Chicks News - 27th February 2023

This week our topic book was The Colour Monster by Anna LIenas. This book is a brilliant story which uses colours to encourage young children to discuss and identify how they feel. In the story the Colour Monster is confused and emotional until a little girl helps him name his emotions and together they sort them into a range of coloured jars.

Taking inspiration from the story our Focus this week was all about emotions. This story also provided the Orange Chicks a great platform to learn more about colours and as a result we carried out a range of experiments to explore this further!

During our Circle Times throughout the week we engaged in some wonderful discussions about our emotions and talking about the different situations or experiences that can alter our feelings. The children have also loved sitting with their friends around the emotions board, discussing how they feel today and placing their photo next the corresponding emotion.

In Art the children used recycled boxes, toilet roll tubes and a range of different materials to create their own Colour Monster! The children used their creativity and imagination by adding eyes, arms, hair, noises and mouths. We also experimented with colour mixing and refined our fine motor skills by using the pipettes and watered down paint to create different colours. This offered the Chicks a great opportunity to independently explore the topic of colours further, whilst supporting their curiosity and observation skills.

The children also had fun making colour monster using paint and straws. This activity was good for strengthening the muscles within their mouths, which supports their speech and language development.

In Cookery we chopped up a variety of fruits to make a delicious and colourful fruit salad. We discussed the different colours and shared what fruits were our favourites. The children were then able to enjoy eating their fruit salad during snack time. Snack time at 345 is a social event and a time to chat about our experience when at nursery or in our community.

In our Literacy activity the Yellow, Green and Pink Chicks went on a listening walk to the Common. There were lots of aeroplanes flying over, cars and buses wizzing past on the road, and the birds were singing in the trees. It was a very icy and cold morning on the Common and the children found lots of icy puddles to walk through. The children observed that the ice made a crunching sound under their feet.

One of the children’s highlights this week however was making their own monster using playdough and the loose parts. We had some wonderful monster creations ranging from red roaring monsters to calm and relaxed monsters!