This week our topic book was ‘We Listen...We Don’t Interrupt’ by Donna Luck. The story discussed the importance of listening to one another and how it makes others feel when they are interrupted. Throughout the week the children practised taking turns to listen and talk and they reflected on the benefits and importance of listening to each other. The children showed a good understanding of waiting for their turn to talk by putting their hands up to signal that they would like to have a turn to speak and answer questions during our Focus Time activities and group discussions. It was lovely to see the children extending this and acting on what they had learnt in their daily interactions during Free Play, Snack and Lunchtime.
Our Role Play area was set up as a shop this week in response to the children’s continued interest in playing with money, selling items and pretending to be shopkeepers and customers. We extended this very popular activity into our Maths Focus Time activity where the children learnt about where money comes from and about the different values of different coins. They learnt to recognise the different types of coins and matched them to the corresponding sizes on their activity sheets. They also used money during their imaginative play in the Role Play area and it was great to see interactions between the shop keepers and customers where this knowledge was acted out; “This egg is 10p but I only have 5p.” said one 'customer'. The 'shopkeeper' replied “It’s okay I’ll give you some money so you can buy it.”
Our Drama Club is very popular amongst the children and they look forward to our dancing, singing and rhyming session every week. They purposefully select colourful ‘Drama Club outfits’ before they arrive to nursery. This week during our Drama Club we focused on co-ordination and working in pairs, along with our listening skills and ability to follow instructions.
The children were introduced to a new exercise which we called ‘Riding a bicycle’. The children sat on the floor facing each other whilst they supported themselves with their arms and they connected their feet. They imitated moving their feet as if they were moving the pedals of a bicycle. This activity supported the strengthening of the children's core strength and co-ordination whilst synchronising their own movements with that of their partners'. This activity was a bit tricky but the children were up for a challenge and they had a lot of fun with it. The children also learnt to dance in pairs by holding dancing scarves. They danced around in a circle, taking one step to the right and one step to the left as they moved around. As a finale the children had a free dance session where they showed off their favourite dance moves including break dancing and playing the air guitar!