In the garden they created their own campfire using the black plastic tuff spot filled with leaves and twigs. At snack time throughout the week we all put on our coats and sat on logs around the fire. The children had hot chocolate and marshmallows on sticks which they pretended to warm on the fire. Snack time was followed by signing around the camp-fire and, as we sang, we used two sticks to beat out a rhythm.
Garden games included Hide and Seek, creating pictures from tree rubbings, hiding a bear in the garden and following clues to find him.
On Thursday some of the children made bread and decided they wanted to make the rolls into trains. Pictures of the results can be seen on our facebook page. Trains continues to be one of the most popular activities that is requested week after week. So much can be learned from simple activities like the train set; turn taking, counting, role play, new words, logistics, design, construction, the list is endless.
Of course, there are other forms of transport and the children grouped chairs together to make a bus to take them to MacDonalds for a milkshake this week. They made their own tickets with numbers on and sold them to other children using plastic money. We had a lovely time singing on our bus ride.
Our 'book of the week' was, “Going on a Bear Hunt”. It is a book we revisit time and again at the childrens' request. This time we marched around the garden looking for the bear as we walked through “swishy swashy” grass, “squelch, squerch" mud and "hooooowoooo" snow (for those who are familiar with the book). This time we kept “forgetting” the words and the children had to help us fill them in.
Next week some of the children want us to focus on activities from the film Frozen, which is still the most popular topic amongst many of them. We are adapting this slightly to a snow and ice week so it will be interesting to see what activities come out of this.
Words we have learned this week:
Tree rubbings
Squelch
Ideas to continue this week's fun at home:
Den making
Reading a familiar story and missing out key words to see if they remember