This week we focused on two books; ‘Please Mr Panda’ and ‘Thank You Mr Panda’ by Steve Antony. As the titles suggest our focus for the week was all about polite manners and being kind to each other. Just Like Mr Panda, we encouraged the children to be polite to each other. We discussed how to ask questions, using words such as “Would you like …? And then also different ways to answer; ‘yes, please’ or ‘no. thank you’. Some of the animals in the story are very rude to Mr Panda who wants to share his doughnuts. The children were able to recognise that this made Mr Panda very sad and that that if people are rude or don't use polite manners, this can make other people upset.
During Art the children made their own doughnuts and we discussed what flavours the different colours may represent. The children decided that brown doughnuts were chocolate, the blue ones tasted of blueberries and the yellow doughnuts were lemon flavour! The children used the beautifully decorated doughnuts during Circle Times and Drama sessions, offering their doughnuts to others and re-enacting the story, displaying all the emotions Mr Panda and the animals were experiencing.
In our Maths Focus Time, the Yellow, Orange and Green Chicks recapped their knowledge of time. We discussed their understanding of passing time, linking meal times to the different times of the day. They all demonstrated the awareness that breakfast happening in the morning, lunch when they get home from the nursery and that they have dinner in the evening before they go to bed. The Pink Chicks explored repeating patterns. They used a range of objects including blocks, sorting disks and Unifix cubes to create their own patterns.
We have continued to explore letters and sound and the children have been keen to use our AnimaPhonics interactive soundboard. They love using the iPads and listening out for the different sounds that correspond to each picture and letter. We continue to develop our listening skills through a range of activities and some of the children enjoyed scanning the 4D Animals cards and identifying the animals based on the sound that they make. Observing the animals popping up on the iPad’s screen was very exciting and we learnt how to use our fingers on the screen to zoom in and out.
Coach Pedro pulled lots of fun running games out of his sleeve and the children listened carefully to his instructions. Following on from our Maths lesson, he created a pattern with the cones for us and the children were very enthusiastic when playing colour coding games.
