Tag Archives: technology

Berry nice smoothies đŸ“đŸ«

Today in the home room the children decided they wanted to make fruit smoothies.

We used the internet to search for a recipe to make delicious fruit smoothies. We then collected the ingredients we needed from the kitchen to begin making our very nice smoothies.

To begin the children took turns to  scoop a spoonful of frozen berries into the bowl. Next they safely used a knife to cut up a banana to add to the bowl.

“I put strawberries and blueberries in they were stuck together with ice”

Using the measuring jug the children measured out 240ml of milk, they worked as a team to measure one tsp of honey before adding all the ingredients into the blender. We also made a water based fruit smoothie as an alternative.

“it’s so noisy”

When the ingredients were all blended together the children poured the smoothie into an jug and shared with their friends for snack.

“It tastes yummy”

“ I can taste banana, I like banana for snack”

 


 

Our emotions😀😱đŸ€ȘđŸ˜±đŸ«ŁđŸ„±đŸ˜ĄđŸ˜ł

This week at the malleable area the children have been using their creative imaginations to mould our play dough into different things.

“I made a big worm, I rolled it with my hands”
“look I made my ear in the play dough, I lied down like this”

”I made a smiley face”

The smiley face sparked a conversation about the different faces we could make.

”can I show you my silly face”

The children used the iPad to take a picture of the different faces they could make, they even took a picture of Carly’s silly face but we won’t bore you with that.

Each child made a different face and we discussed what they were and why we might feel these ways. Using facial expressions we can begin to learn and recognise different feelings and emotions that we can feel and find solutions to understanding and dealing with them.

”some of the new boys and girls get sad faces when they just come to nursery, now they have happy faces”

We will continue exploring emotions in different ways at the malleable table, it is a very important way of communication especially for children as they don’t often understand their feelings.

Exploring technology in the studio

As part of STEM week, the children have been exploring technology in the studio room by using the promethean board to create pictures.

The children were able to explore the different features of the ‘Actispire App’ by selecting different colours that they wanted to use..

”I’m using the yellow colour”

”I can pick black for my picture”

The children then used their gross motor and fine motor skills to perform different movements with their arms to create their picture on the board.

”I can do a circle”

”My picture is red and wavy like this”

”I can do a green colour on my picture”

T discovered that he could control the board by using the mouse pad on the laptop, he chose this as his preferred way to make selections for his picture.. great problem solving skills!

He then used the Ipad to take a picture of his creation all by himself.

 

Bee-Bots & Colours

This week we have been exploring the bee bots in our technology area.  We began with  learning how to program the bee bots to go forward.

Our bee bots have very good memories, they remember every button we press. We had to learn how to clear the bee bots memory, so we could program them to do what we want.

We then introduced a colour line and were challenged to direct the beebot to a given colour. This helped us to practise our knowledge of colours as well as practising our beebot skills.

“I got yellow.”

“Can you find something in the room that is yellow?”

”The bee.”

“”Can you count how many squares to the yellow square?”

“1,2.”

“Ok we need to program the bee bot to move forward 2 spaces. Press the button 2 times”

“My top is green”

“How many times do you need to press the forward button to get to green?”

“5.”

Once we  were able to program the bee bots ourselves, we  added further challenge by learning how to direct the beebot left and right to land on the given coloured square.

Article 28

You have the right to education

 

 

The floor is lava

Today the children played  “The floor is lava” but with a twist…

They worked together to collect different materials including:

  • Paper/card
  • lollipop sticks
  • twigs
  • Small figures
  • building blocks
  • Cars
  • Bowls

They then used the materials to design and build a stable structure together that was suitable to save the little figures and cars from the lava without it falling over.

“It needs to be up high, what can we use?”

”we can use the blocks to get it high”


The children came up with a variety of ways to save the cars and people from the lava while developing their listening and teamwork skills.

They used their problem solving skills to organise the different shaped blocks by size so that the figure didn’t fall over.

”The big ones need to go to the bottom because they will fall if they are at the top, they won’t balance”

“The bowl can go under in case he falls”

The children had so much fun making a safe structure for the cars and people using materials around the nursery. Why don’t you try creating your own at home.

Our Maze Adventure

Today in the Discovery room we have been busy learning about ‘what is a maze?’

We had a think about it and decided we should write down what we thought it was. đŸ€” Here are some of our mind mapping ideas-

“It is round and you find your way out.”

”A maze is something you go in to.”

“You have to get in one way and another way out.”

The first thing we decided to do was look at different types of mazes and have a go trying to solve them out using our fingers to work our way around them and then we tried to follow it using our pens .

“These can be tricky!”

“Watch out for those dead ends!”


“My bee  is going to get the  flower”

We had so much fun exploring our mazes that we decided to create one for our Bee Bots, using our wooden blocks in a pattern.

First we created a route by using the wooden blocks to mark out the path. We used all our problem solving skills to identify and remove the blocks that wouldn’t work with our route until our maze was complete – not forgetting to add in some dead ends to make it a bit more tricky!

We placed the Bee Bots on the green circle that symbolised green is for go and start. The children pressed up, down, left, right buttons while counting the number of times the Bee Bot moved to direct him all the way through the maze.

The children had lots of fun and were developing their navigation, co-ordination, problem solving skills, social skills by taking turns and working as part of a team, following and giving instructions and developing their language skills by suggesting ideas and supporting each other. They also showed their ICT programming skills by programming the bee-bots to follow the route round their maze.

Why not give it a go at home, you can draw or make one and if you are lucky enough to have a remote control toy, you could see if it can get through the maze. We hope you have an a-mazing time!😊

Addition & Subtraction

Today has been an exciting day as the children moved from the Home Room into the Discovery Room. They have been busy investigating and exploring the new areas.

They have enjoyed using the Promethean active board in particular, where they explored a variety of numeracy games through Top Marks. You could try these at home too on  www.topmarks.co.uk


The children developed their numeracy skills, fine motor skills, hand/eye coordination, as well as sharing, taking turns and recognising the need to follow rules.  We had great fun being able to identify and recognise numbers 0-20. We were able to estimate how many without having to count. The children counted forwards and backwards and were learning how to add and subtract. We all enjoyed learning new language to describe subtraction and adding e.g take away; add one more on. “I have to put one back”  “we need two more to make ten”.

Later in the day the children decided they wanted to get fit and do a sticky kids exercise activities.

We had so much fun listening and following the actions whilst showing off our gross motor skills, balancing skills, jumping and developing our awareness of space. Well done everyone! Why not give it a go at home 👍

Train Track

This morning in the Discovery room the children asked if they could get the train track out. Using their fine motor skills the children worked together to build the train track. One child asked if they could build a really big track so we moved the table to create a large open space for the children to extend the track as large as possible .

When the track was complete, another child asked if they could build bridges around the track.  Using their gross motor skills, the children chose a variety of different sized blocks to create bridges around the track.

Incorporating technology into the play, we turned on the promethean board and played the noise of steam trains chugging along and sounding their horn.

Everybody had great fun pulling along the trains and cars on the track and pushing them under the bridges.

Tinker Table Workbench

Over the last few months the children in the Discovery room have been practising their skills at the Tinker Table work bench.  The children have learned the rules of the Tinker Table and why these rules are very important to follow for their safety.  They created a rule book for the Tinker Table work bench to encourage them and others to put on gloves and safety goggles when using the tools in the tool box.

The children have been learning to use hammers and saws properly as well as learning that there are different types of saws and hammers used for different jobs.  The claw hammer has been popular for creating pieces using nails as well as the children learning that the claw can remove nails. The children’s saw skills have really flourished as they now know how to hold the hacksaw properly and use their body weight to make the saw move through the wood.

With the children’s skills improving at the work bench so too did their understanding of how to better construct their creations. The children decided that they wanted to introduce glue to the Tinker Table and with that came wonderfully creative pieces.

The children have now progressed on to drawing a plan first of what they would like to create. They are looking online at images, drawing it, then thinking of how to create it with the resources at the Tinker Table.

A wonderful plan producing a fabulous rocket.

The children’s pieces have all been displayed in the Tinker Table Gallery for several months now. The children decided that they wanted to close the gallery in December and take their exhibits home to stay.  I hope you are looking forward to seeing how creative your child has been at the Tinker Table workbench this year.

Chrome books

The children have been learning about different types of technology recently so we thought it would be a good idea to introduce Chromebooks. First of all we spoke about staying safe online and always have an adult with you when you are searching for information.


We then discussed what they know about chrome books and also what we would use them for.

“It’s like a tablet and a computer”

” we use them to watch videos and play games”

”that looks like my tablet at home”


We spoke about what we would like to use the Chrome books for and decided that we would like to find out some more information about our favourite animals..

Cats and parrots were the most popular đŸ± 🩜 so we went online to see what we could find out.

We used the keyboard to search for information, recognising some of the letters in our names as we typed.


We found out lots of information about parrots
“there are lots of different colours of parrot and some even talk”
Then we looked for information about cats
“boy cats are called tom”

We found out lots of new information about our favourite animals which we saved. We can’t wait to show our friends what we found out and how to use the chrome books.