This week our topic story was The Gruffalo. This is a well know story and the children loved reading it as a group! In the story we meet a mouse who is taking a stroll through the woods. On his way he meets a fox, an owl and a snake who all wanted to eat him! The mouse is very clever and invents a Gruffalo; a monster with terrible claws, terrible teeth and terrible jaws! But will the mouse frighten off the fox, owl and snake or will he be their dinner?
On our Outdoor Learning Day, the Pink and Yellow Chicks were very excited to go on their own adventure to the woods to find the Gruffalo. After listening to the story the children remembered to look under the logs and behind the trees. They searched and searched and eventually found the Gruffalo hiding in his Gruffalo den eating roasted fox, owl ice cream and scrambled snake!
We continued our learning back at the Nursery and the Chicks continued to explore the story through props and our story basket. The Green and Orange Chicks discussed the different characters and made puzzles with the animals. The Pink and Yellow Chicks practiced consolidating their knowledge of the story by acting out the story as a group using the animals and the Gruffalo!
In Cookery the Children made a special Gruffalo crumble. We discussed what ingredients we needed to make the crumble and began by slicing the apples into small slices. Making the topping was the best part however because the texture was soft and sticky and it encouraged us to really get our hands working! To make the topping we mixed oats, flour, butter and coconut sugar and then worked together to squash and squeeze it with our hands until. the mixture turned into crumbs.
This exercise was a great activity to support our hand eye coordination and to develop our fine motor skills and started a great discussion around how and why textures change when they are mixed together. The Chicks all worked extremely well together and we were very impressed with their waiting and turn taking skills.
This week our Role Play Area was transformed into a Gruffalo den and the Children had great fun making Gruffalo crumble and toasting marshmallows on the campfire. They also enjoyed dressing up as the different characters and reading the story together.
In the Outdoor Learning Environment the sun was out and the children asked if they could look at the worms in the wormery. There were lots of worms to observe and we talked about why worms need to be in the darkness. The children watched the worms burrow down into the soil before we put the lid back on the wormery. This inspired us to look at mini beasts so the next day the children used magnifying glasses to observe the mini beasts in our messy tray.
In our communication and Literacy lesson activity, the Chicks were given the challenge of putting the characters into sequence order according to the story and we counted how many animals were in the forest.
It has been a great week and we can't to continue the fun and learning next week!
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