Paint-pops, Florists, City Slickers and Golden Rules (28.09.15)…

The Chimps have turned into mirror reflections of each other as they copied adults’ actions in the group time area. It was all very quiet and concentrated. Perhaps, this is what a miming class would look like. Tee-hee. When they weren’t miming, the Chimps were making a wonderful mess with Paintsicles. Yes, that’s ‘Paintsicles’ – frozen blocks of paint with lolly sticks. The activity really got going, as they tend to do, once the Chimps noticed the ice melting and mixing with the other colours. Another messy activity was the pasta and foam which the Chimps quickly realized was oodles of fun after enthusiastically clapping, sending the foam everywhere. In the small world tray, the little ones dug around for bugs in the sawdust, which required lots of scattering, the occasional “swim” in the tray, and squishing clumps of sawdust to find a hard bug. Nothing sneaks by a Chimp. In the book area, the Chimps have been practicing a broad range of facial expressions for different emotions and repeating words after an adult. In the garden, the children trekked to the top of the hill and rolled cars and large vehicles down, obviously looking out for pedestrians beforehand. Chimps on the rampage!

The flower shop was still open for business this week and the Howlers had a slippery task of exploring leaves, flowers, and seeds trapped in ice. We hope you enjoyed their lovely natural objects collage made from Howler collected sticks, leaves, and flowers…because we like that sort of thing. The children have been paying extra close attention to their small world sensory garden as some mini-beasts have crept their way into it. The Howlers even grabbed the magnifying glasses to take a closer look. These mini-beasts were the plastic kind, of course. The other kind would clearly be a pest control problem. As our grass is, well, fake, and the mud kitchen is actually a sand kitchen, the children made mud indoors with soil and water (what else would you use?) using sticks to stir. They practiced using small jugs to add water and even added a few beans to the mixture. Wonder if a beanstalk will sprout over the weekend?

Beep! Beep! There’s been so much traffic in the Baboon room as they drove around their city. The small world should have included café as the children sat around and shared their experiences of driving around, waiting at busstops, and visiting different buildings. You may have noticed there is a rather tasty canopy above the Baboons’ reading and group time area. This is the Sukkah which is put up in celebration of the Jewish festival Sukkot. The Baboons have been identifying the different fruits dangling above their heads and creating leaf prints to continue decorating the area. Persona doll Irena visited this week to share with the Baboons her feelings of sometimes being left out. The children told Irena how they would feel if they were excluded. Irena enjoyed her time with the Baboons so much, she even shared one of her favourite books with her friends. The children enthusiastically shared their favourite stories with her and talked about reading time with their mummies and daddies. They do love when Irena stops by.

Since all our older Gorillas have swanned off to school, it’s been apparent that our younger Gorillas have not all learned the ways of the “Golden Rules,” which aren’t as stern as they sound. This week the children have been talking about routine and behaviour that will keep them happy at nursery like using kind words and gentle hands with others, walking indoors (so they’re less likely to fall or bump into others), and taking care of our toys and the rabbit. The homecorner role play was a perfect place to rehearse some of these rules as the Gorillas acted out their home and family routines. We even spied three of the Gorillas singing the good morning song in Italian while sitting on the sofa rocking their babies to sleep. Buon Giorno Gorillas! Speaking of Italian, the Gorillas had to make a mad dash (walking dash, not running dash) around the room to find different objects by their Italian and/or Spanish colour. Not much of a challenge for our little clever clogs who know their colours like they know their home time. The phonic of the week was “s” and the Gorillas have been ssssssssslithering and sssssssssnaking their writing hands around its form using tracing sheets and starting to identify words with “s” in it. Goldilocks was blessedly not around to eat the 3 Bears porridge that the Gorillas lovingly made for them this week. They talked about the consistency of their porridge – thick, thin, gloopy, watery – and even added paper nuts and berries to their mixtures. How very thoughtful Gorillas.