Weather Experiments & Pirate Adventures!

Over the last couple of weeks, the toddlers have been very busy exploring different types of weather. As the weather slowly changes and we transition into autumn the toddlers have been looking into what this might bring, including both sunny and cold weather, thunder storms, hail and some environmental changes such as leaves cleaning colour and petals falling. The children really enjoyed a storm cloud science experiment that involved water, crazy foam and food colouring. The foam represented the clouds in the sky and each of the children got to drop food colouring into the clouds and watch them slowly descend into the water, acting as rain drops. Matilda was very interested in this activity and approached right away, picking up a pipette and squeezing out all of the food colouring. She then watched closely as it fluttered down and spread out “Look its falling down...more!” and ran back to collect some more food colouring into the pipette. Eloise stared with fascination as she let the food colouring come out drop by drop “Look its raining! I making rain on the clouds.”. Blair seemed to take enjoyment from squeezing out as much food colouring as possible and squealing “Ahh!” as it spread out across the foam. 

In the garden, the children have enjoyed making dens to protect themselves from the elements and sitting in make-shift boats to sail around incase of flooding.  Oliver dived straight under the blanket and said “I’m hiding from the wind!” followed by a gasp and shocked face “Oh no, it windy!”. Isla laughed at this and said “I hiding with Ollie” while holding her hands over her face. Meanwhile, Harry decided to climb in an upturned stepping stone with his big brother Alfie and said “We in the boat!” which started a beautiful rendition of ‘Row row row your boat’.

The under-twos have had a busy couple of weeks experiencing lots of different sensory activities. Inside, the babies had fun digging for treasure whilst exploring being pirates. Megan immediately went for one of the spades, digging around the oats to find the treasure buried underneath. With each piece of treasure that was dug up, Finley got more and more excited, waving his hands around seeing if his friends were also seeing the treasure he had found. Soon all of his friends were gathering around as he showed them the treasure that he had dug up.

Another activity that intrigued the babies was playing with “Parrot feathers”. They were all ecstatic when a member of staff threw the feathers up in the air causing them to float back down, landing on everyone’s head. George was mesmerised by all of the colours letting out lots of “Ooos” and “Ahhs” as the feathers fell down in front of their face. The little ones fully engaged themselves in to exploring a sensory sack full of lots of different textures for them to discover. Henrietta found a shiny blue one straight away, showing a member of staff that she could see her reflection in it. Imogen grabbed two of the textured squares and started clapping them together with a huge smile on her face, reacting to the noise they made as they came in contact with each other.

Outside, the babies engaged in their very own ‘Walk the Plank’ balancing game. One by one they walked across trying not to fall into the sea creature filled ocean that surrounded it. Santiago in particular loved it, a big smile was spread across his face as his friend Max cheered him on from the sidelines. However, when it came to Max having a go, he found it was much better to sit on the plank admiring the pretty seashells he had found rather then walking across it! One of Billy’s favourite activities was playing with the boats with the big bubbles in the water tray. He moved the bubbles out of the way letting out a big squeal as he found one of the many boats, lifting it up and letting the water spill out making lots of splashes as it poured back into the tray. This massively entertained Cecelia who had joined the babies from preschool to play with them. To finish the week off, the babies had lots of fun moulding some playdough with lots of different tools. Rather then rolling the playdough with the rolling pin, Santiago much preferred to poke it with the end of the rolling pin instead. Rafe saw all of his friends having fun and made a short appearance to squeeze the playdough and then waddle away laughing. He found this very funny and decided to repeat it multiple times, confusing all of his friends.