Park games at Hampton!

The older children have been exploring Elmer the Elephant as their book of the month and have incorporated the theme of diversity. This was inspired by the Elmer quote ‘In our herd, each one of us is a little different’. Some of the children took part in a group sticking activity where they made a giant Elmer the Elephant which will contribute to our book of the month display board. As he was sticking William said, ‘Elephants are grey, but Elmer’s got lots of different colours hasn’t he?’ and Xanthe replied ‘Lots of colours like a rainbow!’ Jasper then picked up a handful of tissue paper and threw it up in the air like snow; all of his friends laughed together. The children also talked about the parts of our bodies that are different, such as hair colour, skin colour and eye colour. ‘I’ve got blue eyes like my baby brother!’ said Maxwell, to which Zach replied, ‘My eyes are green!’. We also moved on to some model drawing of different animals. Bodie pointed out the stripes on the tiger and the zebra, whilst Sophia noticed that although they were both stripey, they were different colours.

The children went for a lovely walk to the park and played different activities. Emily wanted to play ‘Duck, duck, goose’. Whilst running around the park the children started singing to each other chanting for the chaser, and Oliver had a great time running away! He quickly jumped down and sat on his bottom laughing as he rolled backwards and made his other friends laugh. James and Eve had a lovely time playing ten flying saucers, and Eve ran around in circles like a saucer and trying not to tap her friends, which turned into a game and Lyra tried to catch Eve. When she eventually caught Eve they laughed and Thomas shouted ‘My turn!’

They used coloured bubbles to make some amazing pictures. Abigail noticed all the colours and called them out as she blew the bubbles. When the bubbles were put on the paper Alba laughed at them popping all the bubbles at the same time, Ines and Nyra instead choose to pick the bubbles up, and clap them making them go everywhere!

In the under 2’s room the children have been exploring different textures and noises. In the messy tray they loved playing with the farm animals hidden in oats. Theo was trying to eat all the oats while Grace made her own game of sprinkling the oats on the floor! The tray hid different farm animals and the children dug them out to find them! Sidney’s favourite animal was the cow, and squealed with delight when he found it !

We read the book ‘Elmer’ at the table before lunch, which is one of their favourite books, and the children were able to see all the different bright colours. Every time the page was turned George held up the toy elephant ! At the sensory table we put out mirrors and shakers for the children to play with. Emma looked in the mirror at herself, pointed and said “Emma happy”. George looked at himself and said “Ooowww”. Emma also made a big tower by stacking the shakers on top of each other until they fell over. She then said “Uh oh! ”. Honor loved playing with the blue cellophane ocean and shaking it above her head.

During sparkle time the children explored the lightbox and started looking at different shapes and colours, and were fascinated by the effect the light had on many dig=fferent objects. Theo decided he would like to sit on the lightbox himself to get himself to light up!

Blue coloured water created an aquarium. George went straight over, although wasn’t too keen on the apron! They loved splashing and picking up all the different sea creatures. Louis’ favourite animal was the shark and so everyone sang ‘Baby shark’ and all were dancing and wiggling to it!