Chicks News - 14th October 2022

This week our topic book was Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Browne. This is a delightful story about a little girl called Handa’s who is part of the Ludo tribe in South-West Kenya. She places seven pieces of delicious fruits in her basket to take to her friend Akeyo, who lives in the neighbouring village. But as Handa’s wonders what fruits Akeyo will like best, a series of sneaky animals steal something from Handa’s basket... When Handa’s reaches Akeyo will she have anything left to offer her friend or will she be surprised as to what is inside her basket?

The Chicks loved this story and we used it to expand our language and vocabulary of different types of animals and fruits. For our Art project this week the Chicks were busy making their own fruit baskets and painting fruit to place inside! The children explored different ways to use paint and experimented with mark-making. The children loved painting their bananas with the cars where they made marks by rolling the wheels up and down the paper. For the oranges they used bubble wrap to make prints and they stamped the apples using corks. When all the fruits were dry they placed them inside their baskets, just like Handa did in the story!

On Monday it was National Porridge Day and the children learnt about the charity Mary’s Meals who we were fundraising for. We discussed the importance of sharing and helping others in need. This was also a great learning point following on from Harvest Festival. We learnt that Mary’s Meals is a registered charity which sets up school feeding programmes in some of the poorest communities, where hunger and poverty prevents children from gaining an education.

We continued our celebrations of World Porridge Day in Cookery where the children made their own Porridge faces. They spooned the porridge into bowls, chopped up the fruit carefully using the knives and made a face in the porridge with the fruit. The children shared out the fruit and discussed how they were feeling. The best part was eating the porridge at the end and everyone thought it was very yummy!

This week we also ventured out on our Learning Walk to the Common. We introduced the safety zone to the children and talked about the importance of staying within the safety zone. We were all impressed with the Chicks listening skills and how well they stayed within the guided area. We played lots of games using the scarves and had a lot of fun singing our favourite nursery rhymes.

The children have had great fun exploring all that was on offer at nursery this week but one of their highlights was most definitely the water play. The children loved making bubbles with the soapy water and blowing the bubbles to watch how big they could get them!

We look forward to celebrating Diwali next week and having another fun week at 345.