10/03/2024
Week 4-8 March 2024
This week, we celebrated World Book Day, which we expanded onto a week of celebrations! The children brought in some of their favourite books throughout the week that we shared in circle times and smaller groups each day. We learnt how stories are structured, and that fairy tales begin with “Once upon a time” and often end with “They all lived happily ever after. The End.” We love books! Wonderful! Throughout the week, we also focussed on literacy skills 📘📕📗📙
On Monday with Mrs Maggie, we read "Mr Little's Noisy Car" by R. Fowler. Mr Little heard lots of strange noises coming from his car and on closer inspection, he found different animals hidden in different parts of the car. The book had flaps for us to open to reveal the animals. We learnt some of the names of car parts and we loved discovering which animal we would find next. We made animal noises too. We made a little paper car, decorating it with pastel crayons, then attached wheels with split pins - a new skill for us to learn. Our imaginative play area was a garage/petrol station, where we got very busy fixing cars, pumping up tyres, and using all sorts of other necessary equipment and tools. In the tuff spot, we played in the lentil building site driving trucks down a ramp to a lower level situated in another tuff spot. We loved it and it was everyone’s favourite area 🚗
On Tuesday with Mrs Lisa, we went on a "Dear Zoo" adventure. We explored animals from the story in the jungle, finding them in suitcases and box caves. It was a lot of fun. On the tuff spot, we played with wild animals from the story, and fed them (and ourselves!) with the cornflakes they were standing on. We used spoons and our hands to transfer the cereal into bowls, learning about capacity in a simple, fun way. For practising our pencil skills, we drew lines between the animals and the boxes that they came in, following the story. Some boxes were big, some were small, and we had to remember which animals fitted best in which box 🐘
On Wednesday with Miss Fani, we read the story of "The Dot" by P. H. Reynolds. It is a story about a girl named Vashti who thought she couldn’t draw. Her teacher encouraged her to just make a mark, so she put a dot on the paper. As she explored different ways to make dots, she discovered her creativity and began to believe in herself as an artist.
In the art area, we provided a canvas for the children to express their creativity, inspired by Vashti's story. Much like Vashti, the children tried out different media and created their own artworks. They painted on the easel, drew on long sheets of paper using various markers, and experimented with different sizes of dot stickers. In the tuff spot, we explored objects from the treasure baskets and used them to create, explore, and play. We also practised our fine motor skills and had fun decorating dot pictures using colourful dot markers or stickers. It was a day filled with creativity, where we discovered that every little dot or mark can become something beautiful and meaningful 🔴
On Thursday with Mrs Monika, we read a very special story - "I Love You, Mummy" by J. Harker. It's about a little bear who is so eager to try new experiences, he goes too quickly which leads to some mistakes. He is immediately helped by his watchful and caring bear mummy. We looked at our own family and birthday books, finding pictures of our Mummies and sharing nice comments about them. We felt a lot of love and nice fuzzy feelings all over. We drew a portrait of our Mummies and later made a special gift for them - a hand painted candle jar. We played with bears, dressed them and joined them for a lovely picnic 🧸
On Friday with Mrs Mita, we read "Terrific Trains" by T. Mitton, using descriptive words and sounding words related to trains. We travelled in our own train that we built with cardboard boxes. We had to add wheels, windows and other decorations, making our train special and magical. The travelling continued throughout the morning and we took some of the bears with us. We went around the world, remembering to stop for ice cream. We felt happy and did lots of dressing up too. There were many happy characters and lots of fun interactions between children 🚂
We also celebrated special birthday! Yay! 🎉🥳🎁🎈
