Month: August 2022

Fine motor and Malleable area

It’s been an extremely busy week in the fine motor and malleable areas! Lots of creativity, imagination, exercising our finger muscles and making a mess!😆👏👏👏

In our malleable area it was all about mixing, stirring, pouring, sprinkling and concocting! We used cornflower and water to make gloop and created our own potions using porridge oats, lentils, pasta, teabags and water!🤩

At our fine motor station we did an abundance of mark making using a variety of media, including felt tips, crayons, stampers, chalk and pencils!🙌🤩We even created our own Oakburn Office which has been a big hit! Lots of important business going on there!🤓We also explored weaving using pipe cleaners, which proved to be a tricky business!

Some of the children helped with our numeracy display on the resource cupboard. Super number formation.

To end a super busy week we made an alphabet line! This idea came from one of our children and I think you’ll all agree it looks AMAZING!👏👏👏

The Courtyard

The summer weather may be coming to an end but we’ve kicked off the first full week of the new term with lots of new sports in the courtyard! The children have been testing their skills against friends with our new homemade basketball hoop! 🏀 Together, we have been seeing how far we can throw from, how many hoops we can score within a time limit and challenging each other to who can score most! The gross motor skills that the children are displaying have been nothing short of amazing! We’ve also shown a strong interest in both golf and tennis so the children came up with the idea to combine them. ⛳️ 🎾 Using small cones to hold the ball in place, the children use the tennis racquet to see how far they can hit it! Their hand-eye coordination has been so impressive and what’s even better is that this was a team and child led idea!

Snack area

We have been very busy in the snack area this week. The children have been practising using the knives to help prepare snack. We have been chopping lots of different things, such as, cucumber, apple and banana. The children have been learning how to stay safe while using knives. 🥒🍎 🍌

The children have also been making fruit smoothies for snack! We had strawberry and banana smoothies and the children did a great job making them 🍓 🍌

the children have been developing their independence and self-help skills as ‘snack helpers’!

They showed good fine motor skills and risk assessing as they safely cut fruit into smaller pieces for snack, and into shapes using the cookie cutters.

They have been showing their independence through setting up snack, by placing the dishes in the correct places, filling up the cereal and jugs when there wasn’t much left. Thank you to all our brilliant Oakburn helpers 👏⭐️

Small world area

This week we have been exploring under the sea, the children have been fantastic at naming our sea life creatures 🦈🦭and even talking about how we can keep them safe. We spoke about how the rubbish under the sea is really hurting our animals and that if we remember to bin our packets and bottles we can keep them safe🗑.

The children have also been blasting off into outer space 🪐 they have been to lots of different planets and even teleporting to different worlds. The children have been practicing counting backwards from 10 getting ready for the rocket 🚀 to shoot off on its next adventure around outer space.

 

Construction area

At the beginning of the week in the construction area we have been looking at buildings – shapes, structures and where these buildings come from.  We looked at the Eiffel Tower from Paris, leaning tower of Pisa, The Taj Mahal from India and Empire State Building in New York City! The children have been creating their own structures using the blocks.

Later in the week we created our own dinosaur Jurassic adventure using the train tracks, the children were able to identify different dinosaurs including raptors, Tyrannosaurus rex, triceratops and stegosaurus.🦕🦖

Expressive studio

In the expressive studio we have been focusing on transient art – using loose parts to make creative pictures and models. OW made a fantastic robot!

Acorn Room

This week in the Acorn room the children were developing their fine motor skills using spoons and different bowls to scoop beans during sensory play whilst exploring the concept of hot and cold.

At the Acorn Beach the children explore weetabix sand and rice water using. The children used large scoops as spades to scoop up the sand and water to fill a bucket, hide the sea creatures and explored numbers 0-3.

 

Some of the acorns have been building on their fine-motor skills through mark making using various types of media such as salt/oats, digital drawing and chalk!

 

 

This weeks theme was “All around the world”. Celebrating and exploring different things about countries around the world.

Monday we celebrated the UK – Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.
in the construction area we explored famous landmarks from around the UK.  We talked about each of the landmarks and where they were we then recreated these landmarks using the wooden blocks. Some of our creations have been wonderful! 🤩 well done everyone!

Inside we read ‘the teeger that cam for tea’ – it had lots of Scottish slang in it where we had to guess what the word meant. Afterwards we had our own Scottish tea party for the Tiger

Tuesday we celebrated Spain 🇪🇸

The children have been using coloured rice to make some Spanish paella. It almost looked good enough to eat!🇪🇸🥘.

We watched some Dora where we learned Spanish words and repeated them back.  We learned some fun facts on the interactive board with Professor 👨‍🏫 propeller . Which we managed to find out Spanish foods , words and places.

Wednesday was America and Canada day 🇺🇸 🇨🇦

In our acorn room we were recreating the American flag using a range of different materials, playdough, rice and arts and crafts. These provocations gave the children a chance to strengthen and develop their fine motor skills and build on their knowledge of shape, pattern and colour.  

In the 3-5 room the children used different resources to make their own Captain America shields!  The children’s did a great job and they look fantastic hanging up 🇺🇸

Thursday we celebrated Italy! In the acorn room we were developing our fine motor skills making pasta jewellery using colours from the Italian flag. We had to thread the pasta on to the pipe cleaners.
we also made our own spaghetti and pizza spreading, pouring scooping and mixing all the ingredients together.

In the 3-5 room we discussed some Italian words, finding out what they meant and repeating them back to one another. We then matched them with their English word on the tuff tray.

In the kitchen we made PIZZA ! We made our own dough with all these ingredients.  After it was all mixed and into the bowl we left it for a few hours until the dough had gotten bigger due to the yeast.  Whilst we waited the boys and girls got busy making the tomato sauce, they cut up tomato, carrots, celery and garlic then blended it and added some basil creating a lovely sauce 🍝

We made some extra dough so that we could get creative and make mini pizzas using colourful sticks and shapes

On Friday we celebrated Denmark

in the construction area we explored famous landmarks from Denmark We talked about the size and shape of the buildings and recreated these landmarks using the wooden blocks.

we were lucky enough to have a parent helper in – Karina who helped the children make Danish pastries. The children had to use their fine motor skills to spread and roll the dough. Afterwards Karina taught the children number 1-3 in danish. They children loved having her in.