Squirrels Preschool, Highwoods, Colchester
  Squirrels Preschool
  • Home
  • Covid-19 Updates
  • Parent Pages
    • Report absence
    • Blog
    • Letters Home
    • Dates for the Diary
    • What To Expect, When?
    • Supporting children with English as an additional language
    • Keeping children safe
    • Prospective Parents
    • School Readiness
    • Songs
    • Fun Activities
  • Staff & Policies
    • Staff
    • Policies >
      • Complaints procedure
    • Promoting British Values
    • SEND
  • Contact Us
    • How to Register
    • Funding options
  • Gallery
  • Vacancies

Week Commencing 22nd February 2021

28/2/2021

0 Comments

 
This week at Squirrels we have been exploring a space theme! This was inspired both by our focus story, 'Whatever Next' as well as a child's interest in the recent Mars rover landing.  To learn more, we have been using our laptop to look for facts about space, as well as images of rockets and rovers.  This inspired some of the children to recreate their own rockets using a variety of construction materials, including the wooden bricks and the Mobilo, as well as repurposing large cardboard boxes to fly us to the moon!  We obviously needed astronauts if we were traveling into space, so we drew around the children and turned them into astronauts - adding space helmets, space boots and other essentials!

Space was the inspiration for our craft this week too - painting stars, planets and aliens!  We've also explored this theme within sensory play, using salt, dyed rice, oats, and dough to explore space inspired small world adventures!  To complement this, we have shared space songs and space themed books at carpet-time, including the story, 'Aliens Love Underpants' and, 'On the Moon.'

The talk of 'space adventures' led us to discuss our own adventures during carpet-time.  The children talked about the seaside, the forest, and camping adventures they'd enjoyed.  To extend this, we shared the stories, 'The Whale and the Snail', and, 'This is the Bear and the Scary Night' - both about characters who have enjoyed their own adventures!  Inspired by the thought of a seaside adventure, we set up a seaside themed tuff tray, complete with water, seaweed, shells and sea animals.

With the warmer weather this week, we have enjoyed the garden more.  Water play has been popular, both in our water tray, and in our mud kitchen.  The mud, especially, was popular this week.  A group of children found spades and started to dig the borders and pots.  We gave them a tuff tray to empty their mud into, which they then decided needed additional water added!  This new messy mixture was the perfect obstacle to add to their bike track - with children experimenting with riding their bikes through and making some muddy tracks too!  With so much mud - we decided to add flower pots and gardening tools.  This started a conversation about seeds and flowers, so we shared the story, 'Jasper's Beanstalk' and discussed how seeds can grow.  We will soon be planting our own seeds at Squirrels to enable us to explore this further.

Other popular activities this week have included, using spoons to scoop and pour, mixing flour into playdough to change the texture, creating shape rockets, playing in our dark den, creating rainbows, and practicing our pencil control.  We've also enjoyed our Jolly Jo sport session - chasing hula hoops, matching shapes, balancing beanbags, and moving like snakes, crocodiles, lions, dragons and monkeys!

Ideas to continue the learning at home:

Many of our children were inspired by our space theme and enjoyed talking about how a rover had landed on Mars.  You can watch the rover landing via the link below...

Why not use recycling to create your own junk-modelled Mars rover? We'd love to see photos of your creations.

Perseverance Rover's Descent and Touchdown on Mars: Onboard Camera Views | Mars Video - NASA Mars





0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Squirrels Preschool

    Our blog to keep you up to date with what we're up to....

    Archives

    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.