We have had a summer full of interesting and exciting experiences – here are just some of them that we shared on Twitter.
The children learned about our local community and services – with visits from the police and fire service and trips to the synagogue, library, park and shops.
They enjoyed harvesting and preparing fruit and vegetables from our garden…
Here is a snapshot of some of the other experiences on offer!
The orchard bubble have been busy!
The orchard bubble has shown a great interest in making playdough over the last few weeks. The children have taken responsibility for their own learning by coming up with different ideas of how they want to create their playdough from colours and texture. “I want blue.”
“I want pink.”
The children had shown an interest in loose parts and wanted to include this in their playdough experience. By incorporating loose parts with playdough the children are developing their fine motor skills. They use a variety of movements such as pressing, rolling and stretching. This will help to strengthen the muscles in their hand which in turn will help them with their writing skills.
“I want to use leaves.”
“Oooohhh feathers.”
The children showed ownership over their creations and seemed to enjoy the fact that they could start again when one model was finished. They did show interest in taking them home so our next steps will be trying to create models with loose parts and clay.
“Can we take them home?”
Listening to children’s voices.
At the end of April, after every bubble had spent three weeks in each playroom every child was invited to share their thoughts. We used photographs of the playrooms to help us to talk about our likes and dislikes.
The children said they enjoyed moving around all the rooms and shared their ideas to make each room better. Some children felt that the garden in Playzone 2 was too small.
“I don’t like the garden”
“I didn’t like this because it wasn’t too big.”
We were able to begin using the side garden from Playzone 1 and expand the outdoor area for Playzone 2.
Some children missed the tyre swing from the old building so we added one to Playzone 1.
“I miss the tyre swing.”
“We should put some swings in the back yard.”
In Playzone 3 we added dolls to the home corner.
“Can we have babies in this room?”
“I would like to play with babies here.”
To help us look at some of the areas more closely we used Tuff Cams to share our thoughts.
“This art area is not so good. We need more things for sticky pictures.”
“People need to put things away in the right place, we need signs to tell them”.
The children suggested new resources and helped to organise and label them.
This has led to lots of new opportunities for leading their own learning.
As we continue to settle into our new building we can’t wait to hear more of the children’s ideas and suggestions to develop our learning environment.
