With the warmer weather this week, the garden has proved very popular. We’ve had fun with the climbing frame, as well as our balancing planks; helping children to experiment with different ways of moving and to become confident as they climb under, over and through the equipment. We’ve also been practicing for sports day in the garden during Jolly Jo.
We’ve enjoyed plenty of water play - we used fishing nets to help us fish letters out of the water table, we’ve been busy using watering cans to water our growing fruit and veg patch, we’ve been exploring water as it cascades down our water wall, and we’ve used paint brushes to ‘paint’ the fences with water.
We have a number of dinosaur fans at the moment – so, to help engage them, the playdough was set up as a prehistoric ‘swamp’ complete with ferns and dinosaurs who stomped a trail of footprints behind them! We also changed one of our favourite ring games to give it a dinosaur feel - ‘Duck Duck Goose’ became ‘Dinosaur Roar!’ Children sit in a circle with one child chosen to walk around the outside of the circle - they touch each child’s head saying dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur… ROAR… on ‘roar’ the child whose head was touched then has to jump up and chase them around the circle – stomping like a dinosaur and roaring as they go!
Sammy, our resident African land snail, came out to play this week. As we cleaned his tank – he enjoyed coming out and eating his cucumber! The children are always intrigued by his size and often compare him to the common snails you might find in the garden! Also, focusing on bugs, our caterpillars were getting bigger and bigger until, on Friday, we noticed they’d turned into chrysalises. The children have enjoyed observing this transformation and many have shared the story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ – we’re now very familiar with this story and many children can retell the story using props and story cards!
Finally, we’ve considered sounds again this week. We played silly soup last week, focusing on the beginning sounds in words. This week we’ve looked at rhyming words, focusing on the similarity in end sounds. We’ve shared rhyming stories and also been working in small groups to complete a rhyming puzzle – looking for pairs of rhyming words such as cat and hat, crow and snow, and toad and road!
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: Rhyming games can be great fun; why not cut out pictures of rhyming words from a magazine, or have a go at drawing your own, then play a rhyme matching game? Place 3 pairs of rhyming words upside down and take it in turns to turn 2 cards over to see who can find a rhyming pair? Once you’ve found a pair – can you think of any other words that would rhyme? Make it harder by adding more cards!
We’ve enjoyed plenty of water play - we used fishing nets to help us fish letters out of the water table, we’ve been busy using watering cans to water our growing fruit and veg patch, we’ve been exploring water as it cascades down our water wall, and we’ve used paint brushes to ‘paint’ the fences with water.
We have a number of dinosaur fans at the moment – so, to help engage them, the playdough was set up as a prehistoric ‘swamp’ complete with ferns and dinosaurs who stomped a trail of footprints behind them! We also changed one of our favourite ring games to give it a dinosaur feel - ‘Duck Duck Goose’ became ‘Dinosaur Roar!’ Children sit in a circle with one child chosen to walk around the outside of the circle - they touch each child’s head saying dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur… ROAR… on ‘roar’ the child whose head was touched then has to jump up and chase them around the circle – stomping like a dinosaur and roaring as they go!
Sammy, our resident African land snail, came out to play this week. As we cleaned his tank – he enjoyed coming out and eating his cucumber! The children are always intrigued by his size and often compare him to the common snails you might find in the garden! Also, focusing on bugs, our caterpillars were getting bigger and bigger until, on Friday, we noticed they’d turned into chrysalises. The children have enjoyed observing this transformation and many have shared the story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ – we’re now very familiar with this story and many children can retell the story using props and story cards!
Finally, we’ve considered sounds again this week. We played silly soup last week, focusing on the beginning sounds in words. This week we’ve looked at rhyming words, focusing on the similarity in end sounds. We’ve shared rhyming stories and also been working in small groups to complete a rhyming puzzle – looking for pairs of rhyming words such as cat and hat, crow and snow, and toad and road!
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: Rhyming games can be great fun; why not cut out pictures of rhyming words from a magazine, or have a go at drawing your own, then play a rhyme matching game? Place 3 pairs of rhyming words upside down and take it in turns to turn 2 cards over to see who can find a rhyming pair? Once you’ve found a pair – can you think of any other words that would rhyme? Make it harder by adding more cards!
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