This week in the art area the children have utilised our donations of big cardboard boxes and repurposed them into dens and caves. The children have been looking at cave paintings and made lots of positive attempts to create their own large scale expressive marks. They discussed these images and made connections and comparisons to the past. We discussed what was used to make paint and the children experimented in grinding chalk and mixing colours.
AC “They are cave men and they are chasing mammals”
“Cavemen used rocks for paint”
ML “There was woolly mammoths and cave men millions of years ago”
GM “ Cavemen they don’t exist anymore, they got killed by the dinosaurs i think”
“ Houses didn’t exist back then only caves”
LS “He’s hunting the horses to eat them because they had to eat”
MS “ I’m drawing horns to fight the bad animals”
This week in discovery we have been finding out how tall animals are. To help our research we have used Ipads, animal encyclopaedias, and non- fiction books. The children were curious to find out the sizes of many animals including a giraffe, woolly mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, and blue whale. When we found out the sizes we decided to try and represent this visually for the children to get a better understanding. We attached three long boxes together and used the measuring tape to mark the actual size of the animals. The children were very excited to take the boxes outside to see how tall it stood.
CE- “Is that really how tall a giraffe is?”
FMcG – “Am I taller than a woolly mammoth?”
JG – “I’m bigger than a rhino”
RJ – “I think an elephant is bigger than a bear”
The children have been looking at the design of their sewing by first planning out their design on paper and cutting it out to make a pattern, they then copied this pattern on fabric and sewed it using both hand and machine sewing. The children created handbags, rockets, plushies and cushions. The children demonstrated problem solving skills when their designs did not work out, scissor skills while cutting out both their patterns and fabric, and fine motor skills while sewing their creations.
This week in our Home Corner, the children enjoyed practising their grating skills while preparing vegetables. They carefully used the graters to shred a variety of vegetables, developing their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and control. The children also used their communication and social skills as they worked together, shared resources, and talked about the different vegetables and textures. This activity encouraged independence, concentration, and confidence while supporting early life skills through hands-on play and exploration. Claire who cooks all our yummy lunches also came in to help!
This week, our children enjoyed a lovely trip to our local ASDA, where we were kindly donated lots of wonderful plants, seeds, and soil for our nursery garden. The children were very excited to explore everything and have since been busy planting seeds into little pots. Over the next few weeks, we will watch them grow before transferring them into our outdoor planters for everyone to enjoy!
In the literacy area we have been creating our own puppets. We discussed our favourite characters and made up our own. We also changed around our book area to include an area for puppet shows. Mrs Mundagie even sewed new curtains for the stage! We started to make up our own stories using our puppets and performed shows for our friends!
