This week our topic book was Love Makes a Family by Sophie Beer. This wonderful and inclusive book celebrates all types of families and focuses on the things that makes a family, concluding that the most important component to any family is love. We discussed that most of the time this love is demonstrated by everyday actions such as helping each other and reading one extra story at bedtime! It was lovely to see how the children reacted to the story and the conversations it started around how we show love to our own family members.
The children related well to the story and loved the bold and bright illustrations in the book. We discussed what we do with our families at the weekends and the children painted pictures of their Mummies. Daddies and siblings. Some of the Chicks in the Yellow and Green group had the opportunity to make their emotion mats. These are a collection of photos of the children's' loved ones which they can access during the day. Everyone loved sharing their photos with us and enjoyed pointing to and naming everyone in the pictures. It also encouraged the children to ask questions about each other's families and to notice similarities and differences to their own.
During Cookery, the children made delicious and healthy heart shaped cookies which they then loved eating for a snack afterwards! They took turns using their hands to knead the dough and had fun cutting the heart shapes out while counting them carefully and placing them in a row on a baking tray. On Friday, we practised using the Montessori rope and holding onto a magic knot in preparation for our adventures on Wandsworth Common. We were very proud of the children for responding so well to the classroom principles. It has been amazing to see how well they have understood the need for the principles and it has been lovely to watch some of the children repeating them and reminding their peers to use 'walking feet' and 'gentle hands'.
After observing the children using comparative language freely during Free Play, we decided to extend their learning during our Maths Focus Time by focusing on differentiating between big and small objects. The children used 2D shapes and categorised them into two groups according to their size. Then they collaboratively completed a poster with big and small heart shapes to link the activity back to our topic book's focus on love.
During Music, the children were very excited to begin learning the Harvest songs in preparation of our Harvest festival next week. In Sports Mr Pedro focused on ball skills with the children and developed the children's gross motor skills and hand eye coordination when throwing and kicking.
In the Outdoor Learning Environment, our womery has been a huge source of excitement and curiosity for the children and besides the worms we also had fun spotting ants, spiders and woodlice in the garden. We continued our focus on insects inside the classroom where everyone loved playing with the toy insects and building them shelters and bug hotels with the natural materials and wooden blocks.