Building Castles & Experimenting with Colours!
Over the last couple of weeks, the preschool children have shown lots of interest in role play and small world play. Outside in the garden, a group of children worked very hard as a team to build a car garage, a bridge and a car slope with the large wooden blocks. Some of the children were comparing the sizes of the cars that they were playing with and working out which ones would fit in to which sized hole, which they called the car parking spaces. Other children were discussing having to cross the bridge to get to the car slope, whilst others used the chalkboard behind to draw the road for the cars to drive along, ensuring that there was roundabouts for the cars too. Afterwards, the children moved on to build a castle, making sure there was space for a door and some seats to sit down on.
The children engaged in a water play activity, washing, drying, dressing and caring for the baby dolls, showing a lot of care and attention and being gentle when drying and dressing the dolls. One of the children suggested washing the babies hair which made some of the other children laugh and remind them, “The babies don’t have real hair!”.
The preschool children were involved in a colour mixing experiment, using various tools and colours to mix together to make different colours and adding white for different shades of each colour. Some children selected to use the dabbers to individually print the paints on their paper whilst others used glue spatulas to move paints from one pot to another, mixing them together, fully engaged as they discovered that the colours started to change!
Puddle Splashing, Car Races & Animal Art!
The toddlers have been participating in lots of group games recently, one of which involved sitting in a large circle and passing a hat around from one child to the next whilst singing a song. As the song started, the children watched with interest as the hat was placed on a child’s head, then passed onto the next. As the hat made its way around the circle the children began to smile and giggle with anticipation of it being their turn. Once the song had finished and everyone had a turn, the toddlers began to clap and ask for more songs, with lots of suggestions of ‘row your boat’. Many versions of the song were sang, one of which sung about going over a puddle and giving your friends a cuddle. The toddlers quickly jumped up from their seats and began cuddling their friends and staff, giving multiple cuddles to each other with lots of smiles and giggles.
The toddlers went for a very rainy walk one morning, putting on their waterproofs, wellies and smiles as they set off on foot around the Imber Court grounds. The rain was already trickling as they started the walk, which got a few excited squeals from the children as one of them exclaimed “I want to find a puddle!”. Once they made it to the field and saw the large puddles amongst the grass, they were off - running full steam ahead to start splashing! As some of the children began wading through the shallow water creating small waves a couple others jumped, making large splashes. Back at nursery a group of children were going on a tour around the garden with their cars, trailing them along the different ledges and up and down the balance beams. When they made it to the hill and placed the cars at the top there were comments of, “Oh no!”, along with laughs and squeals as the cars went speeding down to the bottom. This turned into a race with the children lining up their cars at the top of the hill and letting them roll all the way down!
Over the last couple of weeks, the under twos have done a great job joining in with a range of activities and doing lots of exploring! The children were very enthusiastic when playing with the nature play dough, and did a great job investigating what marks the various materials would make. One child picked up a pine cone before pressing its edge against the play dough, everyone else admired the marks it left when they removed it. After a little bit of guidance, a group of the children proceeded to roll the pine cones across the play dough leaving a trail, pressing the top of it against the dough to leave a larger mark. The children then began to pick up other materials, such as lolly sticks and twigs, pressing them into the play dough so they were standing up. After a teacher expressed the play dough looked like hedgehogs, some children were able to copy the word and repeated, “Hedgehog, hedgehog, hedgehog!”.
Out in the garden, the children have showed a lot of interest in the toy cars. Some of the children chose to use the footbridge as a road and roll the cars down the slope. As they rolled the cars along the bridge, some of the children shouted out “Vroom vroom”, giggling together as they did so. Whilst out on daily walks, the children have explored the grounds and nature, including splashing around in lots of puddles with their wellies on! A couple of the children were keen to find the biggest puddles they could and explored enthusiastically, running over as soon as they saw some water. They would jump up and down creating huge splashes and watch in fascination as the puddle rippled around them letting out little giggles and laughs each time.
Creating with Nature & Muddy Cooking!
Over the last couple of weeks, the preschool children have been engaging in lots of wet play activities in the rainy weather. The children loved collecting the rain water using many containers including cake tins, jugs, muffin cases and saucepans. The children were using the rain water they had collected as one of their ingredients whilst role playing in the mud kitchen to make various food items, with mud pie being a clear favourite! Whilst some of the children got to work, being imaginative to make food for their friends and teachers, some of the other children got stuck in to sitting on the ground, collecting as much water as they possibly could from the puddles that had formed and filling up the containers for their friends to use whilst cooking. Some of the other children were engaged in a water tray activity, using the spades to transfer the water from the bottom of the water tray, back up to the top, watching almost in amazement as the water was flowing down the levels of the water tray. The children also enjoyed floating paper boats in puddles and the water tray, discussing between themselves when they thought that the boat was able to float and when they thought it would sink.
The preschool children have continued to be creative and enjoyed some lovely walks around the nursery grounds, collecting various natural objects such as leaves, sticks and pine cones. The children used these items to create some nature pictures to help finish the nature winter display board in the preschool room. Some of the children also showed a lot of excitement whilst playing at the arctic animals crazy foam set up, digging deep and counting how many animals they could find - whilst others chose to use some play dough to design their own 3D versions of sea and arctic animals and showing each other with pride what they had created!
