This week our lively Baboons have been painting and exploring colour and different techniques to make patterns and silhouettes. Some of the Baboons were painting over the pictures of farm animals that they had out such as ducks, pigs & horses onto large paper then they were peeling them off revealing the outline of the shape of the animal that they chose – clever. As they were painting they mixed assorted colours and explored what colours they could create. The Baboons, throughout the week have been using different herbs in their paintings and creating sensory art – mixing cinnamon, turmeric, parsley and curry powder into the assorted colours and talked about the different smells. There have been some beautiful little new additions to families in the Baboon room recently, so Jodie (our story representative) and the team created a ‘New Baby’ story bag to use with the story ‘I’m a Big Sister’. After reading the story the children played with and sang to the baby, fed the baby a bottle and wrapped her in a blanket. We are sure they will now be very helpful older siblings – no thanks required.

The Gibbons joined the Baboons on a trip to Taj – they managed to buy our ingredients for ‘Smoothie of the Week’ and they made a fresh apple, orange and lemon smoothie. Very refreshing. The Gibbons have also been involved in creating new types of paintings: – they used aluminium foil to paint on exploring the reflective surface with assorted colours using their hands and brushes. They also used wet paper to explore paint in an unusual way, putting on the paint watching it seep into different shapes and patterns. Some Gibbons used the baby monitor to babble to each other from room to room, using it like a walkie talkie. They were really interested in building blocks into towers, responding to directional language as they built, then knocking them down (of course). The children used sand to mix and pour through the home corner kitchen, re-enacting what they have seen their families do.

The Gorillas have been playing with a beautiful beach scene in their small world area, voicing the people and animals, using their own experience to create stories and narratives. The children even coloured in paper to make towels for the people to lie on. We have been working on height, length, weight and capacity at the allotment with stones, sticks, cups and buckets, this was brought into the nursery through our Reggio Emilia table, talking about the pine cones and sticks we have here and then some children counted and arranged them into patterns. We received some notebooks and notepads from Peter at the allotment and we have been writing and drawing to our friends and parents and putting them in envelopes. There has been a huge interest in the construction of different roleplay resources using the multilink cubes, making wands and swords to use in their games. Some children were talking about the colours they were choosing for each part of their creation. In our brilliant sports sessions this week, the children have been doing different moving races such as a crawling race and a backwards egg and spoon race. They also really got really stuck into the “What’s the Time Mr. Wolf” game and counting the steps.