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!
