Sunbeam Room
Home Corner: The last couple of weeks in the Home Corner, we have been exploring weight. We have explored different weight concepts such as heavy and light. We have explored weight through a variety of different experiences such as using the scales to determine which object was the heaviest and which was the lightest.
Story Corner: In the Story Corner over the past two weeks we have been continuing to explore our Story of the Month (The Gruffalo) through a variety of different activities and experiences. We used loose parts to create our own Gruffalo portraits in play-doh. We have also been exploring re-telling the story using a variety of props such as story spoons and stones. This has helped us to develop our knowledge of our story and the characters. We have also been developing our fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as we participated in an experience where we had to attach purple prickles to the Gruffalo’s back using paper clips. We have been exploring size in the Story Corner, focusing on height. We explored the Gruffalo characters and were organising them in order from tallest to smallest and vice versa.
Creative Area: Over the past two weeks, in the Creative Area we have been beginning to make some decorations for the Christmas season. We have developed our creative skills and used a variety of resources to decorate our own Christmas tree baubles and decorations.
STEM: In the STEM area, we have been exploring the properties of water through freezing it. We have been exploring liquids that freeze and liquids that don’t freeze and investigating why this is. We have also been exploring water turning into ice, and ice melting and turning back into water. We have explored what makes ice melt such as heat, salt, our body temperature. We have also been exploring colour mixing in the STEM area as we have been mixing different colours of paint to match colours in our environment such as people’s hair colours, the colours of our clothing etc.
Outdoors: Out in the garden, we have been exploring the concepts of full and empty using different liquids and tools. We have discussed what these concepts mean and explored what each of these concepts looks like in practice. We filled some beakers up to the top to explore the concept of “full” and measured how much water it took to fill it. We developed our fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as we used pipettes to fill the beakers. We have also been moving the garden equipment around and made an obstacle course using the materials.
Forest Schools: The last couple of weeks at Forest Schools, we have been exploring the wildlife through bird watching. We made our own binoculars using cardboard tubes and then we drew pictures of the birds that we found. We have been feeding the birds over the last few weeks using homemade bird feeders.
Teaching Time with Mrs Smith: This week we have been exploring our new word aware words of the week which are “Exhausted” and “Hard” and were selected from our Talk 4 Writing story which is Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. We have also been exploring activities and experiences relating to this story such as porridge sensory play, we scooped and poured the porridge using a variety of tools. We discussed size as we scooped the porridge into different sized bowls, big, medium and small. We have also been exploring our Goldilocks and the 3 Bears story map and retelling the story using this resources, this has helped us to gain a better understanding of the story. We have been developing our numeracy skills this week as we have explored subitising using 5 frames and bear figures.
Daisy Room
In the Daisy room this week we have been exploring the Old McDonald song and story using props such as small world figures and puppets. We have been singing this song during our welcome times and reading the story book throughout the day. We have also been developing our gross motor skills, hand-eye coordination and reflexes as we have been practicing throwing and catching.
Children In Need: To celebrate Children in Need we participated in a dress up day where we wore something spotty, something yellow or our pyjamas. We explored a variety of Pudsey bear themed experiences and activities.
Book Week Scotland 2023: The week beginning 13th of November was Book Week Scotland. We celebrated this through a variety of book themed experiences and activities such as making Elmer patterns, Winnie the Witch potions and having a Tiger Who Came To Tea picnic. We also participated in a school wide competition where we decorated the nursery doors themed like books. The nursery children made amazing Gruffalo and Goldilocks and the 3 bears themed doors.
