Week beginning 1st June
Waterbeach Feast and our local community
This week we have been busy preparing for Waterbeach Feast so have engaged in lots of painting and creating from making feathery parrots to paper chain snakes and of course lots of greenery and messy painty fun. We also thought about which animals might live in the rainforests and what we thought the rainforests might look like. Our children have really enjoyed sand play recently too so some of our playgroup animals took a trip to a sandy environment for the day too. We also thought about how we could be active helpful members of our community and ways in which we can look after our lovely village and the children had some lovely ideas from not dropping our rubbish to helping others or maybe just making a picture for someone special
Week beginning 8th June
Sun awareness week
As the weather is getting warmer and children are starting to go on holiday it’s important that we teach them how to be safe in the sun so this week we have been learning slogans to remind us what to do like: Slip, Slop, Slap, Seek, and Slide: • Slip on a shirt. • Slop on SPF 50 sunscreen. • Slap on a wide-brimmed hat. • Seek out shady spaces. • Slide on UV sunglasses. We have also thought about how to stay hydrated and encouraged lots of water drinking as well as having a create your own fun drink tuff tray with lots of pouring and squeezing We made some uv bracelets using clear beads that change colour when exposed to uv rays as a way of showing the children that even on a cloudy days it’s important that we protect our skin. Another busy week at Community Playgroup! Come back next week as we look at oral heath and healthy eating
Week beginning 15th June
Oral health and healthy eating
This week at playgroup we were thinking about oral health and healthy eating. We had lots of fun activities to help the children learn about the importance of good oral health and tooth brushing and also making sure the snacks and food we eat are not too sugar laden. Each day the children made a healthy recipe that incorporated some of our 5 a day or is more tooth friendly than many of the snacks marketed at children. These included low sugar cranberry and seed flapjack, healthy trail mix, fruity sheet pancake, carrot and cheese crackers and hidden veg muffins The children all enjoy cooking at playgroup so loved cooking each day and then taking home what they’d made to share with their families. We also made a little booklet with the recipes so the children could make some more at home with their families. We spent time looking at the amount of sugar that some of our favourite snack and lunchbox items have in them, carefully weighing out the equivalent amount of sugar the children could really see just how much hidden sugar there is and why it’s so important to brush our teeth. To help the children with cleaning their teeth they all took a special teeth cleaning pack with a toothbrush, toothpaste and a sticker chart so that they could track their brushing. We asked parents to encourage their child to brush at least twice daily and record it on their charts. Bringing home these activities and encouraging family discussions can help children to extend their learning and further embed good practices.
Our stories this week were
Alan’s Big Scary Teeth
Click Clack Crocodile is back
Let’s brush our teeth
Maisie visits the dentist
Weeks beginning 22nd June and 29th June
All things summer and beach exploration
As the weather has been so amazing many of our families have been taking short breaks, holidays and day trips and the children have been excitedly coming in to tell us all about what they got up to. With this in mind we have spent the last two weeks exploring lots of beach and summer themed activities creating with sand and exploring lots of different media and materials. We tried some ice painting and created lots of ice cream and ice lolly art and used magnetic wands to catch fish. As we are getting toward the end of term we also had lots of activities to embed our number shape and letter recognition for the rising fives as they prepare to move onto school.
Our stories of the week were
• What the ladybird heard on holiday
• Sharing a Shell
• Tip tap went the crab
• Billy’s bucket
