Our topic book this week was Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae and it was a huge hit with the children! In the story Gerald the Giraffe is sad because he wants to dance like all the other animals, but his legs are too skinny, and his neck is too long. All the other animals have their own dances; the chimps cha-cha and the warthogs waltz but nobody thinks Giraffes can dance. With some confidence and help from his friend the cricket, Gerald starts creating his own dance!
We took inspiration from our topic book by making our Circle Times very interactive, pretending to be different animals, and performing the dances mentioned in the story. We extended this into a dance session on Friday, doing the cha-cha and Scottish reels. The children loved listening to the different styles of music and free-styled to classical music as well as some disco tunes!
In Art, we focused on processed art where the children explored pattern making and textures. They created a range of animal patterns, including stripy zebra prints made by sticking black and white paper down in stripes. We used tape resists to create the effect of giraffe's skin and loved printing with bubble wrap to create alligators and tortoises. Popping the bubble wrap and feeling the differently sized air pockets encouraged the children to describe the textures and feel the different materials.
In our group discussions, we paid particular attention to Gerald whose emotions changed throughout the story. The children identified when he was feeling sad and happy and could explain why. We discussed emotions and explored the emotion cards during Free Play too, to extend our learning and relating them to how we felt.
In Maths the children compared sizes and lengths and we had fun finding out who is the tallest and shortest in the class. In Literacy, the children focused on isolating initial sounds and explored the objects in our sound boxes. The younger children were introduced to the ‘m’ sound and loved having the ‘mmm’ for mango as a snack. It was delicious!
This week we have also begun practising for our Sports day races and have loved observing the progress the children are making in their gross motor development and hand-eye coordination, when using our large climbing frame and balancing on the logs and tyres.