Nature Nature Nature – Week beginning 17th April 2017…
Sowing sunflowers…
The Gibbons were joined by Louise on Tuesday to start their sunflower plantings. The Gibbons lined up pots and poured soil into them. In 80 to 120 days we will see the new sunflowers grow in the garden all thanks to our Gibbons and other groups. Pipe cleaners and colanders were the utensils used for this week’s Reggio Emilia and the Gibbons loved pushing the pipe cleaners through the holes. Practicing their self awareness, the Gibbons have been removing and returning Velcro body parts on their Velcro board. They’ve also been using wooden blocks to create lots of different shapes into play dough. The Gibbons used their hands to squish together and roll small balls with the dough. Finally, the Gibbons turned from smiling happy babies to angry dinosaurs stomping around the room and making dinosaur sounds. With a dinosaur themed small world, they had sand, hay and logs to re-create a land of very hungry Gibbon-o-saurs that were only happy when their crunch snacks came out.
Cress egg heads…
In an impressive eco activity, the Baboons have been growing cress in egg shells (no plastic pots here) in their conservatory. The Baboons have been regularly keeping an eye on how well they are doing. Watering in the morning and giving a goodnight kiss in the afternoon, the cress will soon be ready. Here at Young friends, we don’t like to do things small, we like to do them GIANT! Using rolled out large sheets of paper, paint, glue, colourful tissue paper and foil, the Baboon created an abstract collage. Gillian gave the Baboons some sandwich bags this week to fill and make their own sensory bags. They used glue, bubbly water, pencil shavings and small plastic balls. Enjoying feeling the different textures and shaking the bags around to make different noises. During their sports session, the Baboons have been moving in mysterious ways – giggling away as they walked backwards to the coloured cone selected by Nadeem.
New friends at Nature Kids…
This week was an exciting week, as the Nature kids went to the allotment and had their first packed lunch up there. Gillian packed them yummy sandwich of cream cheese and cucumber and fresh fruit and breadsticks, dips and other nutritious morsels for snack. Whilst up there, the Nature kids found some new friends. There was a frog swimming in the water and a slow worm wriggling around in the soil. The tadpoles are being looked after as the Gorillas filled up their water tank. Before the end of their trip, the Gorillas started some life drawing of the new flowers that have sprouted there since their last visit. The Gorillas made sure to check on the status of their growing pineapple and watched a video on how to grow it. With the exciting news of which primary schools the older Gorillas got accepted into, at Group time they spoke about going to school and if their brothers or sisters went to the school too. A whole lot of marbles went into the jar this week as they learned to sound out their names. Using their memory of letter sounds, the Gorillas sounded out their names and noticed the difference in the sounds of the letters. From sounding letters to making an alphabet puzzle, they spoke about the different alphabet shapes and sounds. Some of our Gorillas have a few siblings and some of our Gorillas are only children, and in group time family life and the differences everyone has was discussed.
