Sunflowers and Gardening!
Over the last couple of weeks, the preschool children have been observing the changes of trees and plants in the garden, which have rapidly grown as we welcome the warmer weather. The children have had the opportunity to plant their own sunflower seed pots to take home as well as planting some in preschool, which they have been very eager to see develop each day. After the long Easter weekend, there was good progress on the growth of the sunflowers which many children noticed as they came in to nursery and were eager to show their friends. These sunflowers will be planted in the new herb development area in the nursery garden when they are ready to be transferred and the children will be testing their maths skills and doing weekly measurements of the stalks. The children have been eager to water the vegetable and herb gardens daily and are very pleased to see lots of growth within the vegetable patches which has triggered lots of investigations and conversations as to where and how many fruits and vegetables are grown.
The children have also been very excited to welcome the hatching of the butterflies from their cocoons this week and will be getting ready to release them in to nature at the beginning of next week. The children have been doing daily counts of butterflies each morning as they come in to nursery with a small group of children quickly noticing that there had been 3 butterflies hatch over just one night. The children have been looking in to life cycles of tadpoles to frogs and ducklings to ducks as they await eagerly for the arrival of the duckling eggs next week.
The children have also been challenging their fine and gross motor skills by taking part in large and small scale threading activities. Many children were able to find the first letter of their name amongst the alphabet threading boards whilst others going going on the large scale threading board in the garden. The children worked together to pull the string through all of the holes and admired their group work once they were finished.
Healthy Body Happy Me!
Over the last week, the Pre school children have had the opportunity to join in with many activities to support ‘Healthy body, Happy me’ week. During group times, the children have been discussing the importance of looking after their bodies and how they are able to do so. Some of the children were suggesting which exercises they could do such as jogging, stretching, Yoga and even “Pilates like my mummy”. Some other children were debating between themselves which foods are healthy to eat and which foods are not so healthy. This quickly turned the conversation on to which snacks the children like to eat and when one of the children suggested a biscuit, another child reminded them, “But you mustn’t eat too many of them because they have sugar in them”. The children engaged in an activity where they were able to identify foods from the home corner that they thought should be in the healthy column and which foods belong in the unhealthy foods column. One of the children looked at the unhealthy column and suggested, “But it is ok if we eat those foods sometimes, we just can’t eat them all of the time”.
Throughout the week, the children have joined in with many exercise classes, observing the effects of exercise on their bodies. After a short spout of exercising one day, some of the children held their hands to their chest and laughed together as they detected their heart beat and how fast it was beating. Remembering a previous conversation, one of the children suggested, “Remember if you take a deep breath and breathe out, your heart will slow down again, that’s because you get more air in your lungs”. When the children followed these instructions, they were soon enough ready to get going again and again, each time detecting their heart rate when they took a break.
As well as many activities and conversations surrounding the physical side of our bodies, the children have been discussing their emotions and what makes them feel a certain type of emotion and then following up with what they think they could do to help with each emotion. The story book ‘The Colour Monster’ was used many times throughout these discussions where the children were able to identify a colour in relation to an emotion and letting each other know which colour they felt and what made them feel this way. The children were able to identify many emotions including happy, excited, worried and sad and listened intently to their friends when they spoke about how they felt.
Caterpillars!
Over the last couple of weeks the toddlers have been very excited at the arrival of some tiny caterpillars that they will get to watch as they go through the cycle of cocooning and turning into a butterfly. A small group of children gathered around a table to get an up close look of the caterpillars, sitting on their knees and resting their faces against the table to be eye level with them. They watched quietly with intrigue as their eyes moved across the pots of caterpillars when all of a sudden one of the caterpillars moved, eliciting squeals of excitement from a few children and a comment of, “Ahhh he’s moving” followed by another child joining in with a statement of, “He’s so wiggly… like this” as they give a little giggle on the spot. Later on in the week the children were making their own wiggly caterpillars with sticks and pipe cleaners, winding the pipe cleaners around the sticks and adding eye stickers. One child began stroking their caterpillar once they had finished making it, “Ooh, it’s so soft” and invited their friend to feel it too as they giggled together. They then took their caterpillars to the nature tray where they began wiggling them amongst the grass and over the logs.
The Toddlers have been loving their spring themed walks around the Imber Court grounds where they have been making their own nature frames and bracelets. The children who chose to make bracelets so had some tape placed around their coat clad wrist with the sticky side out and those who chose to make the frame held onto their cardboard shapes with a sticky centre as they all began foraging for items to attach to them. A few children began adding fallen leaves to their creation while a couple found a small collection of daisies and purple flowers which they carefully began plucking and very carefully pressing down onto their bracelets and frames. One child was very happy with their bracelet and showed it to all of their friends, “I got so many pretty flowers” while another child held up their frame, “look I made this with all its leaves on.”
Over the last couple of weeks the under 2s have been exploring colours through a range of different activities. One of the activities the children got very involved with was body painting where they were able to explore the texture of the paint using tools or different parts of their bodies, including their hands and feet. The children had a selection of canvases to choose from including paper, cardboard, and themselves! A couple of the children quickly worked out how to create their own hand and footprints and did a great job painting their hands and feet and pressing them down to create their art. Some of the other children preferred to use the range of tools they were offered, and did a great job mixing the different colours together to see what they could create. One of the children created a handprint and then looked up with a smile, before pointing back at it and shouting “Red!’. Another child followed this up by pointing to a footprint and shouted “Blue!”, which led to the children making their way along the pots of paint and correctly identifying each of the colours. The children have also shown their fantastic knowledge of colours through coloured play dough, which they managed to correctly name. A couple of the children took it a step further by exploring the room until they found the duplo blocks, rifling through them until they found a colour that matched the play dough. The children were encouraged to continue this as the box of blocks were brought over to the play dough, and they continued to match the blocks to the coloured dough.
Out in the garden, the children have been exploring the new tube which has been added to the sandpit. Some of the children picked up the tube at each end, and began to peer at each other through, giggling. They followed this up by shouting down “Hello!” to each other through the tube, before dropping it whilst laughing. Some of the other children brought over a selection of balls which they began to drop down the tube, lifting up one end and clapping as they came out the other end. After successfully dropping down a few of the different balls, one of the children tried to feed through a larger ball, and a small group gathered and watched in confusion at why the ball wouldn’t go down the tube. When one of the practitioners let them know that it was too big, a few of the children echoed “Too big”, before going back to the smaller balls.
