This week we continued with our Christmas topic. Our Home corner has been set up as a Christmas Post Office which was a great hit with all the children. They children loved using the wrapping paper, sellotape and scissors to wrap gifts. We also used the gifts to expand our numeracy understanding by counting them and comparing their sizes.
The Post Office was also busy with children writing letters to Father Christmas and putting them in envelopes before posting them through the letterbox. It was lovely to witness the buzz of conversations between each other about Christmas, who they were writing their letters for, presents, Christmas trees and Father Christmas.
On our weekly nature walk we worked together to create a Christmas tree using different sized sticks. The children were supported by their teachers and sequenced them from big to small. They were all very proud of their results.
In Focus Time the Pink Chicks re-visited the Christmas story. We cemented our understanding of the story by re-telling the story through looking at the pictures as well as sequencing the pictures in chronological order.
The Green and Yellow Chicks had fun playing pass the parcel in their Focus Time lesson. This activity encouraged them to develop their listening skills as well as helping to develop their communication and language communication skills and use of new vocabulary. We focused on learning new words related to all the Christmas items wrapped up in our parcel. The items were ‘sparkly’, ‘shiny’ ‘soft’ and ‘glittery’ and some ‘jingled’. The children did very well listening for the music to stop and opening the parcel when it was their turn.
Many of our activities are now related to Christmas and the Yellow Chicks had lots of fun exploring mark-making when decorating 2D and 3D trees during Free Play. The children refined their fine motor skills and hand eye coordination by threading wool and string through a christmas wreath, mastering the action of wrapping it around the ring whilst following the teachers' instructions.
On our loose parts table, the children used a mixture of objects to decorate Christmas baubles including corks, gems and snowflakes. They created beautiful patterns, concentrating hard to keep the objects on the different shaped lines. We also used this activity as a way of extending and practising our numeracy skills by counting the different gems and objects.
