This week our topic was ‘The Mitten Tree’ by Candace Christiansen. The story is about an old Lady who overcomes her loneliness by knitting mittens for children who don’t have any and therefore are not able to play in the snow with their friends. She places the mittens on a spruce tree to surprise the children. When the Lady runs out of yarn a mysterious basket of new yarns appear by her door. She continues knitting and the children play in the snow and from then on the Lady always had yarn and the children always had mittens. The message of the story is all about kindness and the importance of giving and making new friends by simple gestures. The children really enjoyed reading this story and throughout the week they created and gave lots of pictures to each other in the spirit of kindness.
Inspired by our topic book, the children went on to create paper mittens in Art. They used lots of colours to make their mittens beautifully bright and colourful. We discussed the story in this activity, talking through the chronology and the old Lady's kindness.
In our Role Play area we extended the children’s interests from last term about people who helps us by setting up a Doctors’ office. All week the children were busy examining and looking after the dolls, animals and each other. They used stethoscopes to listen to each other’s hearts, thermometers to check their temperatures and bandages to fix broken legs and arms. They also used clipboards to write prescriptions for the different medicines needed to make everyone better!
Our Deconstruction Area continues to be a very popular activity amongst our children who are becoming confident in using screwdrivers and pliers safely to remove different parts of old electrical objects. Deconsction activities are an excellent way to support the children's curiosity and to allow for open ended questions around why and how objects work the way they do. While they deconstructed they learnt about the function of wires and the different parts of the laptop which are used to store information in the same way as our brain remembers things.
As an extension to our deconstruction activity the children really enjoyed using the iPads to bring animal and letter card pictures to life in the form of 3D images. The children showed awareness that holding the iPad over the cards creates a 3D image and a sound. The children practised their ability to recognise letters and hearing initial sounds whilst looking at the images.
Our afternoon Ballet sessions continue to be a highlight of the week and the children are always eager on Monday for Ballet to begin! This week the children were taken on an imaginative journey in a Space Rocket to collect chocolate starts whilst they practised walking on tip toes, hopping, skipping and walking lifting their knees high.
We have been extremely impressed with the children this week and the many new skills that they have been excited to master. The children have learned to confidently zip their coats up independently and every time they put their coat on they have been proud to show us their new skills. Some children began blending words last term which we have extended this term with the use of our Dandelion Launchers reading books. The children enjoyed starting their reading books, discussing what they saw in the pictures before indecently beginning to sound out and read the words.
We had such a wonderful week filled with play and learning and we can’t wait for next week when we have more exciting and stimulating activities planned for the children.
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