Today we have enjoyed a visit from Clydebuilt Puppet Theatre. The children were very excited…
We heard the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff..
…and Jack and the Beanstalk…
We had to help count out the magic beans and warn Jack if the Giant was coming!
Thank you Clydebuilt Puppet Theatre for a brilliant and fun story time.
The children decided they would like to learn a little about all of the different types of bridges. We used the Promethean board to research them and printed some pictures of famous bridges to use as inspiration to build our own. 
We worked well together to create our bridge. “Look this block is the same shape as the bridge” “We are building London Bridge”
🎶 London bridge is falling down falling down falling down my fair lady 🎶
“ Let’s use this blue material for the water”
“ can we have some music to have a party on our bridge “
”My bridge is for monster trucks “
“ I need to use two smaller blocks to make up the size of the bigger ones because there are none left” Great problem solving!
”My bridge lights up when it’s dark” “ It even has handles to stop you falling over into the water”
“Pizza delivery for the party on the bridge “
The children had lots of fun role playing on their bridges.
Following on from recent interests, this week in the noisy quiet room the children have enjoyed exploring the farm animals in the small world area.
The children have been using their imagination and role play skills to create their own stories and play using the small world equipment. 
”its Old MacDonald’s farm, there is sheep and pigs and cows”
”There is little cows and big cows, small goats too”
”My favourite animal is the pig”
The children have also recently enjoyed building with our wooden train track and talking about all the different places you could go on a train…
”You could go to the shops or to a restaurant”
”I go on holidays”
”Trains go so fast”
Small world play is a great way for children to explore their imagination and develop their role play skills. It could represent a real life place like a farm or it could be a completely imaginary world.
Why don’t you try some small world play at home?
Today we were exploring our senses and developing our motor skills in our Autumn/Halloween sensory tray. We are getting in the Halloween spirit. 👻🎃
This is a great experience for our youngest children to get in and explore different sensations on their hands and develop their hand muscles . For our older children it’s a great way to develop their fine motor skills and writing skills as they can use their fingers or a tool such as a pencil, paint brush, or other item to draw, write letters, or form numbers in the sensory tray.
“I’m drawing a pumpkin in the orange rice”
We added some cornflakes, pasta, leaves, conkers and some spooky halloween characters. We then added paintbrushes and tweezers to see what we could do with them.
”see I can pick the conker up”
“I can get the skeleton”
“it feels hard and crunchy”
”It sounds like rain at night time”
The children then used the buckets as cauldrons and made their own witches brew while telling spooky halloween jokes.
This week in the studio, the children have been showing an interest in castles!
When the children arrived in the studio room they asked for some music on the board, they decided on Disney music which has a castle as a background, this sparked some conversation about castles and the children asked if they could make their own castles.
”I know what we can do”
Some children decided that they wanted to stick things inside their castle to make it pop up!
”I’m making a draw bridge for my castle door”
We even made a sparkly castle… It was so much fun choosing different colours!
”I’m making windows for my castle, It has a big one and a wee one, at the side for the people to see out of”
The children have been very creative as you can see, I wonder what fabulous creations they will come up with next week?! As always, feel free to donate your un-wanted junk to us as you can see, it comes in very handy and our children love to be inventive with it!
Today, we have been very busy showing off our creative skills in the Studio. We designed our own fabulous sculptures and combined clay and a variety of different art materials to create them.
We had lots of different materials to choose from such as foam shapes, colourful straws, feathers ,patterned buttons, ribbon and pasta shapes.
First we took some cold, squishy clay to make a base for our sculpture. We moulded it in our hands before carefully positioning and setting our skewer to begin our creations.
We used good hand eye co-ordination while we were skilfully threading our chosen materials onto our sculptures. We demonstrated excellent fine motor skills, especially when it was a little bit tricky getting those buttons through the skewers!
”I like the feathers it makes it look pretty”
”I’m making mine all blue”
“I can put three bits of pasta together to make it taller”
”I think the buttons are a bit tricky ”
We loved showing off our our final products and displayed them proudly in the studio.
Can you create some 3D sculptures at home ? You could try sculpting some creative art using junk from any recycling materials you may have.
Today the children have been very busy in the Construction area.
They used their team working skills to discuss and create a plan to build a new bridge and roads.
They spoke about the different shapes and sizes of the blocks and how they would join together so that the road didn’t have ‘bumps’ on it .
“You need big muscles to be able to carry the big blocks”
“This block is wider than that one”
“We can make a ramp so the cars can go up and down, the car can’t jump up”
They added in ‘funny shaped blocks’ to create roundabouts for the cars to go round.
Once all the pieces were joined together for the road, they looked for bigger blocks for the bridge.
“This big one can be the start of the bridge and then we’ll add 4 bigger ones it will be so tall”
The children used their problem solving skills as they worked together to make the roads and bridge safe for the cars to drive on. They carried out a test run and a final check, then the bridge was complete.
We have had a busy day in our Studio. We have explored our creativity and imagination through art and storytelling.
Using a selection of junk and art materials we were able to build our own puppet theatre.
We shared and discussed what our favourite fairy tale stories were and who our favourite characters from popular stories were. We then listened to some stories before creating our own puppets. Using our great craft and motor skills when glueing, sticking, cutting and drawing we made our very own puppets all ready for the premier of our puppet show performances.
“ I’m making a fairy for my story”
” Sleeping beauty is my favourite so I’m making Aurora “
Once our audience settled, we began our performances! We sat very patiently and demonstrated good listening skills while we all had a turn of being the puppeteer. For some stories we needed some help from a friend to puppeteer alongside us as it got a bit tricky trying to hold all the characters at once!
We used our loud speaking voices to introduce our characters and the name of our stories we would be re-enacting. Some of us were a little shy and nervous to begin but when it came to our turn our confidence shone and we were able to re-tell familiar and popular stories using our own words such as ‘The Three Bears’, ‘Goldilocks’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Some of us were able to make our own stories up using our puppets we created.
Well done boys and girls you have been great entertainers! We all enjoyed listening and watching your stories and had so much fun with our puppet theatre, why not give this a go at home? You could make up your own puppets and stories!
Today the children were showing an interest in the different cars ,trucks and trains in the Discovery room. We decided to collect some items to see if there were different to do with the cars.
We collected:
We taped the paper to the floor but the children also wanted to tape the pens to the cars to see what would happen to them.
” The train drawed a line and then a circle”
They realised when they moved the trains and cars on the paper, the pens were leaving a trail behind them.
The children noticed that by using different sized pens that the marks were different sizes.
“It looks like my dads map of Scotland, with all the lines on it”
Mark making is an important step in a child’s journey in learning to write. This allows them to practice holding a pencil and learning to control their marks. This improves their fine motor skills and helps to develop their hand- eye coordination.
Mark making can also encourage creativity by giving the opportunity to communicate through drawing and using their marks to tell a story.
” My truck is going to follow the track to find the other cars”
Today in our garden we have had lots of fun transforming our mud kitchen into a mud cafe where the children served up some delicious food!
Firstly the children worked as a team to create their own menu, the children showed great writing skills and fine motor control.
After the menu was complete it was time to open for business! The children picked what they would like to eat from the menu and our lovely ‘waitress’ took their order then off to the kitchen she went.
“I’ll have the ice cream and pasta please”
The children were super creative in the mud kitchen, working together mixing the mud, water and loose parts to make the yummy food.
“I’m making a delicious cake with mud and water”
Now it was time to serve the food!
“Here you go, the spaghetti is ready’
”It’s a little hot, be careful”
The children love spending time outdoors in our mud kitchen. It offers them many benefits such as exploring sensory play, working as a team, using their imagination and of course being outdoors, as well as many more.
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