Washing and vegetable soup!

The preschool children have really enjoyed messy play activities throughout the last couple of weeks. The children loved making marks using the tools and exploring the different textures of the corn flour in the water play. Shyla noticed the corn flour was dry, she said to Maya “It’s very chalky isn’t it?” Shyla then giggled and said “I think we should add water to make it all slippery.” Maya laughed and agreed saying “Let’s make it slippery out of our hands.” Vivienne then said “We can add water with the jug.” Together the children had fun adding water to the corn flour to turn the mixture into a different texture. Emma put her hands and arms into the cornflour and began to laugh, Emma said to Rowan “My arms are all messy now- they go swimming in corn flour!” During the last couple of weeks the children also enjoyed using the sponge dabbers to create many colourful shaped pictures to take home. The children explored putting the dabbers into the different paints and printing them out onto their papers. Francis said to Zachary “Wow I got lots of circles.” Zachary pointed to his picture and responded “Look I got yellow circle, it’s like the sunshine.” The children mixed the different coloured paints on their paper and exploring the colours they changed to. Tomas giggled and said “This colour’s gone purple now.”

In the garden the children all mucked in, using the cleaning tools to wash the water tray and toys. Josh said to William “Come on this is dirty water we need to make it clean again don’t we?” Together the children scrubbed the mud away and organised a toy wash on the different levels of the water tray. Ethan liked using the cloths to wipe the bark from the toys and made sure the mud was being washed off. Jack said “We need bubbles and more water.” Once more water was added William said “Wow that’s a lot of water it will really shine now.” In the mud kitchen, the children made fresh soup with lots of vegetables. Ada said to Jessica “This soup will be hot!- it’s cooking the vegetables to make it good for us.” Jasper said “I don’t like vegetables much, they yucky in my tummy.” In response Sienna said “Vegetables make us big and strong! We need them sometimes.” The children enjoyed stirring their creation with the big spoons and serving the soup out into pots, whilst scooping sand and mud into their big bowl and making a wonderful soup for all their friends to try.

Last week the toddlers had the chance to explore different types of transport as part of their weekly theme. Alastair and Tommy said “Trucks” were their favourite, showing off how they work and pointing to the “wheels”. Whereas, Sammy said his favourite was “Aeroplanes” as he pointed to the sky to show where he usually sees them flying. On Wednesday the toddlers had a catastrophe as all their cars had broken down, causing an oil leak which made a great messy play activity! Sophia said “What’s that?”, and pointed to the oil separating from the water. Due to the cars being out of action, the toddlers had to find something else to do, so they made kites. Blake and Lana enjoyed taking their time to decorate their kites using silky crayons while Rowan and Issac decorated theirs as fast as they could so they could get outside to fly them! Jonny said “Wow look at kites flying in the sky!”

Charlotte couldn’t wait to get outside to participate in a boat race, where she splashed the water as hard as she could to see her boat move which made her laugh. On Thursday the toddlers went out on a walk tractor spotting. Together they counted “Seven tractors, two horses and one lorry!”. To top off the transport week, the toddlers were able to sit on a real tractor which, by their faces, was the best experience they have ever had! 

The under twos have loved listening to stories, Sadie was looking at books with Margot and Ada. Sadie liked turning the pages of the book and ’Peepo!’ Sadie repeated “Peeeopooo” laughing as she helped turn the pages of the book to see the new pictures on the other page. Margot, who was also listening to the story started to babble tapping the book and smiling at Sadie as she laughed.

Ruaridh, Amelie and Youcef enjoyed playing with the shredded paper. Youcef took out two handfuls of the paper and put it in his lap on the floor, he then swished his hands in the paper listening to the sound and liked watching it move around the floor. One of the team hid some rattles for them to find, and Kitty was able to find one of the rattles and shook it before starting to look for the other. Ruaridh liked tapping the water toys on the paper. While exploring the room Ada found the wooden plate and and wooden bowl. She liked hearing the tapping sound and she brought her hands together to tap the wood together. Otto and Youcef took it in turns to put the monkey into the cart pushing it backward sand forward.