As part of National Road Safety Week, the children have enjoyed going out for short walks around Highwoods to discuss how to stay safe near the road.  We practiced holding hands and talked about safely crossing the road using the zebra crossing.  Back in the Squirrels room, we made our own traffic lights at the craft table, using red, yellow and green, and talking about what these different colours represent.  To help remember the colours, we played a traffic light game at carpet time, dancing when a green mat was held up, freezing on amber, and stopping and sitting on red! We also played the car game during our Jolly Jo session this week.

Cars are always a popular small world activity.  This week, as well as having our garage and cars, we also taped down a large roll of paper to encourage children to draw their own road.  This is a good way to encourage some of our more reluctant mark makers to join in and have a go - adding roads, roundabouts and road signs.

As well as road safety, we've also started to focus on Christmas!  As early as it may seem, Christmas will be here before we know it!  The children will all be making a range of festive themed crafts which they will bring home in the final week of term.

Following last week's 'maths mission' - Owlette from PJ masks was back with another mission!  This week the children had to form their own number line, matching numerals and numicon, before then adding counting bears to their numicon line!  This is a great way to encourage maths in a fun way, and supports children as they learn to count one object for each number and to recognise corresponding numerals.

Our doctors surgery has been popular all week.  Children have been dressing up in various nurse, doctor, and paramedic dress up outfits and have used the doctor's set to make each other better! We've observed some lovely group play, with children really starting to now build up their role play scenarios and play with their peers.

Other popular activities this week have included puzzles, tools (especially hammers), playdough and the mud kitchen.

Ideas to continue the learning at home:

Take a local walk and talk about walking safely near roads.  Talk about the importance of holding an adult's hand whilst walking, and see if you can find somewhere safe to cross?  

We observed a two minute silence for Remembrance Day on Monday, and watched the CBeebies animation entitled 'poppies'.   We then made a wreath using cupcake cases that we painted red.  To introduce the idea of Remembrance Day, we talked about remembering people who aren't here anymore - this led to some of our children then reminiscing about friends that have left to go to big school.

We have been baking each day this week, ready to sell cakes for our Children In Need bake sale.  Baking offers so many learning opportunities.  We have been measuring ingredients, recognising numerals on our scales and using language such as more / less.  We've been developing our gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination as we've poured and spooned in ingredients and mixed them all together.  We've also learnt new cooking words, such as 'creaming' and 'folding', whilst working together with our peers and learning to listen to instructions.

Space has been a strong theme all week.  The children had told us they found the changing area 'not very fun' - so we held a vote to decide how it should be decorated.  The children chose a space theme, so we then spent time crafting planets, space rockets and pictures of the stars to enhance this area.  This prompted space inspired role-play where we introduced our dark den alongside a range of rockets and aircraft, as well as space themed songs at carpet-time.

In Jolly Jo we've been practicing a range of skills. We practiced carrying cups on a tray, an essential skill for when children go to big school! We also practiced throwing hoops over cones, before then finishing off with a bike race!

We finished the week with some new maths games.  The children received a letter from Cat-Boy who had sent the children a mission to match quantity and numerals using our number and numicon cards.  The children enjoyed this task, and were then encouraged to write Cat-Boy a letter, asking for their next mission to be sent! 

Other popular activities this week have including construction toys, such as Lego and popoids, jigsaw puzzles, and toy animals.  We've also enjoyed the garden (despite the rain!) - enjoying the very muddy mud kitchen, sweeping the leaves, and playing football!

Ideas to continue the learning at home:
Cooking and baking can be such wonderful learning opportunities, so why not involve your child in preparing food at home.  You can count ingredients as you add them, use scales and introduce the idea of more or less, explore the textures and smells of different food, and enjoy looking through cook books (or the internet) for ideas.   

Welcome to our first blog following the half term break!  It's been lovely to have so many 'Autumn Challenge' pictures returned, giving children the opportunity to proudly show their amazing efforts at carpet time, and tell their friends about their finds.

Our Squirrels' garden has been looking particularly autumnal this week, with an abundance of red and golden leaves having fallen from the trees!  The children have enjoyed kicking these, sweeping them, collecting them in pots, and talking about the colours and shapes. We've also enjoyed exploring the pumpkins that have been donated.  We've been rolling them, scooping them, filling them, painting them, washing them, comparing sizes and counting them!  

With fireworks night on Tuesday, this has been a theme that has been popular all week.  We've introduced children to a variety of new techniques at the craft table to create firework pictures, including; using straws and toilet roll tubes to print with, junk modelling our own sparklers using straws and tinsel, using bubble wrap to create rockets, tea-bag 'splatting' to create explosive patterns, and using coloured pasta to make fireworks!  We've also explored fireworks within our sensory play, using shaving foam and powder paint to swirl patterns, and using our 'sparklers' (sticks) to mark make in sparkly salt!  This has led to children exploring some lovely words to describe fireworks, such as 'bang', 'boom' and 'whoosh,' and telling us all about fireworks that they've seen.  Continuing with our 'fireworks' theme, on Wednesday, we decided to have a group snack around our own 'bonfire' - enjoying hot chocolate and marshmallows together!  

Also on Wednesday, we took our 'harvest' biscuits to the lunch group at the community centre.  The children handed them our basket of biscuits before we then sang a collection of our favourite songs.  The lunch group gave a big applause and thanked the children.

Scooping and pouring has been popular this week.  Rain over the weekend had filled our mud kitchen with water which enabled children to then scoop this into pots and pans to make 'soup' and 'mud cake'.  We saw lots of lovely group role play, with children really building up their own play ideas.

During Jolly Jo we introduced children to our parachute!  We focused on lifting it high / low and fast / slow, before then taking turns to run underneath it!  We also played a game matching shapes and turning over discs!

Other popular activities this week have included the train set, Happyland, marble run, cars and planes, and wooden building blocks.

Ideas to continue the learning at home:

Why not explore signs of autumn together?  Look out for leaves falling from the trees - what colours have they turned? Have you noticed it's getting colder and the days are shorter - why is that?

There are lots of great stories you could share about Autumn, such as 'We're going on a Leaf Hunt' and 'Pumpkin Soup' - details of local library services can be found here...

https://libraries.essex.gov.uk/

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Welcome to our final blog of this half term.  This week we have been exploring Diwali, often called the festival of lights.  We explored Rangoli designs, with many children experimenting and making their own patterns; using doilies, colour mixing with paints, and even making patterns from fruit!  Many of the children also made their own diva lamps from clay, using various tools to help them sculp their masterpieces!  The clay was so popular that, as the week progressed, children came up with their own ideas of what to make; tarantulas, birthday cakes, hedgehogs and reindeer! 

We trialled something new this week, we created a 'kids only' zone!  By sectioning off a small corner of the room with the dressing up trolley, and by filling this area with cushions and blankets, the children had a quiet and safe retreat where they could go to rest, to think and to recharge!  We found that a number of children really valued this 'adult free' area, and we noted how it helped facilitate some lovely communication between peers.

As our children's listening and attention skills develop, our Jolly Jo sessions are becoming more structured and often involve 2-part instructions.  This week we focused on colours, with children playing a game where they had to run to the 'grass', 'sun', 'water', or 'postbox', and a car game where red means 'stop', green means 'go', blue means 'reverse' etc.

Despite the cold and wet weather, we still endeavour to spend time in the garden each day (coat and wellies really are important).  This week the waffle bricks have been popular, with children using these to make football goals.  We have also been busy cleaning and tidying - children used the brooms to sweep up fallen leaves, and we used sponges and washing up brushes to scrub clean our 4 tuff trays!

Finally, sensory play remains popular with many of our children.  We repeated our oats themed tuff tray, with children enjoying mixing, scooping and pouring the oats.  We also set up a potion themed tuff tray with bowls of baking powder and potion bottles filled with vinegar.  The result of these ingredients mixing is a bubbling 'explosion' which fascinated many of the children as they watched their mixture bubble up and out of the bottle!