Our topic this week was Absolutely One Thing: Featuring Charlie and Lola by Lauren Child. In the story Mom takes Charlie and Lola to the story and says they can choose one thing. The book offers a great introduction to simple counting and maths and we follow this through a range of different scenarios including counting minutes and ladybirds! It is a great book for showing that we can apply counting to various different context such as quantities, time, addition and subtraction and led to our week being based around numbers! The topic encouraged the children to include mathematical language into their speech and it generated a lot of discussion around time and numbers.
We extended our focus on numbers to our Outdoor Learning Day where the children took part in a number hunt. They loved searching around to find the numbers, remebering to look 'on', under', 'next to' and 'between' trees, branches and other objects around them! Once all the numbers were found we sequenced them from 1 to 10 and matched quantities to numerals using natural objects including leaves and sticks.
Numbers dominated our Art activity too where the children decorated A4 sized numbers using different techniques such as bubble wrap painting, cork printing, collaging with tissue paper and feathers and marble painting. These enabled the children to explore different art techniques as well as to continue to refine their fine motor skills and the coordination of their arms. It also opened up lots of conversations around the different textures of the materials.
Our Role Play area has been set up as a Building Site this week based on the children’s vote from last week. We have started introducing a voting system to decide on the theme of the Role Play Area as a way to explore the idea of democracy and the children have loved taking part and understand the importance of respecting the decision based on the theme with the most votes.
Throughout the week the children enjoyed working together on the Building Site to build towers and houses. This activity extended the children’s turn taking and communication skills as well as their knowledge of tools and safety. Our Role Play area has been one of the most popular activities amongst the children, especially when we extended this activity to our messy play where the Fledglings were able to experiment with tools and bricks in shaving foam!
We also introduced the children a new Deconstruction activity which captured their interest immediately. They learnt about using tools safely and it encouraged them to assess and practise managing small risks whilst taking turns and extending their vocabulary and fine motor skills.
The time of colds and sniffles have arrived so during our Focus Time activities we experimented with dirt and soap to consolidate the children’s knowledge of the importance of hand washing and their self care routines. We talked about why it is important to keep our hands away from our faces and mouths and learned that this helps to avoid spreading germs.
We noticed that some of the children have started writing and working on their activity sheets on the right hand side. So, we decided to set up an activity in Focus Time to encourage the children to think about their body in relation to space and to distinguish between their left and right hands and feet. We stuck stickers on our right hand then had a lot of fun playing a game of Twister where we had to focus hard on remebering our left from our right!
In our Literacy activity the children practised maintaining their attention and using their listening skills to hear and identify the different sounds. This supports the children's ability to blend the sounds together and they extended the activity by matching the pictures to the letters and words. They enjoyed this activity so much that they asked to do it again soon!
On Friday the children created porridge smiles in support of the charity Mary’s Meals which helps to provide meals for disadvantaged children. We discussed what the word charity meant and why it is important to help others. This generated a conversation about where money comes from and why some people have less money than others which linked to our learning of British Values, including the theme of Mutual Respect. It has been another wonderful week of learning, fun and fundraising for an amazing cause.
Comments