Month: September 2023

Acorn Room

Out in the courtyard this week we have been exploring bugs, using our fine motor skills and also practicing our counting.  The boys and girls have been investigating the bugs in the oats – counting how many ants, ladybugs and beetles we can find.🐞🐜🪲🐛

In the acorn room our book of the month is ‘The Gruffalo’. We have being using the children’s interests in the book as sparks. LK said ‘snake’, this led to having a sensory experience of scrambled snake.

The children have been talking about making ice cream, we used the shaving foam to explore our senses of touch and even smell to create our own bowls of ice cream 🍨!

Outdoors

. The children requested to use chalk so we wrote the alphabet on the fire pit benches. The children then took turns to firstly recognise the first letter of their names and then any other letters of their name they  recognised.

I was very impressed as all children recognised the first letter of their name and some even spelled their whole name.

Afterwards the children practiced their mark making on the logs around the fire pit. ☀️

Outdoors the children have taken an interest in our new birds that have been nesting in our tree. We talked about what the birds might eat which led us on to making our own bird feeders.

STEM area

Recently in STEM, we have been exploring different life cycles and have stumbled on the topic of mould! So we started off by chopping up a variety of different foods into smaller pieces. This developed the children’s fine motor skills, as well as, introducing mathematical processes such as grouping and division. As the weeks have went on, the children have watched mould develop which has sparked a variety of questions and opened the door to different topics and discussions based around life cycle’s. Although a less practical and patient activity, it has allowed the children to better understand and witness change and growth up close! Fantastic work everyone 🧑‍🔬👩‍🔬

Story corner

In the story corner we have been looking at the story ‘what the ladybird heard’ and looking at positional language. The children used the small world animals and blocks to place the Animals ‘inside, outside and around’. Some of the children then drew their favourite animal

 

Acorn Room

This week in the Acorn room we have been looking at numbers  up to 10.  We have been doing a lots of different activities relating to numbers allowing the children to use their counting and organising skills.

The children have also enjoyed music time, using lots of different instruments to sing our favourite songs 🎶!

 

Mirror mirror! We in the art area, we used the mirror to look at our reflection and draw ourself on paper. We spoke about our features, what colour of eyes we have,musing this to mark make and create our pictures 📸!

Block Play

This week in the block play area children were busy building tall structures and compared their own heights to the buildings. This led to some very tall buildings through which children were able to practice their risk assessing skills keeping themselves and other safe.

Children role played using the large hollow blocks. A fire truck, houses, and a jail cell with some of the children being police officers and some being prisoners.

Many of our younger children have been developing their block play skills, demonstrating their ability to stack and build enclosures, some of which became zoo enclosures.

Small World Area

This week in small world we have been exploring People who help us. We have been exploring emergency services. We explored how firefighters keep us safe and what their role is.

 

STEM

This week in STEM, we have been doing lots of experiments! The children shaved soap down to very small pieces and then carefully using the electric whisk, they whisked it into crazy foam! They also mixed secret ingredients to make mini fizzing potions and watched as all the colours merged together! They all followed the instructions very well which ensured amazing potions! And finally, they used their excellent problem solving skills to melt the colourful ice in a variety of different ways using a variety of tools! I have been so impressed with the enthusiasm and involvement of each and every child! Fantastic work my mini scientists! 👩‍🔬🧑‍🔬🧪

Mark Making

this week in mark making the children have been creating their own self portraits. We looked at what makes us different and unique using the mirror to see who had different coloured eyes and hair.

Children’s Rights

The children have been helping make our rights Jenga game. They have been amazing and helped make these from start to finish. The children helped saw the pieces in woodwork and then sand them, making nice safe

, smooth edges to play with. On Friday the children helped with the next step by painting the blocks in rainbow colours to represent the different articles in the UNCRC. We will then write the key values onto each piece (safe, heard, educated, healthy, play and rest and identity) and use some clear varnish to stop them fading.

The game will then be used with the children to build their awareness of their rights by starting conversations about each value when they remove it in the game. If anyone would like to borrow this for home please come and speak to Rebecca and we will happily lend it to you. 🎨

Acorn Room

• This week in the 2-3 room we have been experimenting with size, volume and using words like “full” and “empty” while playing in the water tray.  We have also explored different textures through playing with shredded paper, home made paint (flour, water, food colouring) and breaking ice to set the dinosaurs free! In the story corner,  the children took part in a puppet show, they each got a chance to preform with their chosen puppet in front of their peers!