This week or topic book was Whatever Next by Jill Murphy which the children loved! In the story we join Baby Bear on an adventure to Space. He finds a rocket, makes friends with an owl and has a picnic on the moon! The book was chosen based on the children’s interest in Space and offered a great stimulus to encourage the Chicks to use their imagination to embark on a range of journeys themselves in space rockets, trains, and even on a magic carpet.
We had lots of fun during our Drama sessions re-enacting our different adventures. We used prompt cards to determine where we would go. These encouraged the children to use descriptive language as well as challenging their physical skills for example when the were given the challenge of crossing a rickety bridge across a river in the jungle. They stretched their arms wide when balancing across the stepping stones and rolled side to side when it got very windy on our magic carpets.
During Art, The Pink Chicks created 3D models whilst the Green, Yellow and Orange Chicks practiced using a splatter paint technique and star stamps to recreate the night sky.
The Role Play areas were very busy with the Yellow and Orange Chicks this week who were hard at work in their 'Science Lab', wearing protective gear and having heaps of fun exploring colour mixing and chemical reactions. They used tools such as tweezers and pipettes to carry out their experiments and used lots of different adjectives to describe their observations and predictions. Everyone loved pouring and transferring liquids and other materials which also supported the refinement of their fine motor skills.
The Green Chicks enjoyed cooking in their Nature Café and the teachers were thoroughly spoiled by a delicious spread of pine-cone casseroles, seashell cappuccinos, and sausages made of sticks and twigs!
The Pink Chicks went on a camping adventure in a real tent inside our classroom, snuggling under blankets and cooking food for each other. One morning they even made cookies, pizzas, and bread rolls out of salt dough to support their role play.
During Literacy, the Pink Chicks focused on descriptive language to describe the details of pictures in their books which continues to develop their early reading skills. The Green, Orange and Yellow Chicks played a listening game, identifying a range of animal and environmental sounds. This was lots of fun and brought out a competitive streak in many of the children who were trying hard to be first to identify the sound! The AnimaPhonics games continue to be very popular with the children with many of them starting to refer to the phonic sounds independently during play which is lovely to observe.
In Maths, we looked at the numerals and made number lines. The children worked in teams and we practised counting-up and back down. This was a lot of fun, especially when we pretended to be sat in a rocket that was about to blast off to Space, calling out our own countdown together.
Our weekly adventures to the Common continue to be popular with the children. The children learnt about trees this week, recognising the chestnut and sycamores and we used magnifying glasses to study them up close in more detail. The Pink Chicks learned about the ‘helicopter’ seeds from the sycamore trees and tested how they twirl during their very windy outdoor adventure on Friday. We had great fun using the juggling scarves which indicated the direction of the wind. We tied them to the trees and held them high whilst running around, pretending we could fly. It has been a fun filled week and we can't wait to welcome the children back on Monday!
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