The children have very much initiated this week's themes of play and demonstrated why we promote a child-led ethos - if children are empowered to explore their own ideas and interests - they will be better engaged and inspired to learn. Our job is to then extend their learning and scaffold new ideas and experiences!
This was evident when one of our children took an interest in paper aeroplanes. We have spent the week learning how to make our own paper aeroplanes and competing to see whose could go furthest! This interest was then taken into our Tuesday Jolly Jo session, where we had aeroplane races in the big hall and used planes as the basis for different games. We then decided to extend the learning further and added mark making and letter formation - encouraging children to decorate their planes and write their own names on them! Next, we added maths! We hung up numbered hoops to fly through, and encouraged children to keep score. Our hoops were numbered with 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 and 100 - with many children able to recognise the numerals and say whether a number was higher or lower than another.
Another example of following child-led themes was when a child said they'd had a fox in their garden! We used a laptop to view images of foxes, and noted how an image of an arctic fox was hard to see against a snowy background! This introduced us to the word 'camouflage,' so we discussed exactly what this word means. We then set up a tuff tray activity filled with grass and leaves, and had to help various animals, bugs and dinosaurs 'camouflage' by painting them the same colour as their background! The story of the fox also initiated a story-telling theme - many of the children were eager to tell their own stories - so we wrote these down, and encouraged children to draw accompanying pictures to enable us to create their own personalised books! To ensure all of our children had an opportunity to be involved in story-telling, we did a carpet-time activity where each child had to add an additional element to a story - we then story-mapped this onto a white board so we could retell it - it went something like this...
"A tiger and a monkey in a monster truck flew to the moon and they met an elephant and a bunny who came hopping along! The monkey was flying in the sky and then they met a dog called Daddy! There was a Lamborghini and a lion. The elephant then ate all the grass and they all went into a tree... a motorbike raced passed - The End!"
Other popular activities this week have included, marble run - and then using marbles to paint with! Number recognition games, activities and songs. Exploring our emotions using our mood monsters and our emotion stones. And, bikes, trikes and balancing in the garden.
Ideas to continue the learning at home:
Helping children to create their own stories is a wonderful way to explore how stories work! There has to be a main character, an event, and an ending! Why not encourage your own story telling at home? You could use a favourite toy or teddy to help spark an idea! Decide where that toy goes - then what happens and how does the story end! We'd love you to share your stories from home - and maybe there could be an accompanying picture too?
This was evident when one of our children took an interest in paper aeroplanes. We have spent the week learning how to make our own paper aeroplanes and competing to see whose could go furthest! This interest was then taken into our Tuesday Jolly Jo session, where we had aeroplane races in the big hall and used planes as the basis for different games. We then decided to extend the learning further and added mark making and letter formation - encouraging children to decorate their planes and write their own names on them! Next, we added maths! We hung up numbered hoops to fly through, and encouraged children to keep score. Our hoops were numbered with 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 and 100 - with many children able to recognise the numerals and say whether a number was higher or lower than another.
Another example of following child-led themes was when a child said they'd had a fox in their garden! We used a laptop to view images of foxes, and noted how an image of an arctic fox was hard to see against a snowy background! This introduced us to the word 'camouflage,' so we discussed exactly what this word means. We then set up a tuff tray activity filled with grass and leaves, and had to help various animals, bugs and dinosaurs 'camouflage' by painting them the same colour as their background! The story of the fox also initiated a story-telling theme - many of the children were eager to tell their own stories - so we wrote these down, and encouraged children to draw accompanying pictures to enable us to create their own personalised books! To ensure all of our children had an opportunity to be involved in story-telling, we did a carpet-time activity where each child had to add an additional element to a story - we then story-mapped this onto a white board so we could retell it - it went something like this...
"A tiger and a monkey in a monster truck flew to the moon and they met an elephant and a bunny who came hopping along! The monkey was flying in the sky and then they met a dog called Daddy! There was a Lamborghini and a lion. The elephant then ate all the grass and they all went into a tree... a motorbike raced passed - The End!"
Other popular activities this week have included, marble run - and then using marbles to paint with! Number recognition games, activities and songs. Exploring our emotions using our mood monsters and our emotion stones. And, bikes, trikes and balancing in the garden.
Ideas to continue the learning at home:
Helping children to create their own stories is a wonderful way to explore how stories work! There has to be a main character, an event, and an ending! Why not encourage your own story telling at home? You could use a favourite toy or teddy to help spark an idea! Decide where that toy goes - then what happens and how does the story end! We'd love you to share your stories from home - and maybe there could be an accompanying picture too?
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