Our interests this week have led to some great learning adventures including a trip to the beach! Here’s a peek at what we’ve been learning…
This week our ongoing interest in, and questions about, food has led to “smelly” playdough making and vegetable exploration. It is important that we are involved in planning our learning experiences. Being able to choose what we want to explore is part of this process. Our questions and statements about food such as “what is dis green thing?”, “carrots ir good and rabbits like them,” “Does sweetcorn grow on trees?” shows that we want to learn more.
Ali, Annie and Lottie wanted to include the herbs that we had in our setting into playdough. They compared the different smells before taking the dough to the home/kitchen area and using it as “mashed tatties.”
Miss Sandison brought in some vegetables for us to explore. It is important for us to be able to use resources in spontaneous and dynamic ways and for the adults around us to respond to what we can learn through our play.
We found some cutlery nearby and chose to chop, cut, slice and stab these using the cutlery. Playing with vegetables in this way is great for developing our co-ordination and perseverance, as well as teaching us about force, texture, shape.
Some of us explored using the vegetables in paint to print, roll and mark make on paper. Using interesting materials to make marks like this helps us become motivated writers in the future.
Some of us decided to take the vegetables to the water tray to enhance our imaginative play. We created a variety of different “soups”, explored scientific concepts such as floating and sinking, we learned about quantity and engaged in counting and sharing through our play.
Water was also a very popular resource outdoors too! This week some of us investigated force, speed and direction using the water tap, a big bucket and some plastic divers. “Look how fast it’s going! The diver is going really fast aroond and aroond!” (Alfie), “yeah aroond in a big circle!” (Lottie), “And up and down!” (Lucas)
Lottie and Lewis discovered that it was really difficult to fill buckets and watering cans when the tap was turned on full speed. Lewis solved the problem by dipping his can into the big bucket. He then shared the water with Jessie- Anne so that she could fill her bucket.
After some time all the water from our play created a stream which resulted in a muddy puddle forming. “Look look!! It’s coming down!!” (Lucas)
Alfie and Lucas investigated it’s depth. They concluded that it was not deep enough, ” I can still see the bottom” (Alfie). Lewis helped make it deeper by transporting water in the back of a truck… Hurray! A nice deep puddle to jump in! Jumping in puddles is a great way for us to learn two feet jumping, to improve our balance and depth perception as well as investigate scientific concepts (i.e. infiltration and evaporation) and mathematics (i.e. depth, length, counting jumps).
After a lot of puddle jumping we naturally turned to using the muddy puddle in a different way. It became a fantastic place for mud pies and mud soup creations. We took turns, shared space, discussed our ideas, created recipes, listened to each other and developed our mathematical knowledge through counting, comparing quantities and discussing volume and size.
There was more jumping outdoors this week away from muddy puddles and through hoops instead. Taking part in daily outdoor play encourages us to explore size and perspective through our movements and by seeing familiar objects from a different angle, height or distance. Big movements like jumping, running, skipping and hopping helps us learn how to move our bodies, manage and control them and how to use and share space.
From big movements outdoors to smaller movements indoors. Our love of playdough, and our motivation to create pictures, has helped us work on developing our cutting skills this week.
Lucas and Millie used scissors to cut through their playdough cakes.
Annie, Thea and Sonny used scissors to snip and to cut in straight lines to create pictures. Sonny thought the scissors opened and closed like a “Tick tock crocodile’s mouth”.
Digging, filling buckets with sand and creating sandcastles has continued to be popular this week. This week staff supported some of us to take our learning further by adding decorations in the form of natural loose parts to our creations and exploring different sizes and shapes of castles.
Sophia added leaves, shells and stones to her castle.
Lewis made “five peerie round flat castles”. He stuck one leaf in each and put shells around the perimeters.
Tommy was inspired by watching the castle creations and decided to use materials nearby to build a different construction. He spent time persevering with building a roof by balancing wood and stones.
On Thursday we combined our interests of finding out about Whalsay and Sandcastles by a spontaneous visit to the beach. We would like to say a huge thanks to Jeemie Tetley for taking us there and back on the bus at short notice!
Investigating and exploring interesting and motivating environments, such as the beach, is important for stimulating our learning and connects us to our local community and the environment. Outdoor environments like this offers different surfaces, different levels and lots of natural features for us to explore. Our morning at the beach was full of learning through play. We “fished”, looked for crabs and other wildlife, made sandcastles, made marks in the sand, found treasure and interesting objects, collected interesting shells, stones and sea glass in buckets, explored different textures of sand, did a lot of splashing, filled buckets and skimmed and threw stones into the water. We used the whole beach to move our bodies and stimulate our minds!
Our trip to the beach was so enjoyable that some of us wanted to continue the experience back at nursery! Ali, Sophia and Lewis made their own paddling pool. They wanted warmer water than the sea this time!
We wonder what experiences we will want to re-live, learn about and deepen next week!
