Week beginning 27.03.23

Week beginning 27.03.23

STEM area

This week in the STEM area we have been using our technology skills alongside testing out our new beebot mats. If that’s not enough we were also making them ourselves.

The children came up with some amazing ideas and on Tuesday we decided to make a robot and a rainbow beebot mat as these were the most popular ideas 🌈 🤖. The children showed excellent imagination and creativity and produced 2 fabulous mats. After they were finished they programmed the beebots to go round their mat touching the pictures they each drew.

Using the other numeracy and literacy mats the children practiced their numbers 0-20, shapes, colours and also spelling their names.

Home Corner

This week the children have been making the home corner into an ice cream shop 🍦. The children have been using real cones and sprinkles, as well as playdough for their ice cream! They have been showing good turntaking by having turns each to be the shopkeeper. This has also developed their awareness of money 💰

The children also made a cafe, again using playdough as well as real items to make tea and cakes 🧁they demonstrated good sharing and team work when making their cakes. We used real tea bags to make tea with different flavours and smells 🫖

Snack area

We have been making delicious smoothies this week in the baking area! The children have been very engaged with this activity and have been choosing different fruits and yogurt to use, we have been using our pouring and measuring skills. ❤️

Courtyard – Block play

Sometimes even our builders need a break and what better way to relax than by sitting on the sofa! 👷‍♀️👷‍♂️ So our busy builders decided to build one, how fantastic! Working as a team and using their amazing innovation, the children discussed their ideas and got to work. They discussed the size they wanted it to be, some of the features of a sofa such as arm rests, and how to make it more comfortable by adding pillows! What an impressive build 🛋

Expressive Area

YOU CHOOSE

using your imagination let’s create something!

At Oakburn we are an ECO Friendly centre and we love using recycled materials such as junk modelling. The children used tape and junk modelling to build and construct their own creation. “It’s a boat with wings!” The children worked their fine motor skills problem solving how to connect the materials together ✈️🚀🏎🚢🏥🛠

Easter toddle 🐣

A huge thank you to all who joined us on our sponsored Easter toddle yesterday. We were overwhelmed with the amazing turn out from parents, carers and families supporting us on our toddle and then joining us in our coffee morning afterwards.

The morning was a huge success with a special visit from our friend the Easter Bunny who left the children a special treat for finding eggs on their egg hunt and creating some amazing Easter Bonnets

 

Thank you again for all your support !

Jocelyn

Week beginning 13/03/23

Outdoors

No matter the weather we are always outside! Despite the rainy week we have had, the children have still found creative ways to have fun! This time, the children asked for bubbly puddles to splash in and with the ingredients they made them themselves! This created endless fun for them on a soaking wet day!

Discovery area

This week in the discovery area we have been engaging in activities related to different stories. We read the story ‘supertato’. The children had to use their fine motor skills to free the evil peas from the ice. The children have also been using potatoes to make their very own supertato! 🥔 The children used stick on eyes and drew mouths and noses on their Supertato. We then had a selection of different materials and the children chose which to use for their cape 🦸‍♂️ .

Acorn Room

This week in the acorn room we have been loving our story of the month, “The Gruffalo.”

Everyday the children have had the opportunity to explore a different sensory experience that has related to the story. We have had ‘Scrambled Snake’ to ‘Gruffalo Crumble’, each experience providing the children with a range of sensory and fine motor challenges and curiosity.

The children have also enjoyed using the story spoons to act out the story as we read it together 📖🥄promoting role play and language development throughout.

Fine motor area

This week the children have been talking about the letters from their names. In the fine motor area we had letters hidden under pasta, rice and flour. The children could then search for the letters to see if they could find any letters from their names. They had great fun finding the letters and then trying to write the letter they found in the rice and flour. This was developing their fine motor skills, mark making and also letter recognition skills.

Block play

The focus in the construction area this week has been houses from around the world! The children has been building a variety of different houses based on both real and imaginary! We have been building our own houses, Elsa’s Castle, and even a unicorn house! It’s been wonderful to observe the children working together, and on their own, designing freely and creating and recreating models.

Art area

Within the art Area the children have been learning about Vincent van gough and his artistry. The children used a variety of different materials, learned about colour palette and still life. The children love copying and recreating their own takes of different famous images.

 

Week beginning 06.03.23

STEM area

Beanstalk update

This week in the STEM area we have been looking after our beanstalks (cress seeds) the children have been watering them and ensuring they are kept on the bright windowsill.

At the end of the week we decided to use rulers and our numeracy skills to see how high our beanstalks were! We have 4, 5, 6 and even 7cm high ones! The children then practiced their positional language by comparing their beanstalks seeing which was “bigger and smaller”.

Courtyard – Block area

Ninja Warrior Oakburn! The children decided that this week the focus was constructing their own obstacle courses and making them as challenging as possible! From ramps to bridges, the children excellently navigated across the course showing amazing teamwork and turn-taking skills. As the week has went on, the children has created more challenging obstacles with demonstrates that they can scale their own learning! Amazing work ninjas!

Art area

The art area have been working their fine motor skills through the use of scissor play and playdough building. Using different materials the children became creative to build and construct their own designs using straw and sellotape 🏠

Small world

This week in small world we have been exploring different animals. We have been looking at different jungle animals and where they live. 🦒🐘🦧.

We have also been watching some videos about these animals, and seeing them in their natural environment 🐘

We have also been looking at farm animals 🐖🐄🐓 we have also used natural materials from the garden to explore different textures.

Outdoors

A lovely surprise snow day at Oakburn in March has went down a treat in the garden! The boys and girls watched as they threw the sun up in the air and seen all the sparkling snow fall down! They also observed as the snow melted throughout the day and turned into water ❄️💦

Acorn Room

We continued exploring our colours this week by reading the colour book and also finding different objects around the acorn room. The children were encouraged to find different items to match the colour such as red. For red the children found a fire engine which matched the colour red.

Cosy Corner

Courtyard – Gross motor skills

This week in the courtyard the children have been exploring colours.  We have participated in activities around finding and matching where the children use the coloured foam mats and search for an item around the nursery that matches that colour.

 

Week beginning 27.02.23

Courtyard – block play

Recently, in the block play area we have introduced our “work in progress” signs. This allows the children to take a break and come back later which can stretch the experience out further! It also allows for the children to showcase their amazing structures that they have built and let them remain untouched until they decide to take it down! This gives the control to the children to decide what they do with their own buildings. Excellent work everyone!

STEM area

For World Book Day we have been using some of our favourite stories for inspiration. We used the traditional tale of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ to junk model the giants castle. The children used their creativity, imagination and construction skills to design and build their castles with recycled paper and plastics.

We also decided to plant our very own beanstalks (cress seeds). The children followed 2 part instructions when planting the seeds. They picked 1 cup, 4 bits of cotton wool soaked in water and 2 pinches of cress seeds. We then picked the bright windowsill to put our seeds to grow and spoke all about what plants need to grow well.

The children have enjoyed monitoring the seeds progress each day and we hope to have ‘beanstalks’ that we can measure soon. 🌱 🌱🌱🌱

Woodwork Area

This week in woodwork the children were talking about fairies 🧚‍♀️. We decided to create fairy doors for the garden. The children have been very creative when making their doors. They have added some paint, glitter, beads and keys to their fairy doors 🚪.

Home Corner

This week in the home corner the children have been trying some new flavours, first they were making some flavour teas, the children mixed and had a taste of each one. This moved onto the children wanting to create their own flavours we done this through making smoothies that the children said were yummy. On world book day the children wanted to create their own tea party using some more fruit and making their own cake after they made it the children sat down and had a tea party together while they listened to the tiger who came to tea 🐯

Story Corner

World Book Day – this week we celebrated world book day by dressing up as our favourite characters, wearing cosy pyjamas and sharing our favourite stories with our friends.  All the children enjoyed discussing their favourite stories and characters and sharing their favourite parts of the book.  📚

Acorn Room

In the acorn room this week we have been focusing on our colours using playdough, paints and pens 🎨. On Thursday we tied this into ‘World book day’ by reading ‘Elmer’ by David Mckee. The children used the coloured squares and glue to stick them on toys elephants to make their very own Elmer. We had some very colourful Patchwork Elephants by the end of their wonderful creations 🐘🎨!

Art Area

It was world book day this week. In the art area we have been creating our own stories based on representational characters from famous books or the children enhanced their own creativity by using their imaginationations to create their own stories. The children used their fine motor skills to draw and write their own book.

Garden

This week in the garden we had stay and play with the parents and they were able to join in and help make a den for the boys and girls to play and we were able to build on this by making it into a house and pirate ships

Literacy / Fine motor area

This week we celebrated World book Day. In the fine motor area we read The Three Little Pigs book, the children were then able to make houses from straws, sticks and wooden bricks. The children could identify the best material to make the houses with and demonstrated by saying “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down” . Some of the children then used the story stones to be able to retell the story in their own words, while changing their voices for different characters. Developing their language skills through role play and their fine motor skills while making the houses.

Snack area

This week has been stay and play where we have had lots of our parents/families visit our nursery.  During this time in the baking area we have made cakes and spoke about ingredients.  We have used our measuring, pouring and scooping skills then later in the week we made delicious fruit smoothies!

Week beginning 20.02.23

Courtyard – block play

Building bridges, tunnels and friendships! This week the children have been exploring different ways to play the game “the floor is lava” when they discovered how to build bridges with the blocks so lots of people can get on at one time! This transitioned very well into obstacle course construction and the ideas continued to expand! Through teamwork, the children decided to construct a large tunnel which was completely made by themselves! This was amazing to see! The ideas are limitless and the children are really beginning to see that! Fantastic work builders! 🏗

Courtyard – Gross motor skills

This week in the courtyard we have been trying out our new bowling set, the children have been practicing their counting, shapes and patterns when trying out different ways to set the pins out.  They have showed great control and coordination when rolling the bowling balls 🎳

STEM area

This week in the STEM area we have been exploring science and the changing state of water. The children have been discovering that ice is frozen water and when ice melts it produces water again. We have also been using salt and hot water to speed up the melting process.

During the experiment our mini scientists have been discussing whether we think ice will melt with no help at room temperature and whether we thought our room was warmer or colder than a freezer.

When we melted our ice the children then used their creativity and imagination to make love potions using the water, glitter and sequins. 🧪❤️💕💗 The children enjoyed this so much the next day we continued making lots of magical potions 🧪 🌸 adding glitter and some rose petals.

🐛🐜 🔍 Magnifying Experiment 🔍 🐛 🐜

This week in the STEM area we have been exploring magnification. The children have had lots of opportunities to use magnifying glasses and also microscopes. We have magnified small pictures and practiced our positional language and direction skills by telling our friends how to find our favourite objects.

Later in the week children were keen to use the microscopes and magnifying glasses to look at bugs so we moved our STEM area outside and found lots of worms to take a closer look. This focused on the children’s senses and them describing what they saw. It was also an excellent opportunity for them to get outside and enjoy nature within our nursery garden.  🔍🐛🐜

Snack

PANCAKE DAY!

This week in the snack are we have been celebrating pancake day by making and trying pancakes. The children helped to cook the pancakes using the hot plate. The children developed their risk aware skills by being safe when cooking. We created banana and blueberry pancakes. The children had the option of lots of toppings!

The Garden

With the sun finally starting to come out, our little gardeners have been very busy! In our lovely allotment area, the children have decided to plant some blueberries and blackcurrants! And to help protect the young plants, we have built a fence out of twigs which we have collected from all around the garden 🪵🍃🍂🌹💐

Fine motor area

In the fine motor skills area we have been copying patterns using the foam shapes and laces. The children have been threading the foam shapes onto the laces following the pattern cards. This has been developing their fine motor skills, shape recognition skills as well as colour recognition and counting skills.

The children then created their own patterns  for their friends to copy.

Home Corner

The children have been exploring the kitchen area using real food. We have especially been enjoying pasta! Exploring the different textures and types of pasta. The children have been building on their fine motor skills by using the tongs and cutlery.

Acorn Room

This week in the acorn room all the children took part in making home made pancakes 🥞. They all took turns in mixing the ingredients together and then adding the pancake mix onto the pan.

We had the pancakes with a selection of fruit and sauces at snack time 🍓🍌

 

 

Week beginning 06.02.23

Courtyard – Block play

I’ll HUFF and I’ll PUFF and I’ll blow your house down! Taking our interest in building houses further, this week the children have introduced the familiar story of the three little pigs! Using pipe cleaners for straw, real sticks from our garden for sticks and construction blocks for bricks, the children amazingly replicated the story and discussed all the different strengths of each house and if they thought the big bad wolf could blow their house down! 🐺 Problem solving was a key skill on display in this activity but it was not a problem for the builders! Fantastic work little pigs 🐷 🐷 🐷

Expressive Area

FASHION WEEK 👕🪡👗👙 

We used recycled fabrics and materials to create our own outfits. The children learned about the importance of recycling and how it benefits our planet we live on.

Courtyard – gross motor skills

This week in the courtyard the children have been making their own obstacle courses using the gross motor resources!👣 we have been practicing our coordination, balance and team working skills

Outdoors

This week our little gardeners have been clearing away some space in our allotment to prepare for some more plants to be planted! We are focusing on herbs just now and have decided to plant some lovely oregano! We have been discussing how our body feels after some digging and how the soil feels and sounds as we dig it up! Fantastic works diggers! Our garden is looking amazing thanks to you!

STEM area

This week in the STEM area we have been exploring forces through the pull of magnets. The children have been making magnetic mazes, hovering butterflies with paper clips and taking part in our discovery tray magnet hunt.

Acorn room

The acorns have been feeling the love this week to celebrate upcoming Valentine’s Day with some sensory experiences

Home room – Snack

This week we have been exploring bananas by making different snacks. We used yoghurts and raisin to creat banana ice lollies. We also created delicious banana muffins.

They demonstrated fantastic fine motor skills by cutting and mashing the bananas.

The children demonstrated great writing skills by creating their own banana muffin recipes. We have created our own recipe bags to send Home

Home room – Fine motor area

Some of the children said they liked learning about numbers. During this activity they were able to put the numbered cards into the correct order once they had done this they could use the coloured blocks to count out the correct number of blocks. This was developing their number recognition skills, their counting skills and their fine motor skills.

 

 

 

Week beginning 30.01.23

Woodwork area

This week in woodwork we have been creating patterns using nails and different coloured beads. The children have been exploring different sequences of patterns using different materials.

Art area

This week in the art area we have been focusing on the historical famous artist Vincent van gough. Using the two famous paintings ‘A stary night’ and ‘The Sunflower’ the children used chalk to recreate their own take of these paintings.

 

Home corner

This week in the home corner the children have loved exploring the kitchen. We have incorporated real food into the kitchen for the children to explore.

Baking area

In the baking area this week we have been exploring different vegetables and what we can make with them. The children chose to use bagels and suggested we make pizza bagels using tomatoes, peppers and cheese.  The children developed their fine motor skills as well as keeping themselves safe while using a knife to cut the vegetables.

Small world

In the small world area the children have shown a strong interest in dinosaurs 🦖 starting the week they explored “Dino land” and from that the children were looking at the shapes of their feet. They moved onto printing their feet the next day and looking at the size of real dinosaurs foot prints, the biggest one in the world being a sauropod at 5ft9 👣 the children wanted to know who was the same size as that so getting the measuring tapes they started measuring staff in the nursery, with Hannah being the closest in height “that’s a huge footprint” most of the children said. We measured our friends as the t-Rex print is 3ft3 which a lot of our friends in the nursery are the same size as.

STEM area

This week in the STEM area we have been enjoying learning about electricity. We have been finding out we can get electricity from fossil fuels/power stations, wind, the sun and water.

The children have also loved having a go at making their very own electrical circuits. We started with basic circuits and then some of the children were able to extend these to add switches, along with more than one light bulb.

Courtyard – Block play

Houses come in all shapes and sizes. Can you make your own? The children have shown an interest in houses recently and we have been discussing how all of our houses look so different. Taking this interest forward, we have been designing and building our very own houses in construction! The children have shown a great level of ability to plan ahead and discuss their ideas before building! We have even been drawing our houses before we build which is excellent to see! Amazing work builders, keep it up!

Acorn room

The children were observed hiding in the woods. The children laughed as they hid behind the trees. L.F scaffolded the learning by leading a game of hide and seek. The children were able to follow the simple instructions of the game. We added numeracy by counting 1-5. A child said peek-a-boo, L.F supported this interest with providing colourful scars. A few children were able to identify the colours “red”. With the children’s interest of hiding. L.F provided books, that support this.

 

Week beginning 23.01.23

Acorn Room

This week we provided our acorns with experiences that supported Burns night.
The children were keen to create their own tartan. A few children created their own and a few children copied a few patterns.

The children decorated the Loch Ness monster.  With support a few of the children were able to identify the colours or Pom, Pom’s “A blue one” and “my favourite colour is this one, pink”. We tried the traditional Scottish dinner with vegetarian haggis. The children communicated their likes and dislikes with the tasting experience. At group time we incorporated learning traditional songs. The children were keen to shake the props on the parachute to the song Katie Beardie. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

 

Story Corner

We have been learning  all about Robert Burns this week.  His poems have become an extremely important part of Scottish culture. The children have enjoyed all the facts about him and trying out some of the Scottish words in the poems.  We also explored some other things we do to celebrate Burns day, foods we eat and clothes we wear.

STEM area

This week in the STEM area we have been exploring density though our sink and float experiment. The children helped select some fruit, veg and loose parts to do the experiment with. We used our turn taking and listening skills while having lots of fun predicting whether each item would sink our float.

We found out that an orange floats with its skin on but sinks with it off! We also discovered a tiny grape sinks! The children were very excited that the weight of the item did not determine whether it would sink or float.

At the end of the experiment we counted together to find out how many items we had in our sink box, how many in our float box and also which was the higher number. 🍊 🍌 💦 🍇 🫑 🍐

Home Corner

This week in the home corner the children have been making orange juice. The children have been using the juicer to squeeze the oranges 🍊

The children have also been enjoying doing some baking in the home corner. The children have been measuring the amounts of the ingredients to make and decorate some lovely cakes.🎂

Woodwork area

This week in woodwork we were running a little low on wood so we decided to use to the saw to cut some bigger pieces into smaller ones 🪚. We used a ruler to measure how long each bit was going to be and marked it using a ruler and a pencil ✏️.

Courtyard – Block Play

This week in the construction area, the children have been focusing on building small structures, specifically for superheroes 🦸‍♂️ 🦸‍♀️ working as a team, the children created excellent structures that contained many important features that superheroes need- “a gym, a bed and tall stairs” what else could a superhero need? The children confidently discussed their ideas together and worked hard to creative their image. Super work everyone!

Courtyard

This week in the courtyard we have been talking about Scotland, Scottish words and the Scottish flag.  We have have explored colours, porridge oats, songs and sounds.

Snack/Baking area

This week we have been exploring Robert Burns day. We tasted different Scottish food such as potato scones and haggis, neeps and tatties. We made our own shortbread, carefully cutting it into thin fingers. 

We linked our fruit kebabs to look like tartan. Copying the colours of the tartan for each piece of fruit.

 

Forest School

At forest school this week we have been focusing on whittling. The children had to use great concentration and listening skills and risk assess the activity, making sure to keep themselves safe

Outdoors

As the weather has been cold we discovered lots of big chunks of ice in our garden. We decided to use this as a canvas for painting! The children used blue and red paint mixing this together to create purple.

 

Week beginning 16.01.23

Acorn Room

The children were observed jumping from one log cushion to another. J.M said we are jumping like frogs. K.N said “ribbit, ribbit”. L.F scaffolded their learning by adding a dice and numbers and encouraged them to count and identify the numbers they landed on as they role played. A.M said “I want a frog” L.F supported this interest and created a play-dough experience of create your own frogs with play-dough. The children were able to make their own frogs using loose parts. H.T counted “1,2 eyes”. The children were keen to sing 5 speckled frogs at group time, L.F praised them for learning to count. The children smiled as they explored our pop up frog too. We also watched the frog life cycle song. Parents in the acorn room, please find the attached song on your child’s e.journals.🐸🪵

The acorns have been participating in activities to celebrate Chinese New Year! They have been exploring sensory play with rice and Chinese inspired playdough. They have also been learning about the Chinese flag and it’s different colours and shapes.

Woodwork Area

This week in woodwork we have been continuing to create beautiful photo frames🖼 the children have been super busy using their fine motor skills to hammer the nails around the picture and weave ribbon around them in lots of different colours. 

The Courtyard – Block play

To celebrate Chinese New Year in the block area, the children have been building their own Chinese Temples! Working fabulously as a team, the children modelled their temples from images. This is a concept skill that requires them create their own version of the image on a larger scale. This also requires great gross motor skills and teamwork which the children displayed in abundance! Fantastic job everyone!

Snack\Baking Area

This week was Chinese New Year! In the baking area we have been exploring different tastes – we have made noodles with a curry or sweet and sour sauce.  We also made the traditional Jiaozi (made with Quorn mince, carrots, onion and garlic).  The children did really well when using the chopsticks to pick up the Jiaozi. 🤩

Story Corner

We have been learning about Chinese New Year 🧧 this week in the story corner and reading our new books. The most popular book seems to have been Winnie and Wilbur 🐈‍⬛ at Chinese New Year by Valerie Thomas.

The children have been learning that this is a very important holiday for many people and 2023 is the year of the rabbit 🐇. We found out that Chinese New Year is also known as the Lunar New Year as it is connected to the moon 🌙. The children were very interested in the dragon 🐉 and lion 🦁 dances that are performed to bring good luck. All the children have shown that they are fantastic responsible citizens learning about another culture and celebration 🤩👏.

STEM Area

In the STEM area we have been celebrating Chinese New Year while practicing our numeracy skills. The children have been demonstrating their knowledge of numbers 1 to 10 and their ability to correspond the number of loose parts to the written number. Alongside this the children were able to observe the Chinese symbol for each number and Rong also showed us how to pronounce each number.

Also in the STEM area we have been exploring technology and programming through our bee bot robots 🤖. The children were very excited when the bee themed robots came out. They were able to programme them to go forward, back, left and right. When the children we confident giving the beebots a one step instruction then we built up to 2,3 and some children were able to master 4 step instructions. There was so much demand to play with our beebots we set up a queuing system while waiting our turn, promoting turn taking and cooperative play. This term we will continue to develop our technology skills within the area.

This week we have been exploring Chinese New Year. In the gross motor skills area we have been learning Chinese games. We played, passing the bean bag, jumping and throwing on the squares and picking and throwing pebbles. Rong showed the children the Chinese names for each game.

Fine motor area

This week to celebrate Chinese New Year the children were writing the Chinese number from 1-10. They were able to draw them in the rice with the lolly stick or their fingers or use the pen and paper to copy them too. The children found that writing some of the numbers was easier than others which were quite tricky.

Writing Area

This week we are celebrating Chinese New Year

2023 is the year of the rabbit🐰? Our mark making table displayed a range of Chinese writing and the children were super keen to have a go at writing in Chinese themselves!✏️. It was a little tricky at times as the Chinese alphabet is written very differently to ours!

Home Corner

We made our own  Chinese lanterns using paper and glitter which we have hung up on the ceiling. They look great in our new home corner 🟡🔴

 

 

Week beginning 09.01.23

Mark making area

On Monday one of the children suggested making a post box, which led to the exploration of writing post cards and letters.✏️📮

We used a cardboard box to make the post box and then thought about who we might write our letters to.. Family, friends, Skye from Paw Patrol and Pikachu from Pokemon were just a few brilliant suggestions!👏🙌

We wrote our letters using a variety of media including pencils, felt tips, pencil crayons and chalk! Developing fine motor skills and letter formation, provoking discussion and incorporating role play! Fabulous!✏️📮👏

Courtyard – Gross motor skills 

This week in the courtyard the boys and girls have been using their gross motor skills to manoeuvre around our obstacle course. The children decided to make a hopscotch and were able to identify the numbers and sequence these in order from 1-10.

STEM area

The children have been enjoying the lemon juice volcano experiment this week in the STEM area. For the experiment we used the acid in the lemon juice, mixing in some food colouring and then adding some baking soda to cause a big chemical reaction. The children used all their senses, shared and took turns to add all the ingredients and listened very well to the instructions of the experiment.

Rebecca will embarking on a weekly science experiment in the STEM area. This will happen each day allowing all children to take part if they want to and will change weekly on a Monday.

The Stage

At the stage the focus for the month of January is Good Auld Scottish Patter .

We have been reading Scottish books 📖 and singing Scottish songs .

We have even had a few girls who wrote some Scottish words for the wall .

Snack area
This week in the snack area we have been celebrating lots of birthdays. We made lots of birthday cupcakes. We developed our numeracy skills by counting how many spoonfuls of things we needed and weighing out ingredients using the scales.

 

Courtyard – Block area

From images to real life, the children have done an excellent job this week creating large structures in the block area. Working in teams, the children have discussed ideas, lifted blocks together and created amazing structures 🏗🗼🗽the emphasis this week has been teamwork and this is something that the children do very very well 🤝 furthermore, the pre-planning the children have displayed through selecting landmarks and structures to copy has been wonderful to observe. Transitioning one skill to another and working in a team is a complex concept that the children have displayed with ease. Amazing work everyone 🤩.

Forest School

It was our second session at forest school. We walked in the pouring rain to the woodland but we all had our cozy suits on to keep warm. We put the tarp and hammock up for shelter. We ate breadsticks under the tarp and chatted about the different things we could hear; wind, planes, birds and school children. The children then had the opportunity to learn a basic overhand knot. We had lots of fun and headed back for lunch.

Story corner

This week we have been reading and singing Scottish stories and rhymes. The children have enjoyed learning the Scottish words and what they mean.  Some of our favourites have been, “ canny shove ur granny off the bus” and the “ wee lassie that swallowed a midgie”.  This has supported the children’s listening and communication skills. We also used puppets and resources to act out some of the stories and rhymes which helped to build confidence and vocabulary.

Art area

Within the expressive area the children have sparked an interest on pirates. We have been focusing on making pirate ships using junk modelling, creating our own money through the use of crayons and printing coins and creating our own treasure map for treasure island 🏴‍☠️

 

Woodwork

In woodwork we have been busy making photo frames using nails and wood. They have created frames using beads, smaller items from junk modelling such as bottle lids and excess fabrics 🔨 🗜. This has been great for developing our fine motor skills!

 

Home corner

Our home corner has had a revamp! We were looking for a more cosy environment where the children could relax. We added more natural materials and added a sofa with blankets and cushions. The children now have access to a dressing up table and mirror where they have been exploring roleplay playing hairdressers.

Acorn room

This week in the acorn room we have been focusing on our colours. Using different materials we have been matching and sorting them into the corresponding colour pots. By using the pincers we have also been working on our fine motor skills to pick up the Pom poms to match them into their pots.

In the home corner we have been talking about what we have for dinner. These sparked conversations about making pizza from playdough, using rollers and collage materials for the toppings. We also explored the “Tiger who came to tea”. Pouring and filling into the cups. The children role played with each other, turn taking and sharing with each other 🫖🤩.

The children have been showing an interest in exploring through their senses as they have been exploring our new sensory toys. The children spent a long period of time pushing our pop it. A few children were able to identify the colours on it. The children chose to reach out and touch  the tactile pages of our sensory books. Early Years Workers (EYW’s) used high quality interactions and descriptive language to scaffold their learning. The children said “soft cow” and “bumpy feet”. Showing their understanding. With the children’s interest of That’s not my books. We created a That’s not our Acorn ladies and the children were able to make simple choices of the loose parts they used to decorate them. J.M laughed as he placed tinsel on Elaine hair and said “Elaine has sparkly hair”.

 

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