car experiments, planting, fun in the sun and more….

This week we have been very happy to see the sun making an appearance. We have taken the opportunity to have lots of fun outdoors with our friends.

The children have shown an interest in working together to build houses, dens and obstacle courses. Many of the children have taken a lead role, directing the other children where to place things and giving them instructions on how to complete the obstacle course.

It has been so nice to have some helpers to clean up the garden, they love using the big brush to sweep up. Encouraging large body movements like sweeping, climbing and balancing are a key factor in the development of children’s early writing skills, as they use their upper body and core muscles just as much as their fine motor skills for writing.

Lastly, we had a superhero show that included some fantastic dancing and acting along to the music of superhero theme tunes. This also featured some brilliant back up dancers.

“I like hulk smash” – NH

“Okay you will start here and go all the way around to jump off and climb this bit” – RM

“I love sweeping up the garden” LJ

Last week Miss Wilson noticed that the cars kept ending up in the clay so we decided to incorporate them into the malleable area – we used the ramps and some messy additions (oil, foam and wet sand) to explore friction. There was lots of discussion around distance, speed and texture! Some of us also raced cars, using ordinal language to describe the results.

“It’s going so slowly” – AJ

“It doesn’t go on the sand” – GA

“Ready, steady… it’s stuck!” – A

After exploring the world globe for World Earth day, we decided to look a bit closer into maps of the local area. The children were able to identify some icons on the map key to help read the maps.

“There’s a shopping trolley, thats the shops” R.N (green)

“That’s a tree, in the forrest” M.W (pink)

“That’s Crookfur Post Office, I see St Cadoc’s” Z.B (blue)

Then J.L asked “ Can we do the little man to follow to my house”. This sparked a large interest from many of the children keen to follow the road to map out their journey from nursery to their homes.

Most children could accurately recall their journey and then use directional language such as straight forward, turn left, turn right, go up the hill to direct Miss Corish to their homes. Some children were also able to control the interactive board independently to follow the journey. Some children attempted to draw their journeys from home to nursery onto paper.

“That’s my journey. I live in Australia. My journey is to the airport, fly in a plane to Australia, and that’s my home”. M.W (pink)

The next day as the interest was still strong, we decided to create a large map of the local area. We pin pointed some familiar local landmarks and shops.

“That’s my school i’m going to Crookfur Primary School” B.H (blue)

“My brother plays there, thats St Cadoc’s” M.J (blue)

The children have been talking to Mr McIntosh about plants and how sunlight and water helps them to grow tall out of the ground. The children didn’t know that plants also grow down the way and use their roots to gather water to help them grow. We carried out our own experiment with seeds, cotton wool and sandwich bags.

The children sprayed water onto the cotton wool placed cress seeds or sunflower seeds on the cotton wool, put it in the bag and sealed them up.

The children were encouraged to write their own names on a label before sticking them on the window for observation.

It has been great to see the children checking back on their bag to see the seeds grow up the way as well as the roots growing.