Remember remember we have been learning so much in November 🙂

This term we continue to develop our Literacy and Numeracy skills and Social, Emotional and Physical skills through play.

Every day, before lunch, we gather for Songs and Story time. We use a choice board to select nursery rhymes to sing after listening to a story. Each week we attend a Bookbug session with Ms Hutcheson too and enjoyed inviting family along at Halloween. Listening to stories and singing nursery rhymes helps us  engage with books, learn new words, recognise the sounds in words and grasp word boundaries. When we do actions alongside our rhymes we boost our fine and gross motor skills too.  All of these are fundamental to becoming good talkers, readers and writers of the future.

When we are read to at home and at school we are more likely to become readers ourselves.

We continue to develop all of these literacy skills, and more, through our every day play….

Budding builders mark make building plans and discuss their options.

Superhero’s focus, collaborate and share ideas as well as develop fine motor control to create super powered magic creations.

A group of children were “fishing” from the climbing frame “boat”. Miss Sandison drew the creatures that they described. Talking out loud, describing, learning new words with an adult and friends, and story telling through imaginative play creates writers of the future.

Some of us find enjoyment in drawing/mark making our stories and putting our ideas onto paper/the Smarboard now, not just in the future!

And many of us make up stories and tell our stories through small world play. Small world activities help us to maintain attention and concentrate for longer periods. Language skills develop as we use our imaginations to tell stories and create role-play scenarios.

Our talking and listening skills also develop as we collaborate, explain, ask questions, share ideas and problem solve together…

And it’s always great to share our news and ideas with each other over a snack.

Through talking, listening and mark making we also develop our Numeracy and Mathematics skills.

Using objects to draw around, or even rulers to create lines helps us grasp important concepts of shape, angle and direction.

As we mark make, design and construct through play we have many opportunities to learn about shapes and objects that we make, the direction of the lines we create and how to talk about and compare features such as edges, corners, colour and pattern.

 

Construction also gives us opportunities to link our interests to play, such as building Numberblocks or making cakes and “recipes” with playdough. Through this play we counted up to 20 and learned about early addition and subtraction as we added or took away blocks/beads/sprinkles during the creative process.

 

More ways we develop our understanding of number, counting and order is through playing number games with friends, using numbers in our play and making up games with objects.

Sand and water play has been a popular avenue during November. Playing with sand and water develops our understanding of volume, capacity and weight. As we fill and empty, pour and sift, lift and explore we learn words such as “empty”, “full”, “half”, “heavy”, “light”, “cold”, “warm”, “soft”,”rough” and we develop concepts of time as sand and water travel through various containers, sieves and tubes. As you can see it is also a great place to gather and share our ideas.

Gathering together, sharing ideas and collaborating is part of developing Social and Emotional life skills. Through our play we learn about our feelings and desires as well as other people’s feelings and desires. By sharing our thoughts, feelings and ideas we learn to share, turn take, listen and negotiate.

Shared paint mixing… “You can have that side and I will have this side so that we can make our own colours.”

Shared garage play “my car is going this way ok?” “This one is lift up!”, “Wait! My one come too!”, “I can park in here and then you go past.” “I go so fast! I crashed into you!”

Role play in the home corner…

Playing outside is a fantastic place to work together and develop co-operation and leadership skills….building snowmen and volcanoes…

And time in the gym hall during November has enhanced our Gross Motor skills even more through providing an indoor space for running, jumping, balancing, climbing, pushing and pulling!