The final week of a terrific term

25/03/2021 by Miss Sandison | 0 comments

This week we’ve learned more about the things that interest us, such as volcanoes and dinosaurs and so much more!

There was a very interesting find in the outdoor sand area. Bones!! Every day there was at least one new bone that was dug up. It’s been very exciting wondering what shape and size the bone was going to be! On Tuesday Ross found a jaw bone, it even had some teeth in it. Every day the children have been working together, using their talking and listening skills, co-operating and problem solving to find more bones.

SO many questions, discussions, thinking and imagining! Where did the bones come from? What creature was it? What happened? Which part of the body is this bone from? The majority of children decided and agreed that the bones were from a dinosaur…but which ones? They discussed Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Anklyosuarus, Spinosaurus and many more!

Bobby and Ertie wondered which part of the dinosaur, and which dinosaur, might have had a bone with a hole in it and which one had a club shape at the end of it’s bone “I tink yun is whar his eye wis” said Bobby. “Maybe this is fae an Anklyosaurus becis they had hard club tails to smash into things wi” said Ertie. Miss Manson found an interesting book for everyone to use to help them decide which dinosaurs the bones might have come from.

Jordie explored how many teeth were in the jaw bone, “dir is 20 teeth here so this dinosuar has had a lot of teeth, and they are braaly sharp.” Emmie also explored the teeth. “Dir is two wiggly teeth, I tink dir going to fall out.” We wondered why the teeth were wobbly. Some children thought the dinosaur needed to go to the dentist, some thought that it was a young dinosaur and it would grow in bigger teeth and some thought that it might be an old dinosaur.

A group of children decided it would be a good idea to display the bones they found and then to try to build a dinosaur skeleton from the bones. This required using talking and listening skills to discuss where to put the bones and how to make the skeleton. They used numeracy knowledge to compare shapes, weight and textures of the bones as well as counting how many they had found and how many bones they would still need to make the skeleton.

And indoors our dinosaur exploring led to a lot of mark making through drawing dinosaurs on the big whiteboard.

A dinosaur with “a hard spiky tail and strong legs”

One with “a long tail” and “front legs”.

And “the ultimate dinosaur that has big eyes and he is really strong and can fight.”

Our outdoor area has also been a great space to work on our balance skills, awareness of space, exploration of speed and forces and our writing and communication skills through bike play.

William, Jackson and their friends found the initial letter of their names, lined up in the right boxes and did count downs before pushing off down the hill. Later on a lot of children drew their own arrows, marks and lines to create a course to follow. Henry used his balance and steered between the lines before turning left and heading up the hill.

Bike riding in the wet can be messy fun! A few children decided it would be a good idea to set up a cleaning station. Using the outdoor tap they filled different sized containers and buckets. We used mathematical words such as “full, nearly full, half full, empty, heavy and light” when getting the cleaning station ready.

There was a lot of group co-operation, turn taking, problem solving, mark making and discussion at the “cleaning garage”. Some bikes were dirtier than others and took more time to clean, some brushes were bigger and thicker which were good for the big parts of the bike but not so easy to use on the small areas. We discovered so much about size, materials, turn taking, angles and time during this play.

We have been very busy learning indoors as well this week, developing our scissor skills to make a volcano and flying streamers, learning about numeracy and mathematics using paper planes and creating and copying patterns in creative ways.

Developing scissor skills takes time and is not fully developed until children are 6 years old. Learning how to use scissors is important for developing fine motor muscles that are needed for a whole range of activities such as writing. Scissor activities help develop our focuss and attention skills and helps to improve our co-ordination. Co-ordination is important for helping us complete writing tasks as well being needed for independence when dressing, undressing and eating.

Snipping playdough is a great way to gain control of scissors. On Thursday children frequently visited the volcano on the table to spend time snipping, cutting and pushing through the playdough to create lava, rocks and different shapes. William, Sophia, Freya, Maggie and Sophie combined their skills to create a volcano with “flowing lava, angry lava on top and big hot rocks”.

In other areas of the nursery some children chose to create “water”, “fire” and “smoke” streamers by following lines with scissors and then flying the helicopters and aeroplanes around the setting.

There has been a lot of interest in patterns recently and this week children had opportunities to copy patterns and to create their own in different ways.

Ross made a “numbers pattern” using stones, he found the identical numbers before ordering them.

He then created colour patterns when putting on his “superpowers”. While Jackson made a Rubix cube by using lines of the same colours and then combining them into different patterns.

James, Lucas and many other children spent time trying to copy 2 colour and 3 colour patterns and creating their own this week. Maisie and Micah created yellow and red “blobs and stripes pattern” (Micah) when decorating their aeroplanes.

Flying aeroplanes has been a very popular activity this week! Taking part in this play has helped us explore gravity, force, speed, height, weight, size, angle, shape as well as helped us develop turn taking, talking, questioning and co-operation. There is so much learning that comes from a simple paper plane!

Bobby and Ross worked together, sticking on additions to their planes to see if it made them fly faster and higher. David added 10 chickens onto his plane. He discovered they needed “seatbelts” after the first flight so stuck them on with sellotape for the next attempt.

Henry and Micah experimented with different heights of take off.

James and Freddie built different heights of towers for the planes to fly over. Joanna, Thea, Lucas and James explored the different angles, force, height of take off, speed and direction needed to fly over the top!