Puzzles

We love to provide a variety of puzzles with varying levels of challenge. We watch for the children’s learning style. Are they using the shape of the piece to put the puzzle together or are they using the colours and pictures to match the pieces. Puzzles also provide a great place for discussion with teachers and friends. We love it when children work together to complete a puzzle. 

Bank Play

A Bank was set up instead of the home corner. Within the imaginitive play there was lots of practise with pretend writting and numeracy  skills through playing with the pretend money. Playing with ICT through role play with phones and calculators.

Spiders

 An interest area about Spiders is emerging. We can count the legs and draw what we see. We enjoy Incey Wincey Spider and make our own spiders crawling up the water spout. We have been sewing a spider web and enjoy the story “The very Busy Spider”.

Tulips

Shiona brought in some Tulips in a pot, we guessed what colour they would be and waited untill they opened up to show us their colour.  Spring is nearly here !!!

Musical Stories

   We listen to musical stories like Honey the Bear from Hillary Henshaw. While we listened to this story about seasons  we gave the children

 clipboards to draw whatever they like. The story was about how the trees change across the seasons and had some catchy sing along parts for us to join in. The children were drawing and concentrating so hard that I played the story a second time. We will do this activity again with another musical story. Great practise controlling a texter, also a great way to help kinasthetic learners concentrate. We are  inspired by Howard Gardners learning Styles and always try to incorporate the opportunity to use a range of Learning Styles.

Children from all over the world

 We love this Mem Fox story, about children from all over the world. Children who may look different, wear different clothes and live in different houses to us. The story then tells us how hurts are the same, joy and tears are the same. We play with these beautufull dolls and make up our own stories.

“Little one,
Whoever you are,
Wherever you are,
There are little ones just like you,
All over the world.
Their skin may be different from yours
And their homes may be different from yours;
Their schools may be different from yours
And their…”

Next we  introduced a greeting song from the CD Rainbows Trees and Tambourines to say G’day to our friends in different languages. Today we learnt French, Greek, Spanish and Russian (thanks to one of the children).

Exploring Magnets

Exploring the properties of magnets, which ones push and pull together. Some children discovered how they could join together either side of laminated card and move it around without touching. We will add some more items for the children to test what sticks to magnets and what doesn’t.

Winter

The children made their own lovely soft white playdough. Following a recipee involves literacy and numeracy skills, also turn taking and sharing as we work together. The next day we put our igloo set out with the white playdough and some little penguins. The children created habitats and made their own stories about the animals. We then introduced some books about the animals and where they are from. This table experience also provided some great discussion from children who had been to the snow.

 Rainbows

   On a beautiful sunny winter day one of the children in our 4year old group brought in a large pink glass crystal for show and tell. Shiona brought out some more and the chidlren became scientists, we found that by turning the crystal in the sunshine we can make rainbows on the roof and walls. This lead onto a great musical movement experience from the CD Feeling the Beat called It’s a Rainbow. We used streamers in the correct colour order to make our own colourful rainbows to move to the music with. Our emergent program will now follow this iterest area.

The 4 year old groups enjoyed an excursion to Kew Traffic School. Riding bikes on the pretend roads, using the lights and crossing the road. This has lead onto some great discussions and learning experiences related to transport and road safety. 

“Like a leaf or a feather in the windy windy weather, twirl around and whirl around and all fall down together.”

easter sorting

Sorting coloured wooden Easter Eggs and counting how many are ways to practise numeracy through play. We have also been talking about Healthy food that helps us grow and sometimes food.

 The children prepare the soil, plant the seedlings and water the vegetables from our water tanks. They even enjoyed eating the spinach.