This week was a little bit unusual for us. In response to observing the children’s interest in seeing photographs of themselves displayed on our emotion and display boards, we decided to create a book together this week. The book includes pictures and writing, depicting the days and life at 345 Nursery, capturing our routine and our favourite activities. The children loved looking at the book together during our Circle Times and independently in Free Play as well. It was lovely to witness the children's excitement in making and looking through the book and we are sure it will bring them lots of joy in the weeks and months to come.
On Monday, the children were encouraged to share their favourite toys and activities with their peers, drawing a picture of these and in some cases taking photographs as well. These pages were then added to our book. We tried to include the wide range of activities that we take part in through the course of a normal week at 345! We captured our weekly ballet session, drawing and mark-making, playing with rockets and exploring numbers. We focused on the children’s ability to voice their own preferences of what they wanted to capture and include in our book which helped support our learning and understanding of the importance of respecting each other's views.
We have continued to focus on developing the children’s fine motor skills and enjoyed using the playdough during Focus Time. Following a ‘dough disco’, during which the children exercised the muscles in their hands, we used knives to slice the playdough. We discussed how to use the knives safely, distinguishing between the blade and the handle before learning how cut through the playdough correctly.
On Wednesday during Science the children used pipettes in our experiment. The concentrated hard to carefully transfer the coloured vinegar and enjoyed watching how it reacted with bicarbonate of soda. We had a lot of fun and the children were encouraged to observe and comment on the changes which the chemical reaction caused. The vinegar made beautiful coloured patterns which the children confidently described, naming all of the different colours that they could seen. As an extension from this and to continue our conversations around colours, we led on to colour mixing activity where we witnessed and experimented with what happens when we mix different colours.
During Maths, the children explored the passing of time and sequenced photographs representing the different parts of the day. They were able to confidently name the events and placed them in the correct order, identifying what comes next. They loved finding themselves and their teachers in the photos and were encouraged to tell us about our daily Nursery routine when they completed the timeline. We continued our discussion around the passing of time during Free Play where the children had the opportunity to use sand timers whilst sharing toys and taking turns with different activities. Lots of fun was had timing ourselves as we completed our challenges at our Montessori Practical Life area!