This week we took literacy to the tuff tray.
We put out Duplo and Humpty Dumpty puppets.
This was to encourage the children to retell the nursery rhyme using verbal and non-verbal communication.
The children did show good communication skills, sharing their thoughts and feelings and retelling the nursery rhyme in their own way.
We have been enjoying exploring the loose parts in the garden. We have been using the guttering and wooden planks to construct bridges for our cars to drive down. We have also been exploring different patterns by using our car tyres to make different tracks in the mud and with paint.
We have been exploring spring season. We enjoyed using a variety of leaves, flowers and twigs and different colours of paint to create beautiful pictures. Printmaking allows children to explore visual art while also developing their fine motor skills, hand eye coordination and creativity.
We also created our own little pond in the Panda room using water, paint, leaves, flowers and twigs. We spoke about all the animals who we may find in a pond such as frogs, fish, ducks, etc. Water play can support the development of children’s gross and fine motor skills, hand eye coordination and physical strength through pouring, splashing and squeezing.
In the Art area we have been looking a little closer at patterns. We have play dough stampers that leave spots and striped imprints in the dough, pipe cleaners that allow us to create stripes and buttons that look spotty when grouped together.
We have discovered that spots can be large polka dots or small and dotty, and that stripes can be thick or thin.
We have also spent time looking at the stripy and spotty clothing that we wear and have some on display to help the children identify which is which.
This week we have been making egg free cookies. Baking is a great way to help learn some math skills. There is a lot of counting and measuring involved in baking, which allows the children to practice these skills. We did this by counting out the number of ingredients we used or how many spoons of each we needed. Baking helps promote language development, so I talked to the children about what we were doing and I used descriptive words such as sifting, mixing , and whipping to expand their vocabulary. We were also working on our fine motor skills by mixing, kneading, pouring and rolling which helps to develop our control, and strength.
Best of all we had a tasty snack to take home at the end.
The children continue to develop their knowledge and understanding of plants and flowers. We have created a little flower display in our home corner with the children selecting different images using ICT. We then spoke about the different parts of a flower extending our vocabulary Stem, Roots, Petals, Leaves and Seeds. This sparked an interest in exploring different seeds, while having snack we looked at the different sizes and shapes that the seeds can come in. The children then set up their own garden and planted sunflowers and strawberries.
In our curiosity cube we are having a visual stimulus, this large seed has allowed the children to investigate and use their imagination. Children use the post it notes to mark make their thought (with support if needed.) We are excited to learn and research about our mystery item.
