Fruit bread, chicken coops, persona dolls, and seashells (Week Beginning May 11th 2015)…

This week the Chimp room became a pop-up bakery and the little ones were loving it. Following on from their successful bread making last week, they branched out with additional ingredients and made fruit bread. They have been getting rather hands on will all kinds of food as they had a pasta threading session and then wrangled out some spaghetti worms from the sea animal jelly bath. The babies have been fed, the babies have been put to sleep, and this week, the babies have been bathed. Using sponges, the Chimps gave their little ones a good scrub down with sudsy water. With all the baby activities the Chimps have been doing, even the book babies have been getting the nurturing treatment. In the book area the Chimps have been looking through books about babies and demonstrating their gentle hands on the baby images. Aww…. For those who like to post, this was their time to shine as the nursery post box was out for the children to post all manner of items, including, on occasion, themselves. Although, they were none too impressed about getting stuck in the post box. The life of a parcel is a hard one Chimps.

Young Friends’ pet shops are always rather exotic/kooky (random koalas and moles…) and the Howlers kept up the tradition this week as their pet shop also offered up some farmyard delights with a chicken coop and fresh eggs – the Howlers painted the cage and helped the adults attach the string and then waited for the chickens to hatch their eggs. It’s not all been clucking and barking though – little bit of science has been erupting on the creative table… Hot off the trail of their volcanos last week, the Howlers have continued practicing their pipette fingers with rainbow eruptions (lemon juice, baking soda, and salt). They’ve also had bubbles on the brain as they made their own colourful bubble mixture in the water tray and played a bubble popping game on the tablet. The stencils were out in the writing area and after initially bewildered the children; after a few demonstrations they quickly caught on and filled the spaces using crayons. In the garden, those tree stumps have really been spearheading the children to practice their balancing as they’re all ever so eager to follow those agile Gorillas, who’ve also been lending them a helping hand as they try. As much as the Howlers like to get messy, they were not too keen on the finger painting foil session until they were armed with paintbrushes. Then all was right with the world. Funny little creatures those Howlers.

The Baboons are under the sea again and have been popping up with all manner of marine creatures in their role play area. In the water tray the children have been mixing foam, water and rice to create an ‘aquarium’ and setting their sharks off to swim. In honour of the rainbow fish (in the storybook) and its special scale the Baboons made their own shiny decorative fish with metallic finish plates, glitter, and tissue paper. Some of the Baboons are becoming very particular about quantities and counting out their materials. They’ve also been learning all the proper names of their favourite fish with diving videos on the tablet and talking about how they breathe underwater. Caz was on hand to help the children prepare their tea of home-made fish, chips, and Baboon-made ketchup – impressive stuff. They paid special attention to the red lines on the measuring cup to make sure their ketchup tasted delicious. In their story of the week “Gilbert the Hero” showed them all about how to look out for their friends and instigated related discussions. Speaking of friends, persona doll ‘Mike’ came to visit to speak to the Baboons about his starting at a new nursery. Many of the Baboons are moving up to the Gorillas now, so Mike was on hand to help them talk about changes and their feelings. In the construction area, the children have been doing some mega construction with the mega blocks. There’s even been some demolition going on as they built houses and then grabbed their power tools to knocks them down. Not going for those legacy builds then?

The Gorillas added a new item to their restaurant menu – pizza. Using a paper plate base, the Gorillas painted on their cheese and tomatoes and added their favourite tissue paper toppings. No word yet on prices. If I know those Gorillas you might have to save up a bit. On their loose parts table, the children were provided with string, threading wheels, driftwood, and rainbow connectors and they, well, let loose. Many thread the wheels while some opted to use the driftwood as block stackers. A few of the children even made rainbow connector yo-yos. To add to their ever-increasing range of natural resources, the Gorillas explored their brand new, and rather large assortment of shells. Quite amusingly, they’ve been wandering around the room with conches to their ears talking about the ocean. Who needs earbuds? It’s looked like Sizzles has had a romp through the Gorillas, but it has only been the construction site small world complete with sawdust, diggers and people. Persona doll Kaila stopped by to visit and spoke about her friend Omar who wanted to wear princess dresses but his friends laughed at him. The Gorillas and Kaila discussed what to do when people hurt our feelings and how to help others if they’ve been hurt. Some of the boys were quick to don some of the princess dresses themselves, just to show it was okay. Many an object has been put onto the new nursery lightbox to see the effects and the Gorillas have been practicing controlling the mouse using the paint application and enjoying their new large screen computer to the full. It is also a supremely useful tool in turn-taking…well, eventually. When the novelty’s worn off I’m sure.