It’s been a marvelous week for mark making, exploring magnetism and much more through our play. Here’s a few highlights!

Using big movements and developing our shoulder strength and control using the Smartboard as part of our mark making has been a source of shared interest this week. Some of us shared the space, discussing our drawings, telling stories and comparing each others use of lines. We noticed a lot of rainbows outdoors this week which inspired some of us to create our own on the Smartboard using various colours. Recording personal experiences through creative play with mark making helps to motivate us to become engaged writers later on.

We also noticed a number 8 in outdoors! This has been used to steer vehicles around and to follow the path with our bodies.

Indoors we have also been over writing numbers and letters using chunky pens. Over writing helps us recognise the shapes of letters and numbers as well as develops our pencil control.

We have used a variety of different pens to create images, tell stories and share our ideas. We drew various sea creatures such as starfish, we drew boats with ropes included to tie up at the pier, compiled “notes” and wrote instructions for our friends as part of our play.

Some of us used hole punches as part of our message writing. Using these types of materials helps us develop finger and hand strength which is important for writing development.

Following from our interest in the magnetic aspects of our new ferry last week we had lots of opportunities this week to deepen this area of curiosity and explore magnetism using a variety of magnets and materials. By exploring different materials and selecting materials for different purposes we develop scientific knowledge and learn about the world around us.

Playing with magnets helps us learn about simple forces such as pull, push and twist and what affect these forces have. Through our experimental play, supported by adults, we also learned new vocabulary such as “attract” and “repel”.

As we put pieces of magnetic toys on various surfaces we developed our spatial awareness, hand eye co-ordination and fine motor skills in our hands and fingers.

Magnets teach us about “cause and effect” and help develop problem solving skills and mathematical knowledge as we explore more and less, on and off and quantity.

Construction play has also helped develop our hand eye co-ordination and fine motor skills and our mathematical knowledge and literacy skills.

Many of us chose to build towers and lines using cubes from the curiosity shelves. It was hard work pushing them together and required a lot of perseverance as well as finger and hand control! We talked with each other about which colours we were using, how many cubes there were and explored early pattern making together.

In the water tray this week we did a lot of squeezing by using small pipettes, filled containers with water and chose small floating objects to “go swimming”.

And at the woodwork area carefully hammering nails into wood helped develop our hand-eye co-ordination, concentration and risk awareness.

There has also been a lot of big block building this week. Our interest in boats have continued as we built “fishing boats”, “fast boats” “peerie boats” and “cruise ships.” Using blocks to represent structures from our real lives helps us explore our world. Including design elements in our structures that are more intricate reveals our ever growing cognitive understanding of spatial awareness.

“I’m going super fast. 100 fast.”

“I hae steps so you can come in to my boat.”

“Dis is my big massive cruise ship, wir going to Aberdeen.”

“Dis bit cuts through d water.” (L)

There was a lot of imaginary and symbolic play incorporated into our block play. “The boat is broken, the steering is broken” (L), “tow it to the pier” A), “It’s windy!” (A) “My daddy is an engineer on his boat. I can be an engineer on dis boat.” (L) “Use dis to tak the screws aff” (A) “Ok we need a screwdriver” (L) “Dis pipe can lift it up.” (A)

And as is usually the case our indoor play naturally linked with our outdoor play too as we caught fish, landed fish, froze fish, defrosted them and used imaginary implements and our hands to chop them up for eating!

We look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week.