It’s been another busy week of learning through play at nursery. We thought you might enjoy a small selection of the highlights!

Our ongoing interest in insects, bugs and nature around us has meant we’ve extended our recent learning about tadpoles/frogs into caterpillars and butterflies this week and have even got some living caterpillars in the nursery. We are learning how to look after them and how they turn into butterflies.

The story “The very hungry caterpillar” has helped us learn about the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, given us discussion points around healthy food and is helping us learn the days of the week. We have chosen to listen to this book being read after lunch time most days and have asked for the story to be shown on the Smartboard too.

Not only are we learning about life cycles, science and nature, this interest in caterpillars has helped us practice our fine motor skills and develop our hand eye co-ordination.

We tried hard to follow lines when cutting out caterpillars and chose what patterns and marks they would have by selecting different arts/crafts materials to stick and glue on to their bodies.

 

We continued developing our writing skills this week as we painted vertical and horizontal lines, circles and shapes when creating colourful caterpillars, and shades of green caterpillars.

Our play outdoors has focussed on a different creature and one on a different size scale. The punt has inspired us to make up a lot of shark stories this week!

We used chunky chalk to draw many different sized sharks. We discussed and compared their lengths and the number and sharpness of their teeth.

 

The sharks got very hungry and gobbled up some adults and children! We drew around each other’s bodies inside the sharks, counted how many people they had eaten and compared the amounts. The sharks could eat more children because children are shorter and smaller than adults.

 

 

The longest shark could fit the most people inside but at the end of the story he choked on Jackson’s toorlie so couldn’t eat any more.

The sand pit has also been very popular this week as an area for building many different sized sandcastles and for experimenting with making sandcastles of different shapes, as well as being a spa!

Elsie used a red bucket to build a castle. Alfie loved her castle and asked if she would make him one too. Elsie and Alfie worked together and made five in a row.

 

Freya, Maggie, Thea and Joanna discussed what kind of castle they would like in the “kingdom”. Freya followed their advice and got to work making it, including decorations, a door and a moat.

 

Jackson wondered if it would be possible to make a cone sandcastle. He tried different ways of doing this and experimented with sand consistency. At the end of the experiment both him and Freya agreed that it was easier to make the bottom half of the cone in the bucket and then add extra sand on top and shape it to the peak.

After being so busy making a sand kingdom it was time to enjoy some “spa” treatment. Freya used all of her muscles to cover Elsie’s legs with sand. She checked that Elsie was enjoying her “treatment”, asking questions like “Are you relaxing Elsie? Is your legs boiling hot? Are you feeling good here?” The spa was so popular that Freya asked for some help so that her friends didn’t have to wait too long. She had happy customers and was rewarded afterwards with her own “spa treatment”. Great team work and awareness of each other!

Moving back indoors – playdough has been used a lot this week to deepen and enhance imaginary play as well as providing ways for us to develop numeracy and literacy skills.

A lot of children have asked to make playdough this week and have been great at listening, taking turns, counting out scoops, helping each other measure and mixing the ingredients.

 

Once made the playdough has been rolled, squashed, pushed and prodded. William, James and Lucas made flat cakes and round cakes. William added some features onto his as he wanted his cakes to have happy faces.

 

Alfie used a plastic fish slice to push down hard so that his playdough had “bumpy bits” on it. We counted the bumps together and found out that there was 9.

The playdough was also sometimes combined with dry pasta. Joanna and Maisie made an interesting soup that required very specific amounts of pasta and playdough pieces in the pot.

Freddie and Jordie also combined pasta with small bits of playdough “to mak it stickier”. They wrote their cafe menu while discussing what they were cooking. The menus included pizzas, hot pasta and bolognaise.

 

Other recipe’s did not include playdough. Alfie, Lucas and Lottie experimented with how full they could fill their pots and still be able to get them over to the home corner without spilling. They had to walk slowly to balance their pots.

Ross, Bobby and Ali used large pots and resources from the home corner to fit even more pasta inside. They compared the amounts with each other, using mathematical language such as “more, most, add,  equal and less”.

And Micah used pasta to make “chocolate milkshakes” which Sophia added to the menu before they served them in the cafe.

 

Thank you for checking our highlights of the week. We look forward to sharing more with you next week.