This week our topic book was From the Garden by Michael Dahl which related to our celebration of the Harvest festival. The book focused on different fruits and vegetables and introduced us to lots of different types of foods including pea pods, cucumbers and strawberries. It also provided plenty of opportunities for us to practice our numbers and counting skills as we helped Dad, Grandma and the other family members in the story count the many fruits and vegetables in their garden. We extended this in our Maths Focus Time by working on a range of colour matching and sorting activities to arrange the fruits and vegetables into different groups. The story also triggered lots of lovely conversations about the members of our immediate and extended families which extended our learning about families from last week.
Exploring and learning about different types of vegetables dominated most of our activities this week. On Wednesday, the children participated in a tasting session where they were encouraged to taste tomatoes, radishes, celery, peppers and fresh garden peas. We discussed the colours, textures, smells and taste as well our likes and dislikes. We concluded that the fresh garden pea was our favourite. The Chicks particularly enjoyed popping the pods and transferring the peas inside their snack bowls, which quickly developed into a great exercise to support the strengthening of their fine motor skills.
We used the remains of the vegetables for printing activities during Art and had lots of fun exploring the different shapes the vegetables made. We discovered that celery makes beautiful flower shapes, carrots create circles and potato prints look like eggs!
On Monday, the children participated in their first Write Dance session with Miss Jackie. These will be held regularly on Monday and will be linked to our weekly topics. The sessions will combine movement, music and mark-making. This will help to develop the children’s co-ordination skills, arm strength and interest in making marks on paper which will prepare them for writing in the future. This week we used wooden spoons and bowls. We made circular movements with the spoons, pretending to stir delicious soup inside the bowl. This was then extended to drawing large circles on paper by holding crayons in both hands. The children loved this activity and we are looking forward to next week already!
The Parent Reading sessions also resumed this week and it was lovely to have some of the parents coming in and reading the children’s favourite books to everyone.
The highlight of the week however was most definitely our mini Harvest Festival led by Jim Sutton from Balham Baptist Church and was attended by many of our 345 Nursery families. We were very proud of the children for singing with such gusto despite having only been back for a couple of weeks! A huge well done to everyone!
