This week’s activities
Wren Bubble
There has been lots of interest in dinosaurs again this week. Children use them in lots of interesting ways; in their role play – pretending to be a dinosaur, in their small world play – what is it like to be a dinosaur? or just for carrying around as a comfort item. To extend their learning, the team have been talking about the various types of dinosaur, what their names are and what they like to eat, introducing the correct terminology; herbivore, omnivore and carnivore.
In other role play, they have used building materials to create resources, such as road blocks in their small world play. They have been on pirate adventures on the high seas, taking their trustee treasure maps with them and finding a “sunken submarine” and a “volcano” along the way.
In the morning, after we have counted the children, we often carry out some simple yoga poses. These are great for stretching out those muscles, keeping flexible and calming our minds before the start of the day. This week, however, they have been trying out some Ninja yoga moves during the session, adapting the traditional yoga poses to take on a Ninja theme, which helps to create a calming atmosphere after some energetic play.
To help with the children’s listening, attention and speaking development, the team have been delivering Every Child a Talker sessions. These sessions are great for developing concentration, patience and turn-taking skills, as well as those all important communication skills. These have been extended to include talking about the structure of stories. All really important skills for literacy development.
Continuing with the listening theme, the children have listened to the rain that we seem to have had rather a lot of this week, recording the weather on our daily weather chart, measuring the rain in our rain catcher and noticing that puddles disappear (introducing the word evaporate) over time.
Whilst outside they have helped prepare our tyres and pots for our spring planting. It’s important that children learn about the whole process of how plants grow, from preparing the soil, to planting the seeds, to the anticipation of seeing them grow. Nature will not be rushed and in this world of instant gratification, it is good for children to understand that some things are not immediate and are worth the wait.
They have continued to enjoy large physical play including games of football, following the rules, being good sports and taking turns in goal.
They have had some fantastic ideas about how to create their own games including using pipes and guttering to create ball runs and making their own tunnels to wriggle through. Creativity, trial and error and perseverance have all been on show.
Robin Bubble
The children have been exploring patterns; patterns that they create themselves using pegs and boards, and patterns that they notice in the environment, such as in the natural world and the material and scarves they use in their role play. They also used patterns in their role play when they created a train using the chairs in a pattern. They created their own tickets with a colour representing a different destination; blue- dinosaur world, pink – Peppa Pig world, and black – prison! Lots of lovely creative and imaginative play and an understanding of the world going on in this activity.
They have been enjoying working out how to do the puzzles of various sizes and materials. They have particularly liked the ‘seasons’ puzzle this week and have linked it to our weather chart and the things they notice in the garden. The spring picture typically contains images of sheep. This led to the children learning that a baby sheep is called a lamb, thereby extending their vocabulary.
Pegs and boards are great for promoting fine motor skills, as are tongs. Small hands need lots of practice to strengthen muscles in fingers and hands ready for early writing. Tongs help strengthen these muscles and develop the pincer movements needed in writing. They’re also great for concentration and useful for transporting from one place to another without picking something up!
In their arts and crafts they have used a salad spinner and paint to see what happens when colours are mixed. There has been lots of loose parts play which really encourages creativity and imagination. Open ended, loose parts do not have a pre-designed outcome, this means they can be whatever you want them to be. A toilet roll becomes a telescope and a pair of toilet rolls become binoculars. There are no limits to what children can imagine and create when they are left with open-ended resources.
Outside they have been making the most of the wet weather to take part in lots of water play with bowls, cloths and paintbrushes. This involved lots of sharing and turn-taking. They even cleaned some of the outside equipment with warm soapy water. There was lots of lovely teamwork on show, and it was great fun getting each other wet!
Thinking about cleaning things led to lots of discussion around how we can and should keep things clean and tidy. The topic of germs came up (children cannot avoid hearing about COVID). The team reinforced how to keep ourselves safe in a way that is relevant to the children, using tissue for noses, coughing into their elbow and washing hands.
Some of the children are noticing letters in the environment and have been playing with the foam letters. Some of these letters are familiar to the children but it is important to remember that they need to learn the sound that a letter makes before they learn the name of the letter and they need to use lower case letters before learning about upper case ones. Listening to sounds, playing sound lotto games, clapping and rhythm games and noticing print in the environment are all really good ways of helping children with early reading and writing. They really don’t need to be sitting down doing worksheets, learning their alphabet or writing their name, until they have mastered the foundation skills that come first.
As always, thank you for your support and keep safe and well.
The Pre-school Team