Oakburn Early years centre

Blog 6th aug

This week our little acorns have been very busy!

Some of the children spoke about ice cream and their favourite flavours, we made our own with cotton wool and coloured rice for sprinkles. Using the scoops to share it out between our friends.

As our summer theme for this week was Baking the children made some ‘Gruffalo crumble’. The children also enjoyed reading the Gruffalo story and using our story spoons.

The children enjoyed developing their motor skills using tweezer to find the hidden letters hiding in the shredded paper.

We hope you have a lovely weekend x

This week we finally released out butterflies. The children learned about their life cycle and were prepared for letting them go to find some friends.

one of the butterflies remained in our garden for a little while, this allowed us the opportunity to investigate the beautiful colours and patterns on their “symmetrical” wings. This led us on to creating more symmetrical images, we found items in our environment that have patterns on then but are also symmetrical. We also applied our skills through loose parts play, creating visual art that was symmetrical.

This week in the music area 🎼🎶🎵we have been practicing the nursery rhyme 5 Currant Buns 🥮In a bakers 👩‍🍳👨‍🍳 shop. The boys and girls enjoyed singing and practicing . We also decide to make  our very own Currant buns and decorated 👩‍🎨👨‍🎨 them beautifully, well done boys and girls.

We were also exploring shapes 🔵🔶🟪talking about the colour and sizes of the different shapes  , the boys and girls made and copied some patterns that were created on the easel.

Courtyard Kitchen Area😍

We’ve been using our imaginations to create our own cakes using a variety of different and interesting foods! The children suggested carrots, cucumber, pasta and noodles! What a tasty combination!🥒🥕We mixed, stirred, poured and used our senses to touch and smell.👃

Shirleyanne brought in some cookery and baking books from home and we used these to help us think about what else we could add to our cake creations…😍We realised that books can help us find out lots of information.🤩

Flour, pine cones and play dough were some excellent ideas!

We extended our learning by deciding to make recipe books using mini notes books and felt tip pens.🍰😋

We thought about what makes up a recipe and found a lemon cake recipe that used lemons and caster sugar!🍋🍋🍋The children used their note books to mark make and write their own recipes.📚

We then turned our attention to the kitchen itself and thought it would be useful to make some signs for all the appliances. We made signs for the cooker, pots, pans and the sink. Super fine motor skills on show!

On Thursday we added herbal tea bags to our kitchen. These proved to be very popular! The children used scissors to cut the tea bags and pour the leaves out. They mixed the leaves with pasta to create a pasta cake!Genius!🤩

Friday was especially creative with some super cake concoctions, using cotton wool, yellow play dough and glitter!🤩🙌What a wonderful week of exploration, discovery, creativity and PLAY!❤️

Blog

This week we got a new castle for our small world area, however we didn’thave many characters who could live inside so we had a discussion about what kind of people would live in a

“A castle needs a king!” The children decided they wanted a king, a queen, princesses, princes, dragons and fairies! So we decided to create these ourselves using wooden dolls, paper, pens, felt and gluecastle?

 

These were the end results! What do you think ?

In the garden we were playing number pong. We were recognising numbers 1-5 in the ball and cup. The game was to pick up the ball and tell us the number and then find the matching number cup and try to throw it into the cup. The boys and girls were working on number matching, and number matching. Also working with hand , eye coordination to throw the ball softly into the cup.

The children expressed an interest in playing with chalk in the garden, I set up a small mark making station for them to explore 🌈 The children have developed their fine motor skills and turn taking.

One of the summer fun activities this week was nature day! Therefore, the children gathered together different natural resources whilst on their nature walk. I then set up an activity consisting of patterns and set out the resources for the children to create their own pattern following the lines filling the spaces with different natural items engrossing fine motor skills and engaging hand eye coordination when creating the pattern.

This week was the perfect time to get the paddling pool out! We had fun cooling down and splashing each other.

On our nature walks we spotted lots of flora and fauna, we took pictures and used them for a scavenger hunt the next day. We found horses hoof fungi, buttercups, slugs, acorns, hawthorn berries and roots from the tree. The children had discussions of all the different parts of the tree.

Some of the children collected different types of leaves from the wooded area to create transient artwork. We spoke about the species of trees, focussing on oak at the moment!

As part of ‘Nature Week’🌿🍀🌳we created our own nature gardens using leaves, twigs, bark and rice! The children had the brilliant idea of mixing green paint with the rice to create grass!GENIUS!🌟A great activity for developing fine motor skills too!

Later on in the week the children had the idea of adding pasta and dried noodles to our gardens! Why not?! We can be creative in lots of different ways!🤩

We also explored the garden to find other natural resources to add to our gardens. Grass, soil and stones were found to create more texture.🌿

We used our senses to discover and explore our outdoor area further, during our nature walks.🍀🌳🌿Beech Tree group found tree roots, a black beetle and a worm!🪱We used our gross motor skills to climb the garden steps and had to bend down to safely go under the tree branches and watch where we were placing our feet to negotiate the uneven terrain!🪵👣👣Such risk aware children! Fantastic!👏👏

On Friday we introduced play dough, numbers and flowers to our nature gardens.🌹🌷🍀Lots of different smells, textures and things to feel and look at. We used so many of our senses!👃👀✋Discovery, curiosity and exploration! Nature Week was AWESOME!😀🤩🌿🍀🌳