On a Wednesday the children make their way over to forest school with Mrs Penn where they have been developing their listening skills and learning how to keep safe in forest school from not crossing the red rope without an adult to learning about fungi and things outside that are safe and are not safe to touch. throughout the autumn 1 term we have been focusing on the autumn season and recognising the change in our outside environment. We have enjoyed activities such as collecting autumn leaves, making leaf crowns and drawing forest school using autumn colours.

The children have fully immersed themselves in play across all areas of the provision!

Playdough

Our focus at the playdough table has been developing finger/hand strength by using our key exercises: Roll, pinch, press and squeeze while incorporating these skills into play, the children love making cakes with the playdough so every day is a birthday at the playdough table!

Texture tray

We have been exploring a range of sensory experiences at our texture tray from soapy bubbles, sand, cornflour slime and pumpkin guts! with a selection of resources for the children to explore from sea creatures in the blue slime for storytelling filling and pouring with spoons which has stimulated conversations around measuring and quantities.

Small world/block area

There has been some amazing creative work in our small world area and block area. The children have enjoyed building fairy gardens and castles with our small world resources and using our fairy and princess characters to tell stories. Our block area has been transformed into a range of things such as shops, houses, doctors and a park with a slide where we see our children fully immerse into their role play.

In foundation we have had an amazing start to the year! Welcoming back our lovely nursery children and settling in our new starters into the foundation setting.

Our core books: Dear zoo, Brown bear, Where’s spot.

Songs/Poems: 1..2..3..Bubbles, leaves are falling, 5 little pumpkins

Bubble song 

Leaves-Are-Falling

Five-Little-Pumpkins

The children have developed great oral memory skills through reciting our stories and poems. They enjoy doing this together in our guided sessions or during their free play with their friends.

During this week we promoted lots of opportunities to tell and create stories. In the Foundation Unit we used tough trays to enable children to make up story narratives. We promoted role play scenarios and encouraged children to retell well known stories with props. We were lucky to have Mike from Talking turns to come in to create a story with the nursery. This involved children talking about their ideas, listening, acting, dressing up, dancing, playing instruments and being creative!

Here is a flavour of the Talking turns story telling fun!

Completing the designs

Designers constructing walk ways

Trains and bus rides

Shops and Cafe time

Builders hammering in nails!

A wonderful start to the school year.

What a WORLD BOOK DAY! We had the pleasure of watching and creating our own Shadow Puppets Show. The shadow puppet show was based on the story , ‘The Man who Cuts the Clouds’. It’s a simple story about a grandad who has an amazing job. He climbs up a big ladder every day with a pair of scissors and he is the reason why sometimes we can spot shapes in the clouds!

Charlie’s block play; where he created a sequence of washing clothes making a washing machine, a tumble dryer and a washing line, inspired us to to explore why and how we keep ourselves clean and to add resources from the real world to develop our imaginary role play. We have explored  vocabulary and enjoyed stories and rhymes to enhance our knowledge and understanding of why we need to keep ourselves and our homes clean but also having lots of fun!. Enjoy some of the images below.

The children have spent time exploring soap in the water tray and outside. They have learnt the song “here we go round the mulberry bush” and “Miss Polly had a dolly” and enjoyed stories such as “Mrs Wishy Washy”, “The washing line” and the “Big Read bath”!