This week our topic book was Smart About Sharks by Dave Owen. We chose this topic based on the children’s interest in sharks. Over the last few weeks our Small World play activities and books have sparked a keen interest and curiosity from the children about sharks and where they live. The children had been talking about sharks as scary animals who prey on people so we took this opportunity to introduce the concepts of fact and fiction to them and to extend the children’s knowledge about sharks and the lives of other sea animals.
The children really loved this topic and they were fascinated by the facts they learnt about sharks. This topic inspired the children to ask questions and to independently look at fact books in. Free Play. It was a brilliant topic to not only contribute to the development of their communication and comprehension skills but also to extend their understanding the world and their personal, social and emotional development.
We extended our learning in Art by using playdough made from bicarbonate of soda, water and cornflour to create sharks. After our creations had dried we were then able paint and decorate them, using fact books to help us add the correct details to our sharks.
It was fantastic to be able to extend our learning about marine animals on our Outdoor Learning Day where we went to pond dipping to explore what kind of life we could find in the pond nearby. We found seaweed and small fishes and talked through how the life in the pond will change throughout the seasons.
Other popular activities this week included free writing and letter formation where the children were able to independently practise their letter formation skills and explore phonetic words and letters. They also enjoyed pouring water at our messy table where they had to control their movements to make sure they only filled the jars to the lines.
Our highlight of the week however was our 'team building' and 'understanding the world' themed activity where we created a mini sea in our Outdoor Learning Environment and talked through the effects of plastic pollution. We discussed how plastic affects animals and what we could do to help them. The children were keen to help and set to work as a team to create a safer environment for the animals. Some children were holding the bin bags whilst other children took the rubbish out of the sea wearing gloves. The children shared many insightful thoughts about the affects of polluting the sea and spoke about the harms that rubbish can have if animals eat them or get caught.
