Month: January 2021

25/01/21 – Burns night and Australia Day

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This week we’ve been looking at some Scottish and Australian traditions. To celebrate Burns Night and Australia Day.

For burns night the children decorated Scottish flags, thistles, and created tartan while talking about Scotland. We listened to bagpipe music and watched the bands march in the parade on YouTube. We copied the marching, using objects from the room as drums. To celebrate Australia Day, the children coloured kangaroos, while talking about animals that live in Australia. We listened to some didgeridoo sounds on YouTube.

Orange room have been making bird feeders, to hang in the garden. We are looking forward to watching the birds from the windows.

Messy play this week has been focussed on colour mixing. Orange room used coloured water and gloop. The children loved the gloop, watching and feeling it drip through their fingers, adding different paint to mix and create new colours.

Yellow room have been carrying on learning about our bodies. This week using construction to look at our body parts and their shapes. How we grow, and what we need to help our bodies grow. Then ending the week with some physical exercises, and talk about how our hearts beat faster when we exercise.

Did you know we use the ‘yoga pretzels’ cards, exploring different poses. The children get really engaged in this. There are some great yoga stories on YouTube (link below) that you can practise at home.

Next week is National Story Telling Week. We would love to hear all about your favourite stories and see you reading them at home. You can email photos across to be uploaded onto your child’s learning journey, or share to our closed Facebook page.

https://www.youtube.com/c/CosmicKidsYoga

18/01/2021

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This week has been focussed on our current themes of weather and our bodies.

We’ve been looking at numbers and building using sugar cubes in our tuff trays. Also talking about animals that live in cold countries like penguins and polar bears. We made some penguins by drawing and cutting around our hands and built igloos for the animals to live in.

The children really enjoyed last weeks activity of drawing themselves using a mirror, and some children asked to it again this week. With added language and conversation about how to take care of our bodies. Eat, drink, sleep, exercise and wash. We filled the water tray with soapy water and washed the babies, then dressed them and tucked them into bed with a story.

The children spent time in the garden climbing over the tyres and moving around in different ways. Also taking the babies for a walk around the garden in their buggies.

Some children created a puppet show, using the emotion books and puppets, exploring different expressions on their faces.

Understandably we have a few children who aren’t in setting at the moment. Each key person has been keeping in touch via weekly telephone or zoom calls. The children are missing their friends and look forward to being able to play together soon.

11/01/2021

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Lots and lots of activities have been happening this week…

The sun came out for a couple of days, even though it was still very very cold, we made the most of it and had a run around in the garden. On the days when the weather was too bad to go outside, we experimented different ways of moving over the stepping stones and jumping over and between the planks of wood.

The dart board was a great way for us to try to recognise numbers, and turn taking as we all really wanted to have a go.

Can you see the big big towers we built using the foam bricks? One of the towers was even taller than us!!

It was very fun to paint our feet and make prints on the paper. We haven’t tried this before and we all really enjoyed it.

Some of us have been learning about our bodies, we drew pictures of ourselves using the mirror to see our faces. We compared the differences with our friends, we all have blue, brown or green eyes. And we compared our hair colours.

We have a weather theme in both rooms at the moment, and we’ve been looking closely at ice, snow and wintery weather. Using various activities to promote new language, communication and introducing quantities. Which animals live in the cold weather? See if we can remember and talk about it at home…

January 04/01/2021

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Welcome back everyone. We hope you all had a great Christmas and a happy new year.

What an eventful start to the year with yet another lockdown. As early years remain open, it’s back to business for us at St Helen’s and it’s great to see so many smiling faces.

Things are a little bit strange for young children at the moment. They can’t see loved ones or friends, parents are extra tired, their siblings aren’t at school and there’s a lot of talk about this virus, keeping safe and distant. It’s a worrying time for the little ones who don’t quite understand. We’ve made sure to put out some toys which the children love, the familiarity helps them feel reassured and can reduce any anxiety while at preschool.

In play dough this week, the children have been making snowmen. Also using cotton pads to glue and stick to create their own snowmen.

It’s great to have the emotion puppets out. Especially at the moment. The children have been practising their emotion faces, however we have had to cover these. They are learning that it’s ok to feel sad, angry, scared and how to manage these feelings. They have also acted out their own stories using the theatre, giving them the chance to express their personalities.

The children have played learning games, with colours, animals and numbers. The tuff tray was set up for exploring numbers and using the tweezers to develop fine motor skills.

We had a play with the weighing scales, exploring the language of weight. And the magnetic letters allowed us to recognise some of the letters in our names.