Oakburn Early years centre

This week in our garden 🪴 we have been very very busy developing our space , after consultation with the boys and girls , we have added some wonderful additions, such as an interactive weather and days of the week station ☀️❄️💨☔️☃️.A fantastic numeracy station , we’re the boys and girls can collect items from the garden 🌸🌻🌷to add to our numbered pots , or perhaps the boys and girls will be curious enough to find out how tall they are . Our mud kitchen 👩‍🍳🧑‍🍳has had a few changes as well , for our boys and girls to make some mud pies. We have also added by popular demand a brilliant water 💦 wall which allows our boys and girls to explore with water that they have collected in the buckets 🪣 next to the station 😃. We have been very busy with other activities in the garden 🪴 making firework pictures using gloop and some food colouring 🙂, as well as popping balloons 🎈to create a magnificent firework picture 🔥. We have been making potions 🧪 this week , and the boys and girls have been writing out their own potions 🧙🧙‍♀️ this has been very interesting 🧐. Towards the end of the week we have been celebrating Diwali and making mandalas from lovely red Playdough adding some buttons for decoration.

This  week we have been celebrating Diwali, by making our own clay tea light holders.Diwali is a five-day festival that celebrates the victory of light over darkness.🕯🪔

Hindus across the world are celebrating Diwali. The five-day festival of lights is one of the most popular holidays in India, and Thursday is the main day of festivities, when the faithful pray to the Hindu goddess of wealth.

The children used moulding techniques and using clay also helps improve eye/hand coordination and build both gross and fine motor skills, including the small muscles in hands and fingers.

Our author of the month for October was Valerie Paul and the children have been reading many of the “Winnie and Wilbur” books. We have read about Winnie and Wilbur’s adventures in winter⛄️,on a flying carpet, with a big bad robot🤖, on a pirate ship ☠️and at a birthday party🎂.These have proved very popular and the children have joined in with counting to five or ten as they pretended to wave their wands 🪄and say the magic word “Abracadabra!”.

We have also been learning about the right way up to hold the books, the front cover, the back cover, the spine of the book and the blurb.

In the discovery area we have been making fireworks with glitter, flour, pom-poms and coloured lollipop sticks. We spoke about how we keep safe and how we stay far away from fireworks as they can be dangerous fireworks 💥🎇

During the week, some of the children have shown an interest in caring for the babies in the home corner. On Monday whilst playing with the babies, the children began role playing a hospital environment. To support this, we introduced some medical resources such as bandages, plasters, stethoscopes and a thermometer. This allowed the children to develop their imaginative skills further as they role played and took care of the sick babies. 👩🏻‍⚕️👨🏼‍⚕️🚑

To celebrate Guy Fawkes night, we have been creating transient art fireworks using a variety of loose parts. This allows the children to develop their creative and imaginative skills as they take part in this experience. The end result was some really lovely firework creations 🎇💥❤️

This week we have created a new woodwork corner into our nursery courtyard. Within this area it allows the children to have more opportunities in woodwork. The children have been loving the new tools and are always keen to create different things within this area! 🔨 🥽 🪚

This week we have been creating firework pictures using lots of different materials.  The children explored different ways to create their designs, using salt and glue to make 3D fireworks and using recycled toilet roll holders to create firework displays.  🎆

We also celebrated Diwali, the festivals of lights.  The children created lanterns and floating candles.  We also read a fantastic Diwali book.   ✨ ✨

 

Discovery Area – Week commencing 25/10/21😀

It’s a SPOOKTACULAR week!🎃🎃🎃Monday was a day for small world play! Our discovery area was filled with pirates, wild animals, puppets, Halloween themed loose parts and the car garage!👏🎃🍁

Lots of opportunities to explore, discover, be curious, play, share, chat and have fun!🤩On Tuesday we added more Autumnal resources to our loose parts… Spot the leaves!🍁🍁🍁

On Thursday we explored the colour orange and mixed red and yellow together to match the colour of the leaves.🎃🍂🍁It was very exciting to paint on cling film!🍁🍂

On Friday we had fun at our Halloween party!🎃👻We danced, did cosmic yoga, dooked apples and had a spooky snack!🎃👻

Happy Halloween, everyone!🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻

This week in the discovery area we have been leaning about space and their planets by reading “our space” story.  The boys and girls have been taking in interest in rhyming. So we brought out a game where you have to match rhyming words and put it into a rocket. The children have really enjoyed this challenge 😊

In the STEM area we have been focusing on learning about money and the different values of it. We have been using padlocks and keys to help develop fine motor skills and problem solving.

We have been using a numeracy car park to help develop number recognition and having races to see how different sizes can go at different speeds 🚗

This week in the Studio, we have been using our Autumn treasures to create interesting things. We have been developing our creative skills and building relationships as we worked as a team to roll the conkers around the tuff tray to create a painting. We had to use good communication skills to work together and tilt the tray to roll the conkers in the paint. 🎨🍂

This week we have been further exploring transient art, we have been using the loose parts resources to create wonderful things. One of the children this week made a house of sticks, conkers and acorns. We have developed our curiosity, inquiry and creativity skills whilst exploring transient art 🍂🍁🪵🪶

We have been using some of the leaves from our Autumn treasure bags to make “leaf monsters”. We have used our creative skills to use some of the craft resources to make these, everyone’s was different and they are all very imaginative. 🍂🍁

 

This week in the outdoor area we have been looking at signs of autumn. We went on a leaf hunt around the garden and collected lots of different leaves, discussing the shapes,sizes and colours.  We then sorted these leaves into groups of small/big, narrow/wide and made our own leaf graph sorting them into groups of colour.

Continue reading “The Garden 18/10/21”