This week’s activities

Creative art and design

The children learnt about what happens when you mix colours and they were surprised to learn that they make new ones! Fascinating for a two to three year old.

They then went on to use resources that they had found in the environment to make prints. Lovely use of recyclable resources and experimenting with different media and materials.

Noticing changes in the weather

There have been some strong winds this week and the children were fascinated to observe the effect of the wind on the fallen leaves. They watched intently as the leaves whirled round and round in a circlur motion, commenting on what they saw and thinking about how we can’t see the wind but we can feel it and it can move things. This led to discussion around the changing seasons, what this meant for the trees and plants and the wildlife that visit our gardens.

We are currently showing the children our allotment garden so they can see the changes over time in the plants, fruit and vegetables that we had been growing in the summer. If you take a look at the allotment garden next time you are waiting to drop-off or collect, you will see that there are still some tomatoes, which are still not ripe, alongside some sweetcorn. Even though these may not be edible, we can use this as a learning opportunity – I wonder why we can’t eat them? What do they need to ripen? What could we do with them if we don’t eat them? Etc.

Making butter

Thinking about where our food comes from and how it becomes the end product led to much excitement this week as the children got to help make our very own butter. They learnt that by being patient and churning cream in a butter churn – one of our lovely team happens to have a mini version – the cream starts to change consistency and thicken, as well as changing colour from a creamy white to a pale yellow. Not only does it thicken, it splits into two substances, with some becoming more liquid. They learnt that by separating the solid and the liquid, one substance became two – buttermilk and butter. After they had separated the butter from the buttermilk, they washed the water in cold water before using the butter paddles to shape the butter into a block. Fantastic. They then used the butter on their toast and crackers at snack time during the week.

As always, there are photos of some of the things the children have gotten up to this week on our website and Facebook page. We hope you have a lovely weekend.

The Pre-school Team