This week we have been enjoying the wonderful sunshine and making the most of the garden! We were happy to see that our fruit canes that we planted in February had suddenly burst into life with leaves and shoots beginning to grow! We’ve also been busy planting sunflower seeds this week. Children will be bringing their seed home to look after; we have shared stories about how these seeds will need water and sunshine to help them grow, and we would love to know how well your seeds do!
With sunflowers in mind, we tried a new craft idea; we squirted shaving foam in a tray, used pipettes to add yellow food colouring, and then used sticks to swirl the two together. When a piece of paper was pressed on top of this and the excess foam removed, the pattern left behind should have resembled the petals of a sunflower. However, we are very much of the thought that any activity we do is ‘all about the process!’ As much as we may have envisaged sunflowers, the children had their own ideas. They soon began to experiment with adding different coloured food colouring and they also experimented with different ways of swirling these colours; the thin sticks made delicate swirls, whereas we soon discovered large paint brushes made the foam all one colour. We also used our fingers to make patters, before then using our whole hands (and arms in some cases!) to explore. We talked about the colours we made as the food colourings mixed together, we talked about the feeling and smell of the shaving foam and then we admired the prints that we made as we pressed paper and paper plates on top of the foam. The end result was very far removed from the sunflowers that inspired us, but our journey was one of wonder and discovery!
With the sun shining we’ve also been able to better embrace water play. We started off by setting up a ‘car wash’ where the children could ‘drive’ their vehicles through. This then extended to the children wanting to wash other things they could find – so we’ve had a Lego wash, baby bathing session, and animal bathtime! The small tray we started off with was soon extended to include our large water table, as well as the baby baths! The children used sponges to wash with, and then used towels to help us dry. The babies were also treated to some fairly robust hair washing and brushing as we used soap and mini-brushes and pretended we were hairdressers!
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
Many of you will have had a seed come home this week, with a few to come home next week – help your child to look after their seed, to water it and observe what happens. Hopefully it will germinate and begin to grow within a week or two; you can talk about the changes you see, count the leaves as they grow, and enable your child to nurture and care for their sunflower.
With sunflowers in mind, we tried a new craft idea; we squirted shaving foam in a tray, used pipettes to add yellow food colouring, and then used sticks to swirl the two together. When a piece of paper was pressed on top of this and the excess foam removed, the pattern left behind should have resembled the petals of a sunflower. However, we are very much of the thought that any activity we do is ‘all about the process!’ As much as we may have envisaged sunflowers, the children had their own ideas. They soon began to experiment with adding different coloured food colouring and they also experimented with different ways of swirling these colours; the thin sticks made delicate swirls, whereas we soon discovered large paint brushes made the foam all one colour. We also used our fingers to make patters, before then using our whole hands (and arms in some cases!) to explore. We talked about the colours we made as the food colourings mixed together, we talked about the feeling and smell of the shaving foam and then we admired the prints that we made as we pressed paper and paper plates on top of the foam. The end result was very far removed from the sunflowers that inspired us, but our journey was one of wonder and discovery!
With the sun shining we’ve also been able to better embrace water play. We started off by setting up a ‘car wash’ where the children could ‘drive’ their vehicles through. This then extended to the children wanting to wash other things they could find – so we’ve had a Lego wash, baby bathing session, and animal bathtime! The small tray we started off with was soon extended to include our large water table, as well as the baby baths! The children used sponges to wash with, and then used towels to help us dry. The babies were also treated to some fairly robust hair washing and brushing as we used soap and mini-brushes and pretended we were hairdressers!
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
Many of you will have had a seed come home this week, with a few to come home next week – help your child to look after their seed, to water it and observe what happens. Hopefully it will germinate and begin to grow within a week or two; you can talk about the changes you see, count the leaves as they grow, and enable your child to nurture and care for their sunflower.
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