Keeping Cool & Exploring Senses!

The toddlers have been loving the sunshine recently and spending lots of time at the water tray. As the tray was continuously topped up via the hose, the children began requesting to be sprayed to help cool them down. The hose was set to sprinkler mode and showered over the children! There were squeals of “Ahh it’s cold” and “It’s so nice” and “ITS RAINING!” as they ran around under the trickles of water. Some children stood directly under the mist of water while others began running through it as they cackled. As they all settled back into playing at the water tray, a small conversation began about getting themselves wet, “it’s all on my t-shirt and my hair!”, “Yeah but it’s going to dry really quickly because it’s so sunny!”, “Yeah and then when we all dry we can go back inside with the air con”. When it was in fact time to come inside due to the heat, the toddlers all sat on the floor with their fresh cold waters and sat back for a minute with their arms out beside them, eyes closed and taking deep breaths to have a moment of calm and to feel the air con on their skin. One child laid back completely and rested his head on a cushions while others leaned back on their hands. Once the children had all cooled down and had enough to drink they began trickling off to go and play whereas one child remained seated and asked, “Can we feel the air con again?” as he closed his eyes and held his arms forwards again. 

Inside, a couple of children were at an activity where the floor was covered in paper and they were provided with a range of mark making materials as well as stickers to apply to the paper. Some children began drawing circles and swirls, while others did patches of colour and long lines close together. A couple of children began peeling the stickers off of the sheets and applying them to the paper when one sticker got stuck to a child’s leg… so they decided to add another, and another, and another, until their legs were full of stickers! A few children around them began copying, applying stickers to their arms and hands with lots of smiles and investigations into the different stickers the each of them had.

Over the last couple of weeks, the Under Twos children have been learning about their senses, exploring new things inside and outside. During inside play, the children were taking part in a sandy painting activity, where they could experience the texture of the paint and used a variety of tools explore the marks the paint made. Most of the children chose a paintbrush as their tool of choice, whilst others went hands in and were able to feel the gritty texture. One child dipped in her paintbrush and went onto spread the paint onto her hands. She rubbed her hands together whilst smiling and showing her friends and then lifted them into the air and shouted, “Purple!”. Continuing with the sandy theme, the children also had a play dough and sand tray to explore. Some children enjoyed just the play dough and would squeeze, pinch and poke it. Others sprinkled sand over the play dough, then used their hands to feel the texture of the two together. 

In the garden, the children have been spending a lot of their time at the herb patch, paying particular attention to the ginormous mint leaves! They took it in turns to pick out their own mint leaves and paraded around the garden showing everyone their find. One of the children held the leaf to their noise and then said “Look, smell!” to one of their friends. They all then began to move around the edge of the herb garden, holding and smelling the different plants to see what each of them smelled like. On the daily walks, the Under Twos appeared to remember smelling the herbs, as a couple of them ran over to some flowers and lifted them to their noses to smell. They began to show them to their friends, exploring the different smells of the different plants and flowers. Once the children settled down on the field, and the balls were thrown, they began to explore the field to see which different types of balls were around. One of them picked up a spiky ball and began to move it around in their hands, feeling the texture of it. The ball was passed around a group of the children, with a few of them letting out little “oohs”, and one child held up the ball and said “look Amie, a ball!”.