The children have embraced the cold weather this week and still enjoyed the garden. A number of children decided to gather leaves and build a huge ‘bonfire’ in the garden… they then decided to enclose it using the mini-fence panels and warned us not to touch the fire because it was hot! With bonfires in mind, lots of children decided to dress up and pretend they were fire fighters… racing around the garden with their sirens blaring!
The excitement of the holidays seems to have made some of our children very excitable this week – to help us work off some of that energy we’ve been enjoying active action songs. We made our own ‘bus’ as we sung the wheels on the bus and we enjoyed marching to the grand old duke of York. We’ve also had fun playing the bean game… pretending to be broad beans, runner beans, frozen beans, baked beans and so on!
Our wooden puzzles have also been popular this week – these puzzles are great for helping to develop fine motor skills as well as helping children to identify shapes and gain spatial awareness skills.
Finally, we’ve observed lots of children splitting off into small groups this week and simply spending time talking with each other (with Father Christmas being a popular topic!). We’ve witnessed this in the book corner as well as the summer house. So, to help enable this further, we made an additional cosy corner in our dressing up area with a soft blanket, cushions and chairs made from the waffle bricks! It’s lovely sometimes to stand back and simply observe what our children are engaged in!
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
Could you create a cosy talking corner at home? Maybe add pillows or cushions, snuggle up and just enjoying having a chat with your child. Maybe you could read a book together in your cosy corner, or let them invite some teddy bear friends in for a tea party?