This month in the nursery room we have been enjoying the sand and water area! We have been scooping and pouring the water and sand to build sandcastles and homes for the dinosaurs. We have enjoyed washing the babies in the water tray using sponges and soap to give them a lovely clean whilst learning about how important it is to clean ourselves too!
Our current Core Book is 'The Three Little Pigs' so in the back room, we have had activities out to support our understanding of the tale. We created the three different houses we had bricks and shaving foam to help us build our brick house and we used play dough to shape and build our straw house using lolly pop sticks as outlines. When we read the book, we have spoons showing the pigs and houses - we have been using these in our story time to help us follow the story and make it interactive! Using the train tracks and blocks the adults created three little houses to represent the ones in the story on the train track.
Sensory play has been a big hit this month in the nursery room, everyone has been getting stuck in to play and discover the different textures of pasta, foam and cereal! We have been scooping the resources up to feel the texture. At first some children were unsure so adults helped them move at their own pace to explore. We have also been down to the interactive screen to discover mark making on the whiteboard and listening to a sensory game to see all the different colours and sounds it produced when touched. To end the month we had some fun with the parachute! We enjoyed shaking it up and down in the air to get the teddy bear off and hiding under it and jumping out at the adults to scare them!
In Kindergarten we have started the year by exploring our outdoor learning environments! We have used the track to practice our running and coordination skills which we can then extend onto the large climbing equipment. We are getting better at balancing on the rope bridge or using our loose parts as stilts to walk on.
We have all been interested in mark making and the adults have used this interest to set up some lovely activities to support this. During free flow we used up the last of our Christmas crafts to make some pictures. We had to use a controlled pincer grip to pick the sprinkles out of the pot. We have also used the colouring pencils and stencils to create more detailed drawings and marks. In the tuff trays we explored colour mixing and mark making using our hands. We were able to draw shapes, lines and letters from our names. The adults helped us by drawing some images first so we could copy them.
In free play we can often be found in our small world area. This area supports us to develop and use our imagination which we then use in other areas of the room. We can play pretend, talk about our family and either share a story with an adult or look through our books independently.
This month in Pre-School we went on regular nature trips - we really enjoyed bird watching, we looked up into the sky and saw sparrows, a robin and a crow! We then had fun playing and climbing in the park.
We continue to induct children in learning woodworking skills, we show the children how to use different tools and they create their own designs using buttons, bottle tops, cloth and beads at the Woodwork Station. They make fantastic designs they love taking home.
The children have really enjoyed playing in our Construction Area, developing their Maths skills - they have built 3D shapes with Magnet Tiles, created walls with Lego and made pictures with tessellating shapes.
We have been reading our Core Book for this term 'Our Skin' having conversations with children about how we all have skin that comes in different colours and our world has so many different groups of people.
To finish the month we played games at our interactive board, learning how to use the board to move and match shapes - we had lots of fun!
