This week the children have been interested in exploring different smells and textures using the playdough. The children have been turn taking and learning about recipes, as well as practising their fine motor skills using different tools, safely using knives and graters. They have used their imaginations to come up with lots of great creations such as apple pies, lollipops and pasta. Some of the children have even used their creations to have tea parties.
“Putting the ginger in and it smells nice” MM
“We had a turn each i put the hot water in” AS
“Its pasta bolognese with vitamins on top” “the tea party is getting amazing” AM
In the sewing area we have been busy stitching our initials and creating necklaces from painted pasta. We have been exploring and discussing colour mixing as we created secondary and tertiary colours and practised our fine motor control as we threaded. It was a bit tricky when the string frayed but there was great problem-solving and perseverance!
The children have been interested in sorting the letters and finding the letter that starts with their name. We have chosen ‘Giraffes Can’t Dance’ as our story of the week and had lots of fun reading it together and trying out some of the dance moves the different animals were doing at the party. We made lots of noise tapping out the syllables in words with the musical instruments and all enjoyed taking a turn to choose a special item from the feely bag for our friends to work out how many syllables were in that word.
We practised counting forwards and backwards to ten and tried hard to show that number on our fingers. Through games we were able to practise writing the number 2 and 3, spot the numbers when all muddled up and count out a particular number of counters on a ten frame.
The art area has been a very popular choice to visit this week with Miss Carroll and Miss Goldie looking at still life paintings and the work of Van Gogh and Picasso, in particular Van Gogh’s sunflowers and fruit bowls and the abstract paintings of Picasso, exploring shapes and colour. The children have used a range of media to create their own masterpieces. Watch this space for a new art gallery space coming soon.
In our garden, the children were inspired by ‘Winnie’s Magic Wand’ by Valerie Thomas and decided they would like to make their own potions. They began by writing down the ingredients they would like to add what their potion would do if you had some.
SS “I don’t know how to make wizard potions. It’s a little bit gooey”.
EK “It’s a birthday potion for mine”.
AC “I am going to turn a bug into a dinosaur”.
They mixed colours and natural resources like mint to help make their potions sharing their thoughts as they worked.
JK ” blue and red make purple”.
The sensory play generated lots of discussion and mathematical language including full, empty, taller and less.
They used their creative and fine motor skills to make wands at the woodwork bench. KC “2 triangles make a star”
Thanks for taking the time to read through our blog. If you have any ideas to share from home about what your child is interested in learning about then please add it to our noticeboard at the nursery door.
Have a great weekend!
