This week our topic book was T-Veg:The Story of a Carrot Crunching Dinosaur by Smriti Prasadam-Halls. This is a story about a vegetarian dinosaur called Reginald who loved eating his vegetables. However Reginald soon discovers that he is different from the rest of the dinosaurs who all eat meat and starts to feel sad when he doesn't fit in. But one day the meat-eating dinosaurs get into trouble as a large boulder is about to destroy their habitat. T-Veg saves the day by using his strength to hold the boulder back. The meat eating dinosaurs realise that the vegetables gave Reginald lots of energy and made him grow big and healthy and they started to explore eating vegetables themselves. This story encouraged the children to discuss what fruits and vegetables they liked and to think about the benefits of consuming healthier foods. It also prompted a discussion around accepting what other people eat without judgement.
The topic of vegetables linked to our mini Harvest Festival performance which took place on Wednesday. Reverend Jim came to our nursery to talk about growing food from seeds and the importance of helping other people by giving food to those who might not have enough. The children performed songs related to vegetables and both the parents and children had a wonderful time. We were extremely proud of all the children and it was wonderful to able to invite the parents in for this celebration!
To continue with our focus on foods, in Science the Fledglings had the opportunity to make their own fruit smoothies. The children continued refining their fine motor skills by chopping bananas, apples, pears and strawberries. We also discussed the benefits of healthy eating, exercise and oral health and linked this back to our understanding of the effects of healthy and unhealthy foods. The children were very excited about this activity and they enjoyed making and drinking the smoothies. Some children expressed what types of fruits they enjoyed the most in their smoothies whilst other children expressed their dislikes. It was lovely to see the children expressing their thoughts about their likes and dislikes and showing a positive attitude towards trying different fruits even if they discovered that they did not like them!
We continued to take inspiration from our topic book in our Art activity where the children painted individual dinosaurs, before sticking on fruits and vegetables that they thought their dinosaurs might enjoy eating.
Our Role Play area was set up as a shop and the children spent the week working hard to keep the shelves stocked, serving customers and working the till. It was great to see the Fledglings working together and using their imagination to pretend to be shopkeepers and customers. It offered a great opportunity for the children to engage with numbers and money through role play scenarios with each other and to independently build on their communication and turn taking skills.
This week construction activities were very popular both in the classroom and in our Outdoor Learning Environment. The children enjoyed building houses, towers, trees and cars using different construction materials and outside they loved building obstacle courses and challenging themselves to see if they could balance on them.
We had another wonderful Outdoor Learning Day and this week we had the opportunity to we observe how people cut down trees and why as well as what safety equipment they need to use to prevent the trees from falling. The children then enjoyed continuing their learning of numbers by counting conkers before finally having the chance to work together to build houses for animals and princesses during our team building activity.