motor movements as they grow, it is important to strengthen wrists and fingers by using materials such as playdough.  Another excellent way to do this is to use tools like tweezers.  We have a set of larger coloured tweezers and the children have been enjoying using them to pick up small plastic bugs hidden amongst pasta and other objects.  This developed into a race of who could pick up the most and is an excellent example of how we learn and develop through play activities.  

Jolly Jo as we call her has continued to do some excellent sports activities in the hall on a Tuesday morning.  We have managed to extend this to a further session on a Monday afternoon and are trying to secure some extra “big hall time” to give every child who attends on other days this opportunity.  Many of the games that the children play during these sessions are recreated by the children themselves in the garden at other times and it is interesting to observe which ones they remember and how they are able to organise themselves into groups and follow the rules.  

We are focusing this term on activities that will prepare the children for school, primarily for those that will leave us in July to start Big school in September, although the younger children are encouraged to join in if they show an interest.  These activities are, changing shoes for PE, carrying a cup on a tray (requested by the school), holding a pencil correctly and saying please and thank you and name recognition/writing.  

There have been many other activities happening at Squirrels this week, too many to write about in detail but they have included: making paper aeroplanes and numbering them, making clay bugs, drawing shapes in shaving foam, talking about and drawing our families, tracing and playing with the dolls house, water wall and mud kitchen.  Phew, what a busy week!  

Words we have learned this week:

Wormery

Tweezers

Ideas to continue this week's fun at home

Make bug houses in the garden or at the country park and see what moves in.

Try using tweezers to pick up small objects

• Wormery
  
  
• Tweezers 
  
  Ideas to continue this weeks fun at home: