This week, we have been focusing on 'people who help us' and have been exploring different role-play opportunities, including a veterinary surgery, doctors' surgery, building site, hairdresser, and post office! We have observed some lovely play, with children now much more confident to elaborate on their ideas and extend their play. The doctors' surgery was particularly busy - the doctors donned their scrubs and asked the patients to sit down ready for their jabs (inspired by recent preschool jabs!). We extended the learning opportunities further by encouraging the doctors to write up their patient notes - with some lovely mark making, pre-writing, and attempts at letter formation observed.
We have also focused on rhyming stories this week, with 'Oi Frog' and 'Chocolate Mousse for Greedy Goose' just two of our favourites. We have considered what a rhyming word is, and have had a go at trying to recognise them in the stories we've been reading. We have also played a rhyming pairs matching game, and tried to come up with our own rhyming strings!
Another popular story has been, 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. To extend this story further, we set up a sensory tuff tray themed on the story, complete with swishy swashy grass, water to splosh through, mud, snow, a forest, and a cave! This enabled children to revisit the story and talk about key events from the book, as well as explore the textures and explore the vocabulary needed to describe these textures.
Balancing has been popular in the garden. At the start of the week, the staff set up a simple balancing activity with our crates - but, by the end of the week, the children had taken ownership of this and were creating their own, ever more complex and challenging, assault courses! Using crates, wooden planks, wooden blocks, and even the trampoline - we filled half of the garden with an assault course. This offered a great opportunity for balancing, but also helped children to experience a certain level of risk - it's important that children can experience some risk to enable them to develop problem solving skills and form an understanding of consequences. We followed this up by reading the tale of 'Little Monkey' - a book about having to be brave!
Finally, with the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend, we enjoyed creating our own bird feeders this week. We threaded cheerios onto pipe-cleaners and hung these in the garden. We then discussed what we thought might eat our food, with answers ranging from; 'flying cats', 'ducks', 'fire breathing dragons', and, 'maybe even a pigeon!' To encourage mark making, we suggested the children draw signs to tell the birds or dragons where to eat!
Other popular activities this week have included; construction with stickle bricks, Duplo, and wooden blocks, marble run, baby bath time, and our weekly Jolly Jo sports session. We've also explored colour mixing, chromatography, making our own playdough, and listening games.
Ideas to continue the learning at home:
Why not get involved in the RSPB's Big Garden Bird Watch at home? You could watch for different birds in a garden, from a window, or whilst on a walk? What birds did you see? What colours were they? Can you count them? The link below has lots of resources to support this initiative, you could even make your own toilet-roll binoculars to help you!
Big Garden Birdwatch | Join the fun - The RSPB
We have also focused on rhyming stories this week, with 'Oi Frog' and 'Chocolate Mousse for Greedy Goose' just two of our favourites. We have considered what a rhyming word is, and have had a go at trying to recognise them in the stories we've been reading. We have also played a rhyming pairs matching game, and tried to come up with our own rhyming strings!
Another popular story has been, 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. To extend this story further, we set up a sensory tuff tray themed on the story, complete with swishy swashy grass, water to splosh through, mud, snow, a forest, and a cave! This enabled children to revisit the story and talk about key events from the book, as well as explore the textures and explore the vocabulary needed to describe these textures.
Balancing has been popular in the garden. At the start of the week, the staff set up a simple balancing activity with our crates - but, by the end of the week, the children had taken ownership of this and were creating their own, ever more complex and challenging, assault courses! Using crates, wooden planks, wooden blocks, and even the trampoline - we filled half of the garden with an assault course. This offered a great opportunity for balancing, but also helped children to experience a certain level of risk - it's important that children can experience some risk to enable them to develop problem solving skills and form an understanding of consequences. We followed this up by reading the tale of 'Little Monkey' - a book about having to be brave!
Finally, with the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend, we enjoyed creating our own bird feeders this week. We threaded cheerios onto pipe-cleaners and hung these in the garden. We then discussed what we thought might eat our food, with answers ranging from; 'flying cats', 'ducks', 'fire breathing dragons', and, 'maybe even a pigeon!' To encourage mark making, we suggested the children draw signs to tell the birds or dragons where to eat!
Other popular activities this week have included; construction with stickle bricks, Duplo, and wooden blocks, marble run, baby bath time, and our weekly Jolly Jo sports session. We've also explored colour mixing, chromatography, making our own playdough, and listening games.
Ideas to continue the learning at home:
Why not get involved in the RSPB's Big Garden Bird Watch at home? You could watch for different birds in a garden, from a window, or whilst on a walk? What birds did you see? What colours were they? Can you count them? The link below has lots of resources to support this initiative, you could even make your own toilet-roll binoculars to help you!
Big Garden Birdwatch | Join the fun - The RSPB
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