Tag Archives: problem solving

Outdoor Learning

Garden fun!!

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The children have been making the most of the lovely weather so far this week by having lots of fun in the garden. They have been developing both their fine and gross motor skills through a number of outdoor experiences.

The children have been developing their filling, pouring and scooping skills with jugs and containers in the water tray and with spoons and kettles in the mud! This helps the children understand the concepts of more and less whilst developing their hand/eye coordination.

The children also had great fun jumping in the muddy puddles the rain left us, jumping and landing on both feet helps to strengthen their leg muscles! What big muddy splashes!!

The children made a great obstacle course which further develops their gross motor skills. This will enhance their strength and balance whilst developing their coordination and problem solving skills.

What a busy start to the week in the garden! Let’s hope the sun keeps shining!!

Health and Wellbeing, Numeracy

Do it yourself dough

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In the Home Room we are learning to make our own play dough by ourselves.

We gather our own materials to make the dough, a bowl, a spoon and a cup for measuring.

We collect the flour bowl and using our spoon we fill up the cup until it’s full.

We pour the flour into the bowl, then collect the salt bowl.

We add 5 tablespoons of salt to our bowl and mix.

We collect the oil and a 1 tablespoon of oil to the bowl.

Slowly we add a little warm water to our bowl and mix.

We keep mixing until our dough sticks together.

(if our dough is too sticky we add some flour and mix, if our dough is too dry and crumbly we add a little more water and mix)

Once our dough sticks together we put in our hands and need the dough.

Its then ready to tip out of our bowl and onto the table.

We are learning to follow instructions and develop our independence skills. We are learning to measure out ingredients and follow a recipe. Some children are scaffolding their own learning  and assisting the younger children with each step.

The children are now accessing this area in the playroom independently and are even cleaning up their own dishes once they have finished playing.

And most of all they are having so much fun making their own dough!

Expressive Arts

Chinese New Year

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We have been learning a little bit about Chinese New Year. We learned that this year Chinese New Year begins on 12th February and that celebrations take place for 16 days. It is the most important holiday in China, but it is also celebrated by people all around the world.  We enjoyed learning all about the Lantern Festival which takes place at the end of the celebrations. We looked at lots of lovely photographs of the lanterns and decided to make some of our own!

Although traditional  Chinese lanterns were red to symbolise fire, good fortune and joy, and gold to symbolise wealth, they can also be all different shapes, colours and sizes. We decided to choose our favourite colours and worked really hard to decorate our lanterns to make them nice and colourful.

We used our excellent fine motor skills to fold and cut our paper, it was a little tricky!

Then it was time to carefully glue our paper to make our lantern shape. We had to be very careful not to rip our paper!

We wondered how we would carry our lanterns? We used our problem solving skills and carefully cut some paper and decided to use more glue to stick it onto the top of our lanterns to make a handle.  Well done boys and girls!

Our lanterns were finished! Don’t they look amazing!

 

 

 

News

So much fun on skis

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The children have been exploring their imagination by using the blocks as skis. They also demonstrated great problem-solving skills as they came up with different solutions to allow them to move around the room.

The children started using the single blocks to slide their feet but were finding it difficult to move. Some children were able to push off using the furniture.



 

The children were engaged in their play and started using the bigger blocks as ski poles.

As the children played we watched some ski videos to inspire their thoughts.

Expressive Arts

Junk modelling

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This week in the Studio room  the children have shown an interest in using every day recycled materials to make their own models.

We discussed what materials we would need to make the robots.

“We need glue and paint”

“We could use these sponges and brushes to paint them”

 

They decided to make Robots using “big” and “small” cardboard boxes and selected their own paints and materials such as sponges and paint brushes to paint their boxes.

” We chose orange and blue and green paint”

“We are going to glue heads on our robots”

When the boxes were dry the children glued them together to create their robots and decorated them using “sparkly gems” .

Junk modelling is a great way to provide our children with opportunities to develop their imagination and problem solving skills.

We are looking for more bits n bobs to add to our collection that you may have at home :

  • Bottle lids
  • Cereal Boxes
  • Cardboard boxes
  • Kitchen roll tube
  • Shoe Boxes
  • Yoghurt pots
  • Cartons
Expressive Arts, News, Numeracy

A Day in the Discovery Room

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Through discovery, natural curiosity and imagination we have been exploring different ways to problem solve and construct a obstacle course and models.

“We can use these long bits to balance on”

“If the wood doesn’t fit we need to move the blocks closer”

 

 

“I’ve made a slide for the cars”


“mine has two eyes”

“I’m going to use all these to make a smiley face”

“These nails are the ears like mine”