Outdoors:
Reindeer food:
A group of children requested to make reindeer food like they had done at home so we set out a tray with seed, oats, carrot peel and carrot chunks with some cinnamon essential oils. This gave the children the opportunity to explore their senses by having different smells, textures and colours to explore. We spoke about what reindeers eat and the important job they have at Christmas time and how it is very tiring for them which is why they need special food to keep their magic going.
Forest – mushrooms:
Whilst we were in the forest this week we were doing our risk assessment to find any hazards or risks in the garden. We found some wild mushrooms so we gathered round to have a look and we spoke about how some foods that grow aren’t safe to eat so we looked at different foods and plants that grow in forests and which ones are safe and which are not. We also found lots of bugs and insects under logs and bricks, we spoke about the life cycle of the worm and what worms need to thrive in the forest.
Healthy eating:
There has been lots of interest in healthy eating recently and the life cycle of foods like fruit and veg. Today we chose some healthy and not as healthy foods and put them in a basket beside this was a tuff tray split in half and the children were asked to sort the foods into healthy and not so healthy. When we had sorted the foods out we had a discussion about why they thought each food was what they’d chosen and what makes a food healthy or not.
Construction:
Snow blocks were set out in a tuff tray following a child asking to build igloos in the garden. A group of children worked together to design and build their igloo. The children were developing language skills, team building skills, learning about when to talk and when to listen, sharing resources, gross motor skills, planning and problem solving.
Mud kitchen:
The mud kitchen has been very popular recently with children making soups and stews so we added some real fruit and veg into the mud kitchen to give the children the opportunity to use real foods in their soups. They are learning about soup ingredients, cutting skills and how to cut food safely using child safe equipment.
Numeracy:
We set up cotton wool balls (snowballs – as the children decided they were) and tongs/ tweezers in a tuff tray with different numbers written in the tuff tray with the aim the children would use the tweezers to move the correct number of snowballs into the numbered circles. This is developing fine motor skills, hand grip, hand eye coordination and wrist movement which help build the skills required for writing as well as developing numeracy skills such as number recognition, counting and 1:1 number correspondence.
St Andrews day:
To celebrate St Andrews day we set out some different activities such as our Scottish loch in the water area; where we used water, blue paint and white glitter to create our Scottish coloured loch and the children were exploring making their own Loch Ness monsters using natural objects like leaves and sticks. This is to develop their imagination skills, creativity, learning about and celebrating the country they live in. We also discussed what floats and sinks in water as they tried different materials to make their monster.
We also set out two tartan inspired painting activities. In one tray we put green, yellow and blue paint with glitter along with celery sticks to use to mark make. We also taped paper down in a tuff tray and provided paint and cars for the children to explore and create their very own tartan.
