Welcome to our final Blog of this academic year!  With the summer holidays looming, we spent carpet time discussing where we would be going on holiday this year.  The children were eager to tell us their holiday plans and, someone who had already been on holiday, shared pictures from their holiday and taught us all the Polish for ‘hello’. It’s wonderful to be able to share at carpet-time, and we encourage children to bring in pictures, postcards or special mementoes to show and tell with their friends.

With the warm weather continuing, we were inspired to make our own ice creams!  Using an array of craft materials (lolly sticks, sequins, foil, buttons, and sugar paper) we created our own yummy ice creams.  Children were encouraged to talk about what flavour their lollies were and we then started discussing our favourites!

The climbing frame has been popular again this week.  This has been out every day for the past 3 weeks and children have become much more confident to climb, balance, step between the different height platforms and slide independently.   This has been great for developing their gross motor and balancing skills.  It has also inspired a number of children to share their gymnastic skills – using the safety mats to perform forward rolls and cartwheels!

We’ve also been busy getting ready for sports day and the end of term – children made their own flags ready to wave and cheer on their friends!  We had plenty of practice of the different races so that all children would be primed and ready for it!  On the day, our children did us proud!  They were eager to have-a-go and joined in with running races, sack races, egg and spoon races and bean bag balancing. 

​This leaves us to wish all of our children going to big school the best of luck.  We aim to inspire children to lead their own learning; to be engaged and interested in their environment and to learn through play.  We are confident that all those going to big school are ready for the next step of their learning journey, and feel that they have all got a firm foundation to build upon.  We wish them well.
 
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
Why not make a holiday memory box? Collect photos, postcards, tickets or mementoes of places you’ve been and then you can share and relive your adventures. 

With the excitement of the world cup this week, we’ve planned with football in mind!  Our Jolly Jo session incorporated a penalty shootout, as well as practicing ball skills as we passed balls through hoops and then along and under guttering.  We also used our mini (marble) footballs to produce an interesting art effect as we rolled them through red and white paint and swirled them within a tray!

Animals have also been a popular theme this week, especially with our visit from Kimmy’s Zoo!  On Thursday the children were all invited to join us for an animal fun day where they were able to meet and touch an exotic collection of animals, including; Shelby the tortoise, Fifi the skunk, Stanley the chinchilla, Rapunzel the giant millipede and Charley the bearded dragon.  As well as meeting the animals, children were also able to decorate their own animal masks, make animal collages and bake bird nest cakes.

Water has been well received as the warm weather continues.  We started with water in our water tray with the children then choosing to add a collection of washing up and hand wash bottles.  We experimented with the pump action effect that the hand wash bottles offered; watching as the water was sucked up and then spat out!  Children then decided to explore the effects of pouring water down ramps, as they then realised they would need to quickly find something to collect it with at the other end!  Others simply enjoyed transporting the water from the water table to other areas of the garden, such as the mud kitchen and growing patch.  Next, water was added to a tuff spot to achieve a mini splash
pool effect – children removed their shoes and socks and enjoyed the cooling effects of splashing in the water, with one child saying, “This is the best day at Squirrels EVER!”

With so much time spent in the garden, we decided to go exploring to see what nature finds we could collect.  The children found an assortment of twigs, leaves, shells and stones, which we attached to a giant piece of paper.  Children were encouraged to talk about their finds, which led to an interesting discussion about rubbish that was found… should they stick this on the picture?  Why was there rubbish in the garden? Is rubbish good or not?

Finally, we have been closely observing our caterpillars on their journey towards being butterflies.  We were very excited to be able to release our butterflies this week and watched as they fluttered their wings and flew away!

Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: 

Why not have your own nature hunt at home?  See what you can collect as you walk home from Squirrels and encourage children to discuss what they find; look at shapes, sizes, colours… you could even count your finds or try and group them based on size or type.

As we rapidly approach the end of term, we’ve had another busy week!  The children are now all very confident to lead their own learning, and we’ve seen some lovely examples of child-led play.  A number of children decided to build a ‘bonfire’ – working together to move planks of wood into a large pile.  As they sat around their bonfire, thoughts turned to what foods they could cook, with suggestions of sausages, burgers and snakes!

Pirates were also a popular theme.  Having been inspired by props from the dressing up trolley – some of the children decided to build a pirate ship in the garden using crates and planks.  It looked a little dull – so we decided to tape paper around the ‘ship’ and then used crayons to decorate it.  Once sailing across the ocean, we came up with some new pirate themed songs; “If you’re a pirate and you know it say ahoy… ahoy” (to the tune of if you’re happy and you know it.)

Our dolls house has been popular all week; often offering children an opportunity to quietly play indoors whilst the majority have been in the garden.  This has enabled us to observe children as they’ve really focused on building a narrative into their play.

As many of our children have been visiting their new primary schools this week, we’ve been sharing stories about ‘big school’ – this has given children an opportunity to ask questions and talk about their new schools.  As well as sharing stories about school – children have also been choosing their favourite books and then using tracing paper to trace their favourite pictures from the book.  This gave children an opportunity to discuss the story and characters, as well as focusing on pencil control.

Finally, our caterpillars emerged from their cocoons into beautiful butterflies this week!  The children were excited to see them and were inspired to create their own butterfly pictures at the craft table.  It’s been a very exciting journey to observe our tiny caterpillars grow and change!

Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
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Enabling children to lead their own learning through child-led play is such an important part of nurturing independent learners.  Offer your children open ended play opportunities (a box, a sheet over a table etc.) and then be involved in their play.  If they decide the box is a rocket, join them on a trip to the moon!  You can help them explore and expand their own ideas and model new ideas.