We are already five weeks into the new term and the children have really settled in, made new friends and embraced all the new routines and activities on offer. This week we re-visited the Going on a bear hunt story at the children's request. The children have remembered the words really well and have enjoyed helping us out when the
adults “forget” what comes next!
Learning to share and take turns can, understandably, be a difficult concept for very young children to understand, but this week we have seen some lovely examples of patience, co-operation and turn taking.
As the children become more confident at Squirrels they use their imagination to create their own games. It is very interesting to observe how they co-operate, problem solve and come up with a variety of new ideas. An example of this is that we had the balancing beams indoors so that the children could practice their balancing skills. Eventually one child asked if he could turn it into a track for the trains. He then organised finding trains, and building blocks to make the station and a group of children had a lovely time playing with their new miniature world.
Art and craft is always a popular activity. For many of the children the enjoyment simply comes from stirring up the paint, looking at the effects of mixing the colours, gluing small pieces of material to paper or creating models from our recycling container. Some children took this a step further this week and made bubble pictures. This is done by mixing paint, water and liquid soap together. They then blow into it with a straw to create a colourful bubble mountain. Then they place a piece of paper on top to hold the bubbly pattern.
The water wall continues to be popular, but this week children have adapted some of the materials attached to it such as the funnel, to create new experiments. This has given us the idea of creating a box of funnels, pipes, tubes etc so that the children can use their own imagination to develop their understanding of science.
We have observed a lot of spiders in the garden and the room this week as we progress into Autumn. On Friday, many of the children made spiders webs by hole punching around a paper plate and threading pipe cleaners and wool through the holes to create the legs.
Words we have learned this week:
Web (spiders)
Blowing
Ideas to continue this weeks fun at home:
Practice blowing (not sucking) through a straw. This can be used to blow small objects such as a tiny ball or piece of cotton across a table. This fun game is also a very useful
technique in the development of speech as it helps to strengthen muscles used to form sounds.
adults “forget” what comes next!
Learning to share and take turns can, understandably, be a difficult concept for very young children to understand, but this week we have seen some lovely examples of patience, co-operation and turn taking.
As the children become more confident at Squirrels they use their imagination to create their own games. It is very interesting to observe how they co-operate, problem solve and come up with a variety of new ideas. An example of this is that we had the balancing beams indoors so that the children could practice their balancing skills. Eventually one child asked if he could turn it into a track for the trains. He then organised finding trains, and building blocks to make the station and a group of children had a lovely time playing with their new miniature world.
Art and craft is always a popular activity. For many of the children the enjoyment simply comes from stirring up the paint, looking at the effects of mixing the colours, gluing small pieces of material to paper or creating models from our recycling container. Some children took this a step further this week and made bubble pictures. This is done by mixing paint, water and liquid soap together. They then blow into it with a straw to create a colourful bubble mountain. Then they place a piece of paper on top to hold the bubbly pattern.
The water wall continues to be popular, but this week children have adapted some of the materials attached to it such as the funnel, to create new experiments. This has given us the idea of creating a box of funnels, pipes, tubes etc so that the children can use their own imagination to develop their understanding of science.
We have observed a lot of spiders in the garden and the room this week as we progress into Autumn. On Friday, many of the children made spiders webs by hole punching around a paper plate and threading pipe cleaners and wool through the holes to create the legs.
Words we have learned this week:
Web (spiders)
Blowing
Ideas to continue this weeks fun at home:
Practice blowing (not sucking) through a straw. This can be used to blow small objects such as a tiny ball or piece of cotton across a table. This fun game is also a very useful
technique in the development of speech as it helps to strengthen muscles used to form sounds.
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