This week we’ve been very keen on building stages and then performing to audiences. We loved performing “Jingle Bells” to you all when you visited on Tuesday and this enthusiasm to perform has continued throughout the week. Thank you for coming to see us play outside and for buying raffle tickets and homebakes!
The big blocks have been used to design a variety of stages. Some stages had steps and were high, other stages were larger and low. Working together, sharing our ideas, listening and talking with each other helps develop many of our literacy and numeracy skills. Moving the big heavy blocks also helps develop our shoulder and arm strength as well as our core which we need for sitting and for writing.
Performing to a range of audiences such as our family members, our friends and our teachers helps us become confident individuals and builds our self esteem. Singing songs, reciting nursery rhymes and telling our own stories are fantastic ways for us to develop awareness of syllables and rhyme, helps us learn new words, increase our vocabulary and encourages us to talk clearly.
Although it’s not been a great week of weather some of us have been keen to continue our play outdoors. We’ve explored measurement, developed our turn taking and sharing skills on the See-Saw, used natural resources at the mud kitchen to make soups, pies and hot drinks and developed our mark making skills using rollers to paint and to clean.
We have been doing a lot of mark making indoors this week too as part of our play. We followed tracks with cars, wrote lists for our performances and rules for being on stage. We created lava sharks, weather pictures, aliens and “family photos” as part of our play. Drawing, writing and making marks together is very important as part of our literacy development. Talking to each other about our pictures and sharing our ideas enhances our imaginations, develops our confidence and skill in mark making and encourages us to become story tellers both verbally and on paper.
The home corner and blocks have been used a lot this week as part of “families” role play. There’s been Christmas tree decorating, Santa visits, babies being born and looked after and shopping trips. Taking on different roles in play develops many skills. Our language skills develop as we listen and talk to each other, co-operating and developing the play. Our social and emotional skills develop as we experiment with the social and emotional roles of life. We learn how to take turns and problem-solve. By acting out different characters and cooperating we learn about empathy and begin to understand other people’s feelings. Imaginary play is also great for our self-esteem as we can be anything we want to be!
Playdough, the Smartboard and the sand tray have also been incorporated into our “families” play. We’ve made pizzas for family members and smoothies of various flavours. Kneading, rolling, pinching dough and developing a tripod grasp when selecting smoothie ingredients are fundamental skills in pre-writing development. Creating pizzas on the Smartboard gave us ideas for toppings and developed early awareness of fractions. We also showed great awareness of safety by incorporating “oven gloves” into our play when taking our pizzas out of the “oven”.
The water tray has also been a popular place of learning this week. Our interest in polar bears, penguins and cold weather merged into ice exploration this week. We learned that polar bears and penguins live in very cold places and on glaciers, we learned that ice floats and we discovered that warm water melted the ice faster than cold water. We asked questions such as “why does the penguins no fall over on the ice?” and “Why is the ice hard?” Exploring and discovering how water changes from one form to another develops our scientific knowledge and an understanding of our world.
We used books to find answers to some of our questions and to listen to stories about polar lands and snow bears. Other books that were popular this week included “Aliens love Panta Cluase”, “The snail and the whale”, “Fancy dress Christmas” and “The Snowman”. We freely chose to explore these books together, to tell each other stories using pictures clues and to discuss different plots. Having easy access to a variety of books, comfortable spaces in which to read, time to freely choose books and opportunities to discuss books with adults and with each other are all very important in order for us to become engaged and successful readers in the future.
We look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week 🙂
