Month: February 2022

Garden – week beginning 7.2.22

This week in the garden, the children have been very interested in the story, ‘We’re going on a bear hunt.’ We listen to the story on the speaker while doing our own bear hunt through the garden! 🐻

We also made a mini bear hunt to match the story. The children enjoyed walking their character through the grass, and mud etc in time with the story. 🐻💧❄️  Our children have the best imaginations! ❤️

Woodwork

In the woodwork area we have been focusing on Valentine’s Day! We made wooden hearts using hammers and nails. allowing children to use real tools and have real life experiences gives children a real sense of achievement and empowerment. The children have the chance to risk assess, develop hand eye coordination and develop their concentration skills.

 

Courtyard

This week in the courtyard the children have been interested in making their own obstacle courses.🧱⚽️

Whilst working hard and the children creating their own vision, the benefits are as follows:

• Strength and Balance, when children encounter obstacles in an obstacle course they develop and enhance strength and balance.
• Memory and Problem Solving.
• Sensory Processing.
• Motor Skills.
• Coordination.

The children are also valuing opportunities to make friends and be part of a group in a range of different situations.

The children were speaking about more benefits as it can keep the children fit and healthy ensuring they eat some fruit and vegetables too.🍓🍎🥒🌽🥕

These activities encourage children to be independent and lead their own learning, which the children were more engaged and interested as it was all their own ideas and vision.

Using a variety of new words for some children such as jumping high, balancing on the blocks, and using concentration for a longer period of time.

Acorn Room. (2-3 room)

 

The children were provided with a range of experiences to support their next steps of achieving particular learning outcomes in Realising the ambition: Being me, celebrating Valentines. There was discussions about people we love and why we love them.

A few children chose to use their self help skills, to peel and chop a banana.

The children scooped and measured creating  “love soup” and role played as they fed it to the dolls.

A child showed an interest in our water tray, we added ducks and pink glitter. This sparked the children’s curiosity of colours, identifying the coloured ducks. A child was able to count them.

Following the discussion of who we loved, we created valentines pictures for our loved ones. A few children were able to count their finger marks, of how many spots were on their bug.

Happy Valentines for Monday, you are loved.

After showing an interest in transporting, some of the children have been building on their fine-motor skills through various threading and sorting experiences using loose parts.

Have a lovely weekend!

Erin 🙂

Garden

 

We continued to develop ‘Animal World’ at the bottom of the garden.🦫🐿🌳🌿🌱

The children wanted to add pine cones to ‘to give the animals food and we can pretend the cones are eggs that have babies inside!’… ❤️

To extend learning we then looked at mathematical concepts such as pattern and addition! How amazing that our wonderful children can enhance their knowledge of numbers outdoors!👏🙌🌳🌱🌿

We used pine cones to create addition columns and used leaves to then create a two step pattern…Pine cone, leaf, pine cone, leaf….WOW!👏🙌

Towards the end of the week we used paint to add a little bit of art and creativity to our outdoor area!🎨🎨🎨 We rolled pine cones in blue and yellow paint to explore colour mixing and used lollipop sticks to mark make!👏

This week at Oakburn –

Baking Area

This week in the baking area we have been making vegan scones, the children have been practicing their measuring, pouring, mixing and counting. We are doing this daily to allow children to experience the in-depth life skills that come with baking, the children will build confidence independence and responsibility over time and we hope that with the continuation of this experience we will have very confident little bakers who can make their own scones very soon. Well done everyone, the scones look yummy!🤩

Woodwork workshop.

This week in the woodwork area we have been designing our own self portraits. The children used a mirror to identify different parts of their face. They then went on to draw what they could see in the mirror! The children used their imagination to pick what loose parts that they would like to use for their eyes nose and mouth. The children will then make their self portraits come to life by creating them in wood work next week.

Expressive Area 

In the art area this week we read the story ‘Stickman’. We then progressed by developing the character stick man from the book. We went on a nature hunt and collected sticks and leaves and put them into our basket! Next we came back inside and crafted our own stick man! We used our imagination, memory, creativity and curiosity skills throughout this experience.

 

Every child experiences a sense of wonder- science 🧪 

This week we showed a great interest in science experiments. We decided to conduct science experiments using vinegar, baking soda, paint, cola, ketchup and mentos! The children developed their sense of wonder, problem solving, risk assessment, team work, leadership, and turn taking. Ought many great skills were developed we have had so much fun watching reactions take place, explosions and creating their own volcanos! 🌋 

STEM Area 🧲 

This week in the STEM area we have been investigating simple types of forces and learning about their effects using magnets!

We have been using magnets in different activities involving ice and paint. These have been great to explore and to get a simple understanding of how magnets work!

We then lay out a range of different materials and the children had to sort them into if it was magnetic or not. We displayed our findings on a graph using our literacy and numeracy skills.

Oakburn home

This week in the home corner we have been busy making our own recipes books and filling them with things we like to make and bake at home and within the centre. We have observed and asked questions whilst looking at recipes and when creating our own we used our little fingers to practice our writing skills.

We also has some discussion about things that we have in our own home, we thought of somethings that could make our dining table look more like ours at home, the children decided to make some beautiful flowers out of lollipop sticks and tissue paper and they have turned out bright and beautiful.

 

The courtyard 

In the courtyard we have been celebrating Lunar New Year, known as Chinese New Year. We have been looking at numbers 1-4 and learning how to write them  using paint.

We also made special traditional red envelopes and, At Lunar New Year, it’s tradition to give the gift of a bright, beautiful red envelope (known as 紅包, hóngbāo) to your friends and family. … These are filled with money – and symbolize good wishes and luck for the new year ahead. The importance of the hóngbāo isn’t the cash held inside; it’s actually the envelope itself.

We are responsible citizens 

Some of the children have shown great interest in reading our recycling books this week.

We have learnt why it’s important to recycle and what happens to the materials when we recycle. The children talked about what and how they recycle at home.

We made our own boxes, using recycled boxes and painting them blue – for paper recycling, orange – for plastic recycling and green- for garden waste.

We gathered a pile of recycling and the children took it in turns to sort it into the boxes.

The children have shown that they are fantastic responsible citizens ⭐️by understanding the importance of recycling to help the planet 🌎!👏

Our little hands are busy getting stronger.

 

This week we have been working on our fine motor development. In early years it is so important to work on the muscles within our hands and arms as it prepares our little people for when they begin to write, by providing wide ranges of fine motor experiences children can work on strengthening their muscles making holding pens/pencils easier to use when they progress into school.

This week we experiences weaving which included great concentration, some problem solving and hand eye coordination. We then progressed this onto using litter pickers and linseed to collect some little and large Pom poms this was a real favourite for the children and offered some support and challenge to their learning, next one of the children had said one of the green Pom poms was a shiny apple, we decided to add some fruit to a tuff tray and try using knives to cut it, offering bananas to start as they are smoother to cut through and offering challenge via apples and cucumbers, with some children we also discussed 1/2 and whole sizes.