This week at nursery a lot of learning has continued to revolve around ferry play. Exploring aspects of our real lives in our play is very natural and a great way for us to develop our social and emotional skills as well as explore what local services mean to us.
We continued to use blocks and cones and booked/unbooked queues in our play this week. Re-visiting play in this way allows us to
We extended our ferry play by adding funnels, engines and life rafts to our designs as well mark making our own signs for people to read. Co-ordinating play in this way refines our skills leading to consolidation of our learning as we apply what we learn in familiar and in new situations.
A highlight of the week was the arrival of a new ferry made by Brian Mair! This ferry helped us to engage very deeply in imaginary play together. We discussed new words as we explored the new ferry and all it’s aspects and compared it to our older ferries. We asked each other questions and taught each other new vocabulary “Why does the ramp stick up?” “Becis dir is magnets sticking it.” “What is magnets?” “Dis sticky things.” This interest in magnetism will be something we can play with and explore next week. We created signs for Vidlin and Laxo, talked about the weather and which pier we would go to. We counted how many cars could fit on the ferry and whether there were more or less cars on the other ferries and discussed which vehicles were too long, too tall, too wide. We made tickets to pay the ferrymen/women and drew chains to secure the vehicles in bad weather. We even had a few emergencies where the passengers had to to on the life rafts and the ferry needed a tow hitch so it could be dragged to safety.
Ferries were not the only boats we discussed, built and used as a basis for role play. Fishing boats were also quite popular. We took on roles and learned new words such as “skipper” and “engineer”. We travelled north and to far away places such as Africa with our fishing boats. Next week we will be able to find out more about the places that we included in our role play. Designing and constructing models in this way helps develop our technology and mathematical skills as well as strengthens our bodies in preparation for writing activities later on.
Other block play this week included the building of piers, connecting roads and houses and some complex structures. Having the freedom to build creatively with blocks helps develop our imaginations and literacy skills as well as our scientific knowledge as we use our blocks to tell stories and experiment with mass, weight and balance. We go through various stages of block play as we develop and often combine several stages in our play. This week there’s been complex stacking, making enclosure, creating bridges and arches, combining, making patterns and building structures that represent objects for pretend play.
We have also been creative with playdough this week. With support we made our own. We read the recipe, counted the right number of scoops for each ingredient and shared turns mixing. Once ready we created many things such as ice cream, biscuits, chicken kebabs, sweeties, gingerbread men, sandwiches, snowmen and worms. Making choices like these helps develop our social and imaginative skills as well as numeracy skills as we talk about and describe our creations, share our ideas, count, explore quantities, recognise numbers and explore shapes.
Our playdough cupcake creations carried through to some Smartboard numeracy games too.
There was also a lot of baking and making in the home corner and outdoors in the mud kitchen. We made pasta, pizza, pies and rice dishes. Exploring resources in the home corner helps to develop our curiosity for language and literacy as we notice environmental print on labels and packaging and share our ideas about what to create. Playing in the mud kitchen develops our understanding of the world as we play with natural resources and experiment with changing textures. We develop a lot of numeracy skills playing in the home corner and mud kitchen too as we explore size, shape, volume, weight, time and number concepts through our play.
As children we have our own ideas and plans, and our brains and bodies are good at seeking out the kinds of activities that we need to help our development. This week we have been keen to use art and craft materials to create images and objects linked to our play. Having freedom to create images in our own ways helps us to develop confidence and raises our self-esteem. Creating together is a great way for us to share our experiences, feelings and ideas in practical ways and to develop fine motor control, hand and wrist strength. Many of us used shiny materials such as bio-degradable glitter on darker paper, or brighter coloured paints this week linking our current interest in space, stars, fireworks and fire.
We look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week!
