Play-ability Childcare

Our core text recently has been The Three Little Pigs. This has inspired lots of fantastic role play- with lots of language from the book being used brilliantly. The children have also enjoyed making lots of brick houses to keep safe from the wolf, and have thought about what they need to include (for example the magnatiles house includes "a chimney for the wolf to go down.") We read this book as part of a more structured story time every day, but it is also available in book corner for children to self-select and retell independently. We always keep copies of our core texts accessible in book corner long after it's been our featured story as the children always love to revisit these. We also try and include multiple and variations of the same story when it's a traditional tale, and the older children love spotting the differences! If the children aren't gripped by a story then we move on, and equally sometimes a book can pique their interests for prolonged periods of time in which case we go with it and see where the interest takes us.

July means lots of the children are experiencing beaches and holidays at the moment, so we're embracing the theme and enjoying one of my favourite charity shop finds ever- this book 'On my beach there are many pebbles.' We're also exploring some of Andy Goldsworthy's work.

Minty playdough fun today! The children used tools brilliantly and really creatively to handle and manipulate the dough. They also made lots of birthday cakes so we practised lots of careful counting as we added candles and sang 'happy birthday' to our friends.

It's been so lovely to see the children's confidence to have a go at making observational and representational drawings grow over the past few weeks, and the drawings and paintings they have produced have been wonderful!

Celebrating some of the fantastic observational drawings and paintings the children have made of sunflowers this week 💛 👏.

We've been continuing our exploration of giving meaning to marks this week by making observational drawings of sunflowers.

Slowing down and taking an unhurried approach to teaching and learning allows opportunities to spend real time noticing things around us. This week the children noticed they could see both shadows and reflections in the water tray at the same time, first of the hydrangeas floating in the water but then of themselves, too. This led to searching for reflections and shadows in lots of other places too!