We have been collecting large boxes recently so thank you to all those parents who donated them. They have been turned into space rockets, cars, beds and on Wednesday an enormous train that stretched all the way across the room. We made visits in it to the zoo, the moon, Tescos and finally Spain!
The small plastic animals were very popular this week. A large zoo was created with the Happy land village, and animal pens were made using the small wooden bricks. As the week progressed different groups of children added to the game using duplo, lego and briomec.
We talked about the weather, and the children with some adult help have made a selection of weather bottles. These are displayed on the window sill and we hope to add to them and use them each day to decide what the weather is likely to be. They consist of a small water bottle filled with different materials eg small leaves in the water to represent a windy day and cotton wool to represent clouds. Another series of bottles are magnetic and the children have been practising using a magnet to move materials inside the bottles.
As the week progressed the sessions became smaller and quieter due to an outbreak of chicken pox and by Friday we had heard of 11 cases so do watch out for those troublesome spots.
As we are sure you are all aware there was a solar eclipse on Friday morning. We stayed indoors to protect the childrens eyes although it was a very cloudy day and there was not much to see. We decided to try and explain what an eclipse is by making a sun and a moon out of plates and showing how when they are aligned the sun is blocked out for a time. This got us thinking about the moon and how we could get there so the children made a series of small rocket ships out of toilet rolls, card, paper and glue and we sang our favourite Zoom, zoom we are going moon song.
Words we have learned this week:
Eclipse
Magnetic
Ideas to continue this week's fun at home:
Make your own weather bottles (come and see ours for ideas)
Make sun and moon shaped biscuits to represent the eclipse