Last week, the children were interested in the story, 'The Gruffalo's Child' - so, this week, we extended this interest further by setting up a story themed tuff tray.  Using story props in a salt filled tuff tray, we explored mark making opportunities as we made, 'tracks in the snow'.  We also explored the different characters and recalled where they lived and how the story ended.

Another story themed activity this week has been the tale of the Gingerbread Man.  On Tuesday, we explored making gingerbread men using ginger scented dough.  Then, on Friday, following on from the children's interest in performing their own 'puppet shows' this week, Kate acted out the story of the Gingerbread Man using story props in our make shift puppet theatre.  Using props or puppets to tell a story can really help to engage children and make story telling more interactive!  Many of the children were able to join in with the repetition of, "run run as fast as you can... you can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

Our puppet theatre was initiated by the children themselves.  Initially, we had used our play flats to create a defined space for the home corner - the children then used this space to play with puppets - so, with the addition of a large sheet, we created our Squirrels Puppet Theatre!  The children were eager to perform for their peers - so we added chairs for the audience and took turns as the puppeteer!  There was some lovely turn taking and imagination observed.

We have continued to be led by a festive theme this week.  Our tuff trays have included an ice skating rink with real ice, a sensory snowman, and a snowy themed dinosaur swamp!  We've also enjoyed our water tray and rice tray with opportunities for scooping and pouring. 

A final activity from this week was our Christmas tree themed ice cream cones!  Using Ice cream cones and thick green icing, the children used spreaders to colour their cones green, before then adding a variety of silver balls and edible decorations to create their Christmas trees!   The children showed great focus as they decorated their cones in small groups, and this offered a great opportunity to develop hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

Other popular activities this week have included; role play hairdressers and doctors, building with Knex, Octoplay, and stickle bricks, playing ball games in the garden, and using beanbags to practice our throwing as we aimed them at our tyre targets!

Ideas to continue the learning at home:

Using story props is a great way to engage children with story telling and to make story telling more interactive.  Why not try and create your own story props?  We use a mixture of story spoons or stones, laminated characters, and toys to create our props - what could you use at home?  The link below gives lots of fun (and cheap) ideas for creating your own story props...

Playful Storytelling - Ideas for using a Story Bag, Basket or Prop Box! (theempowerededucatoronline.com)

This week we have enjoyed more festivities! We transformed one of our sheds into Santa's Christmas Grotto and modelled a Santa themed role play.  The children then built up their own role play ideas, taking turns to be Santa and asking others what they would like this year.  To extend this, we encouraged children to 'write' their wish lists to Santa.  We obviously needed somewhere to post our letters, so we set up a Christmas themed post office indoors.  As well as our letters to Santa, children also chose to make cards for their friends and post these in our post box.  Once all the cards were posted, the children then transformed the post office into a shop - selling anything and everything from around the room!

Our tuff trays have felt very snowy this week!  We have explored flour, icing sugar, cloud dough, rice and ice to represent an arctic themed winter wonderland!  These tuff trays are always set up as an invitation to play - inspiring children to engage and explore the different textures.  Our children have been particularly enjoying the train track recently, so we themed one of our tuff trays as the Polar Express!

Continuing a snow theme - we shared the story, 'The Gruffalo's Child' - a sequel to the Gruffalo where the Gruffalo's child explores different tracks in the snow!  Our children took a real interest in this story and it led to a carpet time discussion about how the moon had made a shadow which made the mouse look big - we then discussed how we could make shadows using torches... definitely something to explore next week!

We were very excited to have REAL snow on Friday!  Small groups of children were taken outside to explore the snow, where we then discussed how it felt (cold!), made tracks in the snow, threw snowballs at the fence, and even made a snowman!  This inspired us to make our own snowmen at the craft table too!

With the colder weather this week, we have made more use of the large hall.  On Monday we played a variety of games, such as, 'What's the time Mr. Wolf', and then on Tuesday we enjoyed our Jolly Jo session where we played a transport game - pretending to be cars, planes or trains, and enjoyed a hula hoop chasing game.

Other popular activities this week have included our puzzles, making our own instruments using bottles and rice, and using scissors.

Ideas to continue the learning at home:

We enjoyed sharing the tale of the Gruffalo's Child this week - why not share this story at home too and see what your child can remember? Who lived in the treetop House? What about the log-pile house? Can you remember where Fox lived? How does the story end - is the big bad mouse real?!  There's a link to the story below...

​The Gruffalo's Child - Read by Alan Mandel - Bing video