Reading, Cooking & Exploring!

The toddlers have been looking at February’s book of the month, Owl Babies, where they not only read the story lots of times, but explored the story sack which contains different related props. A couple of the children carefully stroked the larger owl, while two other children huddled together with the three baby owls and spoke to them gently with a higher pitched tone, “Ahh… the little babies!” and carefully ran their fingers over their beaks and eyes. As we read the story together, some of the children showed lots of empathy through their ‘aww’ sounds when the babies were looking for the mummy owl, before let our a cheer when they were reunited at the end! The children then had the chance to try and act out the story as the props were added to a nature woodland scene. The owls were flown from a nest made of sticks and leaves to a tree stump, where the owls sat perched as some of the children began feeding them food from the home corner.

Whilst on a walk around the Imber Court grounds, the toddlers made their way to one of the fields where they ran as fast as their legs could carry them, circling the large area and twirling with their arms open wide. As they did this, a large flock of birds flew over, causing all of the children to pause and watch as they flew overhead. This then lead onto some of the children pretending to fly like a bird, flapping their arms by their sides as they moved around the grass. They then moved onto pretending to be owls like in the owl story and they began hooting and shouting “Twit-twoo!” as they ran. The toddlers ended their walk with a pit stop to splash in some puddles, give a quick hello to the ducks and horses and stop off for a snack on the picnic blanket and returning to nursery to tell their friends of their journey.

Over the last couple of weeks the Under Two’s have been showing a lot of interest in the home corner whether it be cooking, cleaning or playing with the dolls. One morning during free play, one of the children picked up the whole box of toy food and transported it over to the home corner kitchen. After placing it down, a few others took an interest and approached. They began taking out the food, one piece at a time and placed it onto the side. Another child reached under into the cupboard and took out some pots and pans. As the children looked around, a child said, “Cook, cook” as they pointed at the pans. They began placing food items into various pots and pans and continued chatting together saying, “Oh hot, blow, blow!”, as they stirred and cooked the delicious food together. The children were even able to begin learning some new words like, ‘stir’, ‘yummy’ and ‘mix’. 

Outside in the garden, there has been a lot of exploration with new things such as the rolling wall. The children began by interacting with the wall how they usually would, which is rolling small colourful balls from top to bottom. As a small group of them did this, another child walked around the garden as if looking for something. He looked high and low and eventually came across a pine cone, picking up a few as he found them. He then walked back over to the rolling wall and set a pine cone rolling down from the top. As the pine cone rolled down, it wobbled about and half way down jumped over the edge. Everyone let out a little scream and a giggle as it made them jump and that was the new game from then on. Some children even continued to explore and find other objects that would roll down the wall differently to the balls.