Tuesday
All the children came in super refreshed from the Bank Holiday, and ready to enjoy some fun in the sun. Outside, we enjoyed going on a bug hunt and discussing the differences between spiders and beetles. The warm weather meant water play was a very popular activity, and later on the hosepipe came out for a water fight! Other children devised a game where they rolled a hula-hoop down the slide to see who could get it to roll the furthest. There was also a pretend ice cream parlour set up in the Wendy house (it would have been lovely if it had served real ice creams, though!). Inside, there was some maths going on, with some children using the Numicon scales to investigate concepts of heavier/lighter and bigger/smaller, while other children created 3D shapes using the magnets.
Wednesday
Another lovely sunny day meant more fun and games in the garden. We played 'What's The Time, Mr Wolf?' (great to support their understanding of number) and hide and seek. The children also enjoyed having glitter tattoos applied - apologies if it meant there was glitter all over your house later on! Inside, some children decided that they wanted to draw plates of food for a game. They drew pizza, fruit and salad, and we discussed which foods were healthy and which weren't as good for us. We also continued our maths work with some of the children doing sums using the foam numbers.
Thursday
As sometimes happens with child-centred planning, we had a very role-play focused day today. Some of the children paid another visit to 'Sophie's Hair Salon' today - it is such a popular game among the girls! Other children were playing a game of cops and robbers, with the police making arrests and taking the robbers to jail. Later, there was even an imaginary snowball fight! We are always amazed and delighted by the vivid imaginations of the children at Nursery.
Friday
We used our brand new oven for the first time today, with the children taking it in turns to bake fairy cakes with Wendy. They all enjoyed the experience very much, and (mostly) waited patiently for their cakes to cook. We are looking forward to providing many more opportunities for the children to cook a variety of foods while they are at Nursery. While waiting their turn to bake, the children occupied themselves with some sorting activities - some children were looking at our toy animals and sorting them according to whether the animal walked, swam or flew; other children looked at our shell collection and sorted them according to size, pattern and smell! In the afternoon, we played the "Who took the cookie?" game which tested the children's logical thinking skills, and the "What's in the box?" game where the children had to describe a hidden object and guess what it was. This latter game prompted the use of some excellent vocabulary from the children, and also led to a discussion of the different properties of plastic and metal.