This week's topic book was The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires. We chose the book in response to the children’s interest in constructing models. The book is all about a little girl who loves creating things. She uses different scrap materials to build different models. However, every time she finishes a model she isn't happy with the outcome and has to start building again. Eventually she starts to feel very frustrated and angry. To calm herself down, she goes for a walk and things don’t look so bad after all. She realises that every model she had built had something good about it and she decided to use different parts from all of her models to create her most magnificent thing. The story encourages the children to build on their perseverance. It provided a great talking point for us to open up conversation around how to regulate our feelings and how to problem solve when we take part in creative projects. The book concludes that things might not always go well straight away but it is important to persevere and adapt our ideas and sometimes good ideas will come to us by taking a break.
We fully incorporated our topic book and our theme of construction into our Focused Activities across the week. During our Maths Focused activity the children used rulers and shape stencils to design their own models and on Wednesday the children wrote step by step instructions to describe of how to build their models. On Thursday we discussed different forces including 'push', 'pull' and 'twist' and we discussed how things work.
In the Blue bubble the Role Play area was set up as a construction site where the children wore hard hats, showing a good understanding of the importance of keeping safe whilst they constructed. Throughout the week we extended our Role Play area with different construction materials including foam bricks, wooden blocks and large Lego construction materials.
The children actively engaged with our wall displays using them as inspiration for ideas of different models to build. They also matched their tools to the pictures. The children built a range of incredible models including tall buildings and towers as well as bridges which they tested by carefully walking over, using their concentration and focus to keep their balance!
In both the Red and the Blue group the children had endless fun working on creating their own 'magnificent things' at our DT table which was extended daily with different materials. The children created dinosaurs, flamingos, sharks, lorries, houses and other brilliant models by cutting, gluing, painting and decorating.
On Monday the children continued share their 'Weekend News' by taking turns and listening to one another. They practised their writing skills by tracing and copying short sentences for the whiteboards. It is wonderful to see the children independently form letters and becoming more confident in their abilities. The children find a lot of joy in writing and they often choose to write messages to each other independently during Free Play, pretending to be teachers and helping each other form letters.
The Red bubble's Role Play area was set up as a Doctor’s surgery where the children had a lot of fun looking after their patients and administrating medicines. They discussed health and how to look after our body talking through the importance of exercise and a healthy diet.
On Friday we played a game of Twister to consolidate the children’s knowledge of left and right for example by asking the children to place their left foot on the red dot and right hand on the yellow dot. The Fledglings continued their environmental walks this week. The Red bubble enjoyed doing exercises to music on the common whilst the Blue group brought joy by singing their favourite songs to people passing by!
Throughout the week these activities captured the children’s attention and interest greatly and it was wonderful to see their creativity and amazing ideas flourish and develop through all of the activities. It has been a wonderful week and we can't wait to welcome the children back on Monday.