Easter eggs everywhere…
With the week build up to Easter Weekend, the Gibbons brought their carrot baskets to the chick farm in their Small World and collected lots of lovely eggs. Stroking the fluffy chicks and remembering the sounds different animals make on farms. There was a full batch of egg crafts around the Gibbon room from potato egg printing to Papier Mache. They got creative and arty using assorted colours and materials like tissue paper, glitter, stickers and wool to beautify their Easter Eggs. With a National Gardening Week inspired Reggio Emilia, the Gibbons had pots of soil, digging around and causing all sorts of fun mess, pushing leaves they found from the garden into the soil using their fingers and thumbs. To show off all their challenging work this week, the Gibbons have made exciting Easter cards to take home.
‘Eggcellent’ Baboons…
“It smells likes floors and it’s pink” said one of the Baboons whilst they all made scented glittery playdough. Using coffee and bananas flavouring added to pink, green and brown playdough, the children identified the smells and the colours whilst rolling and cutting the playdough into the shapes they liked best. You might notice some lovely designed Easter cards brought home this week ready for this weekends celebration. Mixing Easter and science together, the Baboons carried out an egg experiment where they put 3 eggs into different cups and filled them with different liquids (Coca-Cola, water, and vinegar). Watching the eggs react to the Coca-Cola, water and vinegar was both amusing and interesting. After a couple of days, the Baboons returned to their experiment and witnessed the differences that had occurred in the cups, noticing the peculiar smells that came from the cups (especially the cup with Coca-Cola, we advise not to try this if you want a clean smelling house afterwards!) With the sun shining through the Baboon conservatory, they made sun catchers out of strips of tissue paper and egg shaped-cards. Yellows, oranges, and other lovely bright colours shone when the sun hit them creating lovely colours around the room. It’s never a boring trip to the park as Nadeem planned a more intensive coloured cone direction game. By extending the game to involve spinning in the middle of the circle of cones and then stopping when Nadeem gives instruction is improving not only their coordination but also heightens their location memory and visual skills.
We’re going on egg hunt…
What a wonderful week for an Easter egg hunt in the garden. The Gorillas enjoyed searching high and low for the eggs the adults hid in secret spaces. Demonstrating keen awareness, they looked under and over for the special surprises. Bringing our own experiments into the room, the Gorillas and team are now growing their own pineapple plant. We hope over the next few months, if we keep the plant watered and looked after, that we will start to see the growth of a new pineapple tree. Our mid-week week visit from Cassie James saw the Gorillas remembering old traditional Yoga techniques and stands whilst adding in a new stance this week; “Big Toe Pose”. Enhancing their stretching and balance, Cassie James’s weekly sessions is always much loved. Alex organised a special activity this week for Easter based on her Romanian background. Using hard boiled eggs and special paint, vinegar and hot water, they mixed together the ingredients using a spoon and finally placed their eggs into the assemble. Left for a few minutes to soak, carefully they took out their eggs and rubbed oil over the eggs to make them shiny. The outcome were fabulous colourful eggs in multicolours. Bringing fun to maths and combining eggs and numeracy in the Gorilla room, they matched the number to the number of dots on the broken egg puzzles made by Alex. Jumping on the bus up to the Allotment, the Nature Kids brought paper and crayons to do rubbings on several types of wood and different textures round the allotment. With Spring finally here, the Gorillas took special attention to the red tulip that has appeared at the top of our allotment. Drawing what they could see at the allotment and talking about the rhubarb that we are growing up there led our group time discussion at the allotment ending with an old classic game of eye-spy on the bus back to nursery.
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