We’ve been excited to carry on observing our growing seeds this week. Our beans have now ‘germinated’ and, having planted the seeds using paper towels and not soil, we’ve been able to see the root growth beneath the surface as well at the shoot appearing above. Our grass seeds have also grown over the weekend, providing us with our crazy looking ‘grass heads’ as well as a large tray of grass. We asked children what was needed for the seeds to grow and many were able to tell us both water and sunshine were important… to test this theory we’ve now covered half of our grass with black paper… we’ll see what effect this has next week!
Jolly Jo was taken outside this week into the garden. We had fun with egg and spoon races, sack races, as well as running races. We also looked at matching shapes using our shaped mats and beanbags. Introducing shapes during games helps children become familiar with them in a fun way and helps with shape recognition; linking in with maths.
Following on from making gingerbread men during last week’s cookery session, we made our play-dough ginger scented this week and added rolling pins and gingerbread cutters. The idea of using ‘scents’ sparked quite a discussion… children were interested in the smell of the ginger as well as the salt! We then had a look at the herbs in our sensory garden and found sweet smelling lemon balm… we will extend this next week and see what other herbs we can explore or whether we can recognise hidden scents!
Emotion stones have been popular this week. The children have been sharing a story entitled ‘Angry Annie’ – Annie gets angry when things don’t necessarily happen how she’d like, children then need to say how she ‘should’ react. We’ve explored Annie’s feelings and then had a look at what other emotions we might have; happy, sad, angry, scared etc. We’ve looked at these using our emotion stones, as well as looking at our own faces in the mirror. We will continue to explore ourselves next week and look at what makes us special, as well as others who are special to us, whether that’s our family, or superheroes with their special superhero powers!
Finally, with the weather warmer, it is far easier to embrace water play! We’ve had the water table out this week with the Duplo added and have had fun scrubbing this with toothbrushes as part of our ‘spring clean!’ We’ve also enjoyed exploring our water walls and watering our growing fruit canes in the garden.
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: Why not use a mirror to make faces in; explore what a happy face, sad, angry or scared face might look like? Helping children identify ‘feelings’ can help them to understand how both they and others may feel. Maybe you could even use some large pebbles and make your own emotion stones?
Jolly Jo was taken outside this week into the garden. We had fun with egg and spoon races, sack races, as well as running races. We also looked at matching shapes using our shaped mats and beanbags. Introducing shapes during games helps children become familiar with them in a fun way and helps with shape recognition; linking in with maths.
Following on from making gingerbread men during last week’s cookery session, we made our play-dough ginger scented this week and added rolling pins and gingerbread cutters. The idea of using ‘scents’ sparked quite a discussion… children were interested in the smell of the ginger as well as the salt! We then had a look at the herbs in our sensory garden and found sweet smelling lemon balm… we will extend this next week and see what other herbs we can explore or whether we can recognise hidden scents!
Emotion stones have been popular this week. The children have been sharing a story entitled ‘Angry Annie’ – Annie gets angry when things don’t necessarily happen how she’d like, children then need to say how she ‘should’ react. We’ve explored Annie’s feelings and then had a look at what other emotions we might have; happy, sad, angry, scared etc. We’ve looked at these using our emotion stones, as well as looking at our own faces in the mirror. We will continue to explore ourselves next week and look at what makes us special, as well as others who are special to us, whether that’s our family, or superheroes with their special superhero powers!
Finally, with the weather warmer, it is far easier to embrace water play! We’ve had the water table out this week with the Duplo added and have had fun scrubbing this with toothbrushes as part of our ‘spring clean!’ We’ve also enjoyed exploring our water walls and watering our growing fruit canes in the garden.
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: Why not use a mirror to make faces in; explore what a happy face, sad, angry or scared face might look like? Helping children identify ‘feelings’ can help them to understand how both they and others may feel. Maybe you could even use some large pebbles and make your own emotion stones?
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