Thursday 30th September

This week we have been thinking about what different body parts we have and how they help us to do different things.  We drew around one of the children and then different people suggested what the body parts could do.

We have continued exploring what a family is and how our families are similar and different to each other and how it is good to celebrate our differences.  We have also had a go at drawing ourselves and including all our major body parts. Click on the pictures to take a look.

After many children saw rainbows this week, we all had a go at painting one.

The children discovered the dressing up boxes fully this week and really enjoyed trying different outfits on and playing together.

Friday 24th September 2021

We have reached the end of our second week of school now and the children are becoming more familiar with the school routines and expectations, and becoming more familiar with each other, but many are still not quite sure of each other's names.  The children  enjoyed their second PE lesson today and have had to listen very carefully to different instructions to join in and play different games.

We continued our windmill theme into this week for a little while and made a larger windmill to play in using a teepee and cardboard for the sails.  Some children also decided to make some cogs using crinkle edged scissors, which have yet to be hung.  

The sand continues to be popular, with different children using it for different purposes.  Some children have been constructing roads with it with the diggers, others have used it as a habitat for the dinosaurs and others have just enjoyed digging and building.  There has been lots of chat, negotiating and turn taking happening during these sand activities too.   Also on the day we were letting it dry out, the staff took their eyes off it for a moment and the water had flooded it all again!!!

Many of the children have tried their hand at bead threading this week and have either made a necklace or bracelet for their mum or their buddy or both!  There was lots of concentrating as they had to work hard to get the string through the small holes of the beads but with pleasing results for all.

Friday 17th September 2021

We have been very busy in our first week of school, getting to know each other and trying out lots of different ideas and activities.

Many of us have had a go at joining the polydron squares and triangles together and have progressed from making large flat areas to creating small structures with a little help. 

One of the children was interested in how windmills worked so we have been watching short videos to explore what machinery is inside a mill to make it work. There are lots of cogs that interlink and two milling stones inside.  The children then set to work to make a large paper windmill with turning sails and cogs made from junk and split pins.  The two larger pots in the middle are the grinding stones. There was a lot of interest and team work in its production.  They also used our cogs set to investigate how cogs interlink to turn.

We all then made our own windmills from paper which required a lot of careful cutting and sticking.  We took them outside and found that the wind blew them around.

One group of children wanted to make a road in the sand tray and decided that wet sand was required.  They used the water from a puddle on the tough tray to make it wet, and in their play, tried out lots of different sized and shaped spades and containers to fill bottles with to transport the water.  Unfortunately they all got carried away with finding ways of obtaining water and found that jugs of water from the water tray was much quicker and much messier!

We have also been practising our harvest festival song – what do you think?