Week beginning 31st January 2022

We began the week thinking about Chinese New Year, as it is the year of the tiger we made some colourful stripy tiger masks, the children enjoyed moving around like a tiger making some magnificent roaring noises.

We also made a sparkling dragon together, each child decorated a section of the dragon using glitter and sequins before we placed it together.

We also had a go at using chopsticks to try to pick up the rice and noodles, it was very tricky to manipulate the chopsticks but we had lots of fun trying

We continued to explore mark making using some very fine sand, the children enjoyed using the different tools to make patterns and marks in the sand, some used their fingers and hands to scoop, pour and move the sand

We all enjoyed another start sporty session with Lee, we became lots of different animals moving around like tall giraffes lumbering elephants and galloping gazelles. We also played a great team game with beanbags and cones. It was great fun to be outside in the fresh air having lots of fun.

The children really enjoyed the STEM ice tray activity last week and have been showing lots of interest in the Frozen movie so this week we set up a special story tray where Elsa had frozen lots of animals into ice and the children had to work together to help Anna, Sven and Olaf to melt the ice and release the animals. I’m pleased to report that the children successfully managed to release all of the playgroup animals

Our STEM Friday activity this week was exploring Sink or float. The children explored which objects in the playhouse would sink or float in the water, they carefully placed the items in the water and watched to see what happened, they had a great time predicting which items they thought would float and then trying it out

We also had  lots of fun with a winter snow inspired tough tray, we threaded some lovely snowflakes using wool and also had lots of fun collecting, scooping and pouring the pretend snow! We were absolutely amazed when we saw some real snow falling outside, we were a little disappointed that it was only a short flurry which didn’t settled but we are really hoping that maybe we might be lucky and have some ore real snow soon 

Week beginning 24th January 2022

We’ve had another great week of fun and exploration which started with a very popular fruit punch tray,  we had lots of coloured water, some herbs, lavender and fruit. The children loved pouring, stirring and scooping and making lots of lovely pretend fruity drinks. The children also noticed that when you mixed the different coloured water you could make lots of new colours. We also enjoyed smelling all of the ingredients

This week we were thinking about feelings and emotions, we thought about what makes us happy and sad and also talked about other emotions we might feel. This is particularly important this year as many of our children have been unable to have early play experiences and interactions due to Covid lockdowns. Giving children the vocabulary and understanding of these emotions means that they can convey their feelings.

We had a go at making some emotion monsters,  using the wipeable pens to convey different emotions, thinking about what colours we thought expressed sad, angry and happy. Here are some of the monsters the children created. Can you guess what emotions are?

We also practiced our cutting skills, carefully cutting out the shapes following the lines on the paper. Learning how to use scissors is very tricky so lots of practice really helps.

In the garden a group of children decided to create an obstacle course using the logs and tyres, they worked together to move and roll the logs and tyres into position, checking the placement of each object by having a go, they listen to each other’s ideas and also decided where the start and finish was so that they didn’t bump into each other. A couple of the logs were wobbly so one child had an idea to maybe turn the log the other way up which solved the problem. It was lovely to watch the collaborative play and also the children’s delight when their plan came together to create a lovely obstacle course for everyone to use.

We also explored counting and numbers with our spotty ladybirds, the children carefully placed the black discs onto the ladybirds. They counted the number of spots and tried to find the corresponding numbers.

Some of the children just liked placing the disks onto the ladybirds and weren’t at all interested in counting the dots or thinking about numbers – this is a great fine motor activity and helps to develop the muscles needed to manipulate tools and mark making equipment. Some other children used the disks to build towers.

This just shows how diverse each activity can really be and also that children feel confident to follow their own ideas and interests.

We also explored the inch wincy spider rhyme using  props, the children really enjoyed saying the rhyme whilst acting it out with the props. The French group also learnt the song which is called L’araignee Gypsy in French

As usual there was lots of construction going on, this week the children used the foam blocks to create some great towers, they also used large polydrons to create a magical “dreamland” they placed the polydron pieces together and then set about creating different areas like dinosaur world with a special volcano made from a shell, ocean area with a beach made with shells, a zoo area and fairy land. They worked together and shared ideas about what each area could look like and what they needed to add to each area.

This weeks STEM Friday activity was learning about what makes ice melt fastest, we used warm water, cold water salt and white vinegar. The children tried each thing individually and also mixed some together to see if it changed the speed at which the ice melted. We encouraged the children to make predictions about what they thought would happen before trying.