Schemas, Space and Cityscapes (Week Beginning 7th September 2015)…

Happily the sun hasn’t abandoned us just yet and the Chimps enjoyed some rather lovely days in the garden this week. At the top of the hill, they enjoyed rolling balls, and occasionally bottom shuffling, down. Still full of that growing spirit, the little ones planted grass seeds in cups to eventually have their own “grass heads.” Since they enjoyed the water painting in the builder’s tray so much, this week they made marks in the tray with cotton buds in flour. To encourage them to get on their feet, the Chimps enticed the little ones with a balloon rocket – a balloon is taped to a cup that slides along a length of string. The children enjoyed moving the balloon along, back and forth. The sensory table was a colourful extravaganza as the Chimps created foam dough with food colouring and practiced their mixing skills. Also quite colourful was the spaghetti painting activity during which their scattering schemas were on full display as they seemed to get more enjoyment out of dropping, throwing, and swishing the dry spaghetti sticks around. Happy Chimp team. At the water tray they’ve had a sensory filled version of the “Slippery Fish” song as they splashed around and tried to find matching fish for the song. Glub, glub….

You may have noticed a pop up city in the Howler room as their window was transformed into a city scape for that added bit of scenery as they drove their cars along the window sill road. In fact, the week was full of the wonder of cars and vehicles as the Howlers identified emergency vehicles during their group time. Lots of nee-nawing going on. In the garden, they enjoyed a foamy, messy car wash *cue the song.* At the painting table, the children raced their cars through paint to make prints, spending time building their vocabulary in describing the kind of tracks their cars made. When their cars weren’t burning rubber, er…plastic, the children found small world people to take for a ride around their junk modelled town – the children painted boxes and stuck on doors and windows. Along with their junk model town, the Howlers also created a car tunnel which turned into a hiding spot for all manner of Howler room items; tissue boxes, water bottles, paperwork, you name it, it was in there. Never too young to hone those driving skills, the interactive driving toys were also out and quite a few of the Howlers were adept at turning on the engines and steering. We’ll have them working on the gears next week. Vroooooom!

The Baboons have left the thick of the camping woods for a dusty trek on the moon in their space role play this week. At group time, with a few clues, the Baboons guessed different planets. They had plenty of practice as the planets went missing in the moon dust tray, so they had to sift around for them. Speaking of moon dust, rather than using their fingers to create marks, the children noticed that they could blow different patterns around it. At the designing table, the Baboons made, what else, aliens. Using paper plates, tissue paper, and foil, they created alien masks. Then they created little paper cup alien buddies, cutting and sticking an assortment of materials on their mini-me extra-terrestrials. It’s not just been the Baboons venturing off to space. A dog in the story Spaceship has been dreaming about space adventures and the children enjoyed a puppet show rendition of his travels. After the show, the children burned off a little of that sitting steam with a bouncy session of ribbon dancing. For a change in pace, the Baboons had a tasting session (because we secretly get a kick out of their sour faces) with honey, lemon, garlic, houmous, and raisins. There are quite a few fans of lemons in the room as the team had to pry the rinds from them before those got scoffed down as well.

It’s been all about life on a spaceship in the Gorilla room this week. The children have been learning why Earth is the only planet, thus far, that can sustain human life as they realized just how important H2O and O2 are to us. They viewed some Perhaps the Baboon aliens will have playdates with the Gorilla aliens as the children made their own as well this week. Using their solar system photos as a reference, they created plasticene planets, paying particular attention to details such as adding brown for the continents and making sure Saturn had a ring around it. The lego table was a site of wonderful construction as there were spaceships, rocket launch pads, and even a garden play area for the aliens. Ever so thoughtful, those Gorillas. Their story focus this week has been The Little Prince, and the children have been very curious about the planet he comes from. They also read Aliens Love Underpants (why wouldn’t they?) and gave each other their best alien sounds. Their sounds and letters activity was the always fun “th” phoneme. Maybe that’s why they were quite good at naming words that began with “th” and dancing around chanting “th, th, th, th.” Let’s hope they never lose that zeal for learning.

N.B Please start checking out your reinstated ‘Planning Summaries’ in your child’s room to see what they will be learning about and doing for the week ahead. Have a great weekend.