All posts by Miss Simms

Happy Campers ⛺️

Today, the children were talking about camping in tents and shared their some of their own experiences together in a small group.

”I have been camping”

”I have a tent in my living room”

“ I would like to go camping “

We decided to bring the outdoors in to the discovery room and build our own tent in our block area.  We shared our thoughts on how we could create this and what resources we would need to collect.

Some suggestions of what we could make or need for our camping experience were – ”a roof ”, “a camp fire”,  “torches”, sleeping bag” and of course “ food”

The children  gathered a variety of resources and began to build the tent using and exercising their gross motor skills. They communicated well and helped one another when building their tent. During this time they were able to problem solve together when they had to think and decide “how will the roof stay on ?” The children had some great ideas – “we could use cellotape”  “string” “blocks” and “pegs” . We decided the pegs and blocks worked the best .

Finally the tent was complete and the children were excited to get inside and begin to make a campfire using some sticks, stones and tissue paper. The children used their imaginations creating a variety of scenarios they have tried before such as toasting marshmallows, fishing, playing mummy’s and daddy’s and Going on a Bear Hunt.

” It’s sleepover time”

”I have made real life marshmallows on a fire ”🔥

”Fire is burny”

Later,  I was invited into the tent join the children and read one of our favourite stories – The Tiger Who Came to Tea before we snuggled down cosy for our sleep in our tent! ⛺️ Goodnight campers! See you in the morning!⛺️

The wheels on the bus

Today in the Discovery room we were learning about transport. We looked at different pictures of ways we can travel to and from places.

We shared stories of places we have travelled by bus, cars trains and some of us have been on holiday on aeroplanes.

”I have been on bus with my brother and daddy”

“My favourite is a plane ”

We thought about how we could create our own transport by using our variety of blocks. Together we decided to make our own bus so that we could go a trip to the zoo and beach. We displayed great teamwork and together we chose which blocks would be best to make our bus.

First we built up the side of the bus using the longer pieces. We found that the square block would make good seats on the bus for the passengers. We made a special compartment for the bus drivers.  We made doors for everyone to come on and off the bus. We added a fuel tank to ensure we had enough to get home.


Our bus door

That was us ready to take our seats to go on our adventure to the zoo. It gave us a great opportunity to sing one of our favourite songs The Wheels  On  The Bus.

Ready, Steady, Go!

Today in the Discovery room the children have been building ramps to see which car would go the fastest and win the race.

To explore this further, we decided to build a variety of different heights and level of ramps. We gathered together some of our planks of wood and different materials we could use to test and explore different types of forces.

The children took turns and predicted what ramp would be the fastest. We found the higher the ramp was, the faster the car would travel.

“high one is the best ,it’s the fastest”
”It is speedy”

”Watch mine zoom”

We added bubble wrap to one ramp to see how it affected the speed of the cars travelling down them.


We found that adding the bubble wrap this would make our cars slower and not travel so far.

”This makes it go too slow”

”Look how far mine went”

”My one is the fastest now”

To investigate time and distance further, we used a stop watch to time our cars travelling and a tape measure to see how far they could go.

Why not explore this at home! You could try using balls or pebbles to investigate force, distance and time.

 

Local Landmarks

Today in the discovery room we looked at some different landmarks in and around Glasgow. We used the tablet, lap top and promethean board to search and look at popular landmarks we may have visited.

We demonstrated good listening when we sat together and discussed what we knew about the places we looked at. We were able to share stories of places we had visited with our families. Two of the most recognisable were the Clyde Arc which a few children recognised as the Squinty Bridge and one child shared with the group his own name for it – ‘The Scotland Bridge’. The other one being Kelvingrove Art Museum -“that is where you see a big dinosaur, but it only has bones”.

We took our findings and landmarks to our block area where we showed great team work when we re-created Kelvin Grove Art Museum using a variety of blocks of different shapes and sizes.

The children were extremely creative with their design and creation of the Cart Mill Kelvingrove! Perhaps they can display some of their own works of art in it!

Busy Builders

All go this morning in the construction corner but safety first! We ensured we had our high viz jackets and goggles on and most importantly our checklist. We had a discussion on why we wear protective clothing and complete checklists to ensure our safety for ourselves and others around us…

The children took time to design what they would like to build using clipboards, paper, rulers and pens. Then we got to work, we looked around at different blocks shapes and sizes.

The children built their own creations from the variety of resources on offer to them and then worked together as a group expanding their ideas to create a big castle using their imagination. During this time the children were using mathematical language such as taller, smaller, long and short,  The children demonstrated good communication skills when sharing ideas. They also shared equipment and worked together, passing blocks to each other.

Playdough Creations

Today the children explored with the playdough exercising their fine motor skills and developing their hand and eye co-ordination making  their own creations.  They had very good concentration skills.

The children had a variety of resources to choose from to create and develop their skills.

Our favourite today  was using the spaghetti and threading the different coloured beads

The children then began to compare their creations using mathematical language , tall, small, big, long and short to describe each others’.

“I have lots of small ones”

Sensory Christmas Playdough

This morning the children were making chocolate cookies with the play dough. They have been showing an interest in role play, so this lead us to a discussion about different senses we could explore .

The children used their sense of smell to test and compare the various flavours. We tested cocoa powder, peppermint, salted caramel, ginger, orange and lemon.

 Ginger –  “gingerbread man  , Nannas house”

Peppermint – “mint choc chip”

Cocoa powder – “Christmas pudding  and cookies

The children then independently made their own playdough using their favourite scent.

The children then explored with their playdough and decided to make lots of different  shaped cookies and candy canes for Santa. They used the home corner to put them in the oven to bake.

Christmas Writing

Today in the home room the children have been developing their mark making and early writing skills by selecting their own materials to write with.

The children have been so excited about Christmas and asked to write some Christmas words, which they were able to copy carefully.

 

We drew some pictures of the words we had written. We then decided to draw some beautiful glittery rainbows to take home.

We were so good at taking turns and sharing resources with our friends.