Week Commencing the 22nd April

Spring has sprung! This week we have recycling old wellies by planting pretty flowers in them. We filled them up half with soil and planted pansies in the top. We also filled our smaller planters with soil and planted onion bulbs.

 

The children have enjoyed exploring the trees we have growing in our garden, watching the colours quickly change in the last week. The blossom has blossomed and the green leaves have appeared. We have been climbing the hazel trees which have lots of branches to climb and swing on.

 

This week we have been talking about cakes we make in the house, we decided to make cupcakes with different flavours- vanilla, orange and lemon, they were all very delicious! We will be exploring different baking stories next week.

This week the children have been exploring their senses as they made vegetable soup.  🥦🥬 The children used their touch to feel the different textures of the vegetables, smelling the different aromas and the sounds the vegetables made when they chopped, mixed and grated them.  As a group we discussed the responsibility we all have when in the kitchen while using the equipment and how we safely handle the equipment.  This activity also supported the children’s maths skills as we had to read numbers on the recipe, how many of each vegetable we required and how many sections the vegetable was chopped into.  It was a great conversation starter for the children as well as they discussed who had tried and who like what vegetables. This was also great way to encourage healthy eating 🍅🫑

 

Our Makaton signs of the fortnight are ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ as are feel free to practice these at home. ❤️

 

 

The children have also been showing an interest in sea animals at the moment so we have been exploring this. We have been looking at all different sea animals and finding out some interesting facts about them. 🐠🦈🐙

 

 

 

This week in the courtyard we have been discussing our favourite story books. The children chose their favourite story to read and we have started to create a display of all of our favourite stories! Please feel free to share a picture of your child with their favourite story and I’ll add it to the wall 📚.

 

In the stem area this week we have been looking at what’s magnetic and what isn’t. We used the basket of different types of materials. Children were using good describing words like heavy, light, small etc.

 

 

 

We were so surprised to have a visitor who was looking after her 3 babies, behind the fence!🦊🦊🦊A fox! She was so well behaved as she watched over her little ones. The children were intrigued to look quietly!🦊🦊🦊

 

We wrote a letter to Rachel, our Housekeeping Assistant to ask if we could please have some more fruit from the kitchen!🍓🍎🍊

During a group time consultation the children shared some brilliant ideas for outdoor experiences and in particular the mud kitchen.🌳🤩

We discussed creating a fruit shop and making jam! We took some fruit outside and made orange jam using forks!🍊🍊🍊We mashed and chopped and tasted!😋

 

 

 

 

 

Our little Acorns have been very busy this Easter. The children explored a variety of experiences that supported them to learn through their senses. A few children’s next steps were identifying simple colours, we supported the children to achieve this as we provided coloured eggs for the children to match. The children have been developing their numeracy skills, counting 0-5 and identifying numbers 0-3. The children have been engage with role play, which has been supported with a variety of loose parts and malleable materials.

 

 

 

 

 

Last week we had a fabulous Easter 🐣 we played games , did some dancing and even had a special snack all together in the courtyard 😊. This was soo much fun. We all received an Easter egg 🥚 from the bunny who set up a magical Easter egg hunt in the garden ❤️.

The boys and girls have been fully engaged in the stage area . We have had some fantastic performances, the boys and girls have enjoyed using our instruments 🎸 and taking turns to be on stage ⭐️ as well as part of an audience 👏👏. Well done everyone 🥰

 

Week commencing the 28th March

 

Acorn room .

In the courtyard we have been following the children’s interest in our story book ‘Stick Man’. The children used loose sticks to build their own stick men learning about body parts needed to create the stick man – two arms, two legs, one body and one. The children followed on their stick man interest by painting using sticks and using our easel to markmake stick people drawings.

To develop fine motor skills there was a chance to practice using our large tweezers to pick objects up. We could also use the objects to create patterns and learn about big and small.

In the Acorn room the children have had a big interest in numbers recently. We have started to introduce number recognition as well as counting in sequence. For our little 2’s we are focusing on numbers 1-5. Providing them with objects that they can recognise numbers within, ie a clock. ⏰1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣4️⃣5️⃣.

After admiring themselves in the mirror and pointing out different facial features, the children were offered with the opportunity to explore different facial expressions using the mirrors. The children used emotion stones to talk about different feelings including happy, sad, angry and silly. We spoke about what makes us happy or sad – recognising that different things can make us feel different ways 🤗

Children are encouraged to add and count more blocks to the line to make dominoes. They are supported to measure and test the distance between two blocks. They are also encouraged to add blocks of different sizes and shapes.

This week Oakburn has a new stage 🎶 it has been very popular with a variety of musical instruments 🎸🎹🥁🪘lights and pom-poms for any aspiring cheerleaders.

Kirsty feels it is very important for building confidence and self esteem as well as having fun ❤️

This week in the woodwork area we have been focusing on junk modelling. I provided lots of different materials, cardboard, plastic, fabrics and loose parts such as bottle tops, corks and metal. The children used their creativeness and imagination creating rockets, towers, campervans, caterpillars and castles. The children worked well together, helping each other stick the materials together.

This week in the courtyard we have been developing our literacy area! Our authors of the month are Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodhart who write the fabulous ‘You choose’ books 📚. The children have been discussing their favourite stories and we have had a lovely time reading them together 📖.

 

Also, our makaton signs of the fortnight are currently, ‘happy’ and ‘sad’. Please feel free to practice these at home ❤️

 

In STEM area with week we have been doing some investigating using magnifying glasses and looking for bugs 🪰🕷🪲

We have been exploring our senses using our feely tubs and using lots of different describing words 😁

We also created a box which we painted and are going to use as a blindfolded sensory activity using all of our 5 senses 👃👄

 

 

Week commencing 28/03/22 – Outdoors-Small world and expressive arts area🌳🌿🌱

We have been exploring ball and gross motor skills, colour recognition, gradients, speed and force! So many scientific concepts!🤩We were kindly donated some ball pit balls which led to discussions around speed, direction and positional language!🌳❤️⚽️🎾

We used pipes and a stand to investigate the speed of the balls travelling down the tube, depending on how the tube was positioned!

 

We soon discovered, the steeper the gradient, the faster the balls travelled!👏🙌

We are also continuing to develop our small world area. Some of the children requested vehicles.🚗🚌🚜🚚We added some wooden cars and trucks and will continue to develop this area further in the coming days and weeks…🌳❤️

Towards the end of the week the children suggested bringing chalk outside which led to mark making in a variety of ways, using black paper and a wooden pallet!🙌👏

The children have been developing their fine motor skills, hand/eye coordination and strengthening their hand muscle while exploring the threading activity.  The children then used the foam beads to continue on with the patterns with some children able to continue on with three steps patterns. The children then got creative designing their own patterns.  ❤️🧡❤️🧡❤️🧡❤️🧡 

In the small world area we have been focusing on people who help us learning about the importance of fire fighters and their job roles. The children had fun in a tasting experience using the yoghurt as an alternative to paint. “Mmm strawberries!” We are going to continue looking at all the different people who help us and what to do in an emergency situation 🚨

 

 


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