Sensory Christmas!

The Gibbons have been getting festive.  They reveled in the sensory experience of scrunching up tissue paper and sticking it to collage Christmas trees with jolly red glue.  They have also been getting painty (we know, that’s not a word) and making hand prints and hand rubbings to create very effective Winter trees. The Gibbons have also enjoyed exploring their very own sensory beach by running their hands through the blue dried rice sea, the sand and shells and the green tissue paper (seaweed).  They were also found scooping the ‘beach’ up with their hands and transporting it to the water tray – clever idea little ones! They loved exploring the sea creatures and were particularly delighted by the very funny octopus with its wobbly legs! The children also enjoyed week’s supersized ‘Train’ book which involved making lots of ‘choo choo’ train sounds and learning maths words like ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ and transport words like ‘track’, ‘travel’, ‘move’ etc. etc. The Gibbons have also been busy at the Reggio sand table using tubs and spoons to pour and manipulate the sand from one receptacle to another.  They have also been using their hands to make marks and swirling patterns in the sand – a wonderful starting point for early writing.

Down in the deep blue sea…

The Baboons sure have been getting Christmassy this week too.  They have been making lots and lots of green hand prints which have been used to create a beautiful festive Christmas tree which is now proudly on display. The Jar of Happiness roller tube has also had a makeover with papier mache and lots of colourful paint to brighten it up ready for all those good deeds!  For their Reggio project, the children have been very busy getting sticky gluing lots of teeny tiny wood slices to make a rather impressive tree. For a bit of physical development the Baboons have been doing some Yoga with Jane our fabulous yoga teacher. Lots of active movement and stretching of arms and legs was involved in the process of making an imaginary lunch in an enormous imaginary mixing bowl of happiness. Groovy! Down in their role play deep blue sea, the children have been exploring a homemade sea world full of sharks and other sea creatures.  Over in the Maths Patch, the children have been busy counting sticks and matching their quantities to the number symbols from 1 – 5. Move over Carol Vorderman.

A spot of natural science…

Up at Nature Kids, the Gorillas found some frozen puddles which inspired them to explore and discuss the properties of ice.  They noticed that ice is transparent (another great word under their belts) and discussed how it is formed and where it might be found.  This led them to investigate further.  In the afternoon, some children went on a trip to hide some containers of water overnight to see if it would freeze – real life science! The Gorillas have been keeping active by jumping forwards and backwards – counting each jump and then counting again in Italian! And if that wasn’t active enough for both body and mind, they also played the ‘cone game’.  This was a test of memory as well as energy.  Each child had to remember a cone from a set of cones laid out in a square.  They then held hands and moved around them until the instruction was given to run to their cone. This week’s story was “Alan’s Scary Teeth” – a story now familiar to you all we are sure (if you haven’t taken one from the lobby please do we still have some left). The Gorillas did many activities relating to this – a favourite being creating their own crocodile teeth using green playdough and buttons based on the pictures in the book. In the role play corner there were more Christmassy goings on –   the children were making “mince pies” using playdough and putting their pies in tin cups to share with each other. On the Reggio table you will see a beautiful natural picture frame which some of the children made using the natural items such as sticks and leaves which they collected on their nature walk. On top of all of this they also wrapped up super warm and found time to take a very blustery trip to the beach.