This week, with the warmer weather arriving, we’ve made the most of the garden. The children were excited to discover our new water wall which proved an instant hit. Our children worked together to transport water from one end to the other, using cups and scoops and watching as the water cascaded down. Boats and ducks were then added, as was almost every toy in sight!
Planting has been a popular theme again. Children have been planting pea seeds to bring home, as well as other seeds to be kept and grown at Squirrels. We have been learning how to care for our seeds and have set up an experiment with grass seed; comparing grass that will be grown in sun light, versus grass that will be grown in the dark – we look forward to seeing the results over the next few weeks! To link in with this theme, we set up a tuff tray of cut fruit and veg to enable children to explore where seeds actually come from – this offered great practice for fine-motor skills as we used tweezers to remove the seeds!
With fruit and veg in mind, the children have been discussing their favourite healthy snacks. To extend on last week’s snack ‘vote’, this week we’ve been discussing our favourite fruit and veg, painting images to add to our shopping wish list! This led to discussion about why we should eat fruit and veg and whether cake could count as a healthy snack choice!
Ice cream has been one of our child-led themes this week! The children became very engrossed in an ice cream role play; anyone walking passed squirrels could doubtless hear calls of ‘ice cream, ice cream, come and get your ice creams’. This was lovely to observe, the children initiated the play, using the climbing frame as their ‘shop’. They created flavours (the unicorn rainbow flavour seemed quite popular) and sold their goods (only £50,000 each!). This play then continued and developed over the week, with children revisiting and building on their ideas – we’ll have to see what will happen next week!
We enjoyed our final phonics session this week with ‘Sounds Right’ phonics, exploring ‘I’ and ‘N’ sounds. The children have now learnt ‘S’ ‘A’ ‘T’ ‘P’ ‘I’ and ‘N’ – they have been identifying items that begin with these sounds, and have also started to explore the concept of ‘blending’ sounds to create words. This is a great introduction to phonics that our children going to school will then be able to build upon as they learn to read and write.
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: Most children should now have brought home a seed to grow; help them to water this and observe it as it grows. Talk about how it changes over time, getting bigger and gaining leaves and eventually flowers.
Planting has been a popular theme again. Children have been planting pea seeds to bring home, as well as other seeds to be kept and grown at Squirrels. We have been learning how to care for our seeds and have set up an experiment with grass seed; comparing grass that will be grown in sun light, versus grass that will be grown in the dark – we look forward to seeing the results over the next few weeks! To link in with this theme, we set up a tuff tray of cut fruit and veg to enable children to explore where seeds actually come from – this offered great practice for fine-motor skills as we used tweezers to remove the seeds!
With fruit and veg in mind, the children have been discussing their favourite healthy snacks. To extend on last week’s snack ‘vote’, this week we’ve been discussing our favourite fruit and veg, painting images to add to our shopping wish list! This led to discussion about why we should eat fruit and veg and whether cake could count as a healthy snack choice!
Ice cream has been one of our child-led themes this week! The children became very engrossed in an ice cream role play; anyone walking passed squirrels could doubtless hear calls of ‘ice cream, ice cream, come and get your ice creams’. This was lovely to observe, the children initiated the play, using the climbing frame as their ‘shop’. They created flavours (the unicorn rainbow flavour seemed quite popular) and sold their goods (only £50,000 each!). This play then continued and developed over the week, with children revisiting and building on their ideas – we’ll have to see what will happen next week!
We enjoyed our final phonics session this week with ‘Sounds Right’ phonics, exploring ‘I’ and ‘N’ sounds. The children have now learnt ‘S’ ‘A’ ‘T’ ‘P’ ‘I’ and ‘N’ – they have been identifying items that begin with these sounds, and have also started to explore the concept of ‘blending’ sounds to create words. This is a great introduction to phonics that our children going to school will then be able to build upon as they learn to read and write.
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: Most children should now have brought home a seed to grow; help them to water this and observe it as it grows. Talk about how it changes over time, getting bigger and gaining leaves and eventually flowers.
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