Some of the children made some large dinosaur feet to fit over their shoes with the help of Gill and this developed into making hats to add to the dinosaur disguise.
We talked about animals that no longer existed and introduced the children to the word fossil. Helen helped some of the children to make their own fossils by imprinting shapes into clay, whilst other children continued this theme in the playdough on their own.
We had great fun with the small puppet theatre made from a shoe box and used pictures of dinosaurs mounted on sticks to create shows.
We have spent some time in the garden despite the cold weather and small bouts of sleet and snow. Kelly developed a game we called Tin knock-down. A series of small yeast tins were placed on the tree trunk. The children lined up and threw balls or bean bags at them to try and knock them down. This was a great exercise in turn taking and developing hand/eye co-ordination. Other garden fun has included using the hula hoops as cars and chasing Jo around. The children played football and practised their penalty shoot-outs to develop those important physical skills as well as keeping fit.
We practised our mathematical skills with the colourful “linking elephants”. These are small plastic elephants that link together with their trunks and tails. They are in a variety of colours and sizes and help the children to develop mathematical language such as smaller, wider, bigger, taller, as well as grouping into different colours and sizes.
The book of the week was “The dinosaur who pooped a planet”. This is a hilarious story about a dinosaur in space who eats everything in sight until his tummy is too full to hold it and this results in explosive consequences.
For next week we have had requests for making buses, cars and aeroplanes and also to make “Box Trolls” . Come back to this page next week to see what developed.
Words we have learned this week:
Fossil
Linking
Ideas to continue this week's fun at home:
Paper mache – Blow up a balloon. Tear newspaper into strips and dip them in water and place all around the balloon and cover with glue (the glue can be made from a flour and water paste). When dry, paint it and then when that is also dry you can pop the balloon inside with a small pin and you have a paper mache ball or the the body of any animal you want to create.