This week our topic was Another by Christian Robinson. This is a story without words. It’s about a young girl who enters another universe with her pet cat through a portal in her bedroom. This new world is similar but not quite the same as her own world. They meet other children who are wearing a variety of clothing and playing different games. It is all about celebrating and looking at the world from different perspectives. The book inspired us to have a range of discussions around how we can use our imagination. It was this topic of imagination which informed our activities for the week.
In Art, we explored imagination through drawing. The children used their imagination to create amazing pictures depicting scenes of places where they would like to go and what they would like to do and see. During Maths we revisited the basic 2D shapes (circle, rectangle, triangle and square). The children used pre-cut shapes and their imagination to make a range of arrangements including houses, cars, butterflies and dinosaurs!
The highlight of the week was our nature walk! On our previous nature walk our focus was on observing the different trees and the seasonal changes. This week, to follow on from our focus on observation, we pretended to be explorers. The children used magnifying glasses to help support them in their close up observations of the natural world. The children discovered lots of different objects and animals including lots of exciting insects as well as looking closely at the textures of the trees, leaves and grass.
The children enjoyed collecting a range of different sized and coloured leaves and sticks. They counted their findings before practising their mark-making skills by carefully tracing round the objects on whiteboards. It was great to see the children's quiet determination and concentration skills to succeed in tracing round all of the shapes!
In our Outdoor Learning Environment the cars were popular this week with the children going on lots of big adventures, talking to each other about all the exciting places they were driving to! We also practised our gross motor skills and hand eye coordination by jumping on coloured spots, balancing on the yellow lines, and taking part in a range of ball skills during Sport with Coach Pedro.