This week our topic was Mixed by Arree Chung. In the story there are blue, red and yellow characters. One day trouble breaks out and the colours decide to move to different parts of the city. By moving to different parts, a blue and yellow character meet and fall in love. They get married and create a new colour called green. Green had both the characteristics of blue and yellow but was still its own colour. The other colours were fascinated by this and they decided to mix as well. The town became colourful and exciting with many new colours such as amber, lavender, purple, orange being formed. This book promotes diversity and it encouraged the children to discuss their thoughts of inclusion. The children commented that all colours are beautiful and that they should all play together. The children showed a good understanding of accepting people regardless of their appearance.
This week our Free Play and Art activities involved lots of opportunities for colour mixing and experimenting with colours in different ways. Our messy table was buzzing with children all week mixing paints with paintbrushes and diluted paint with pipettes. We extended their interest of messy play and colour mixing in our Outdoor Learning Environment by mixing paint whilst breaking ice with hammers. These messy play activities encouraged discussions around creating new colours, our topic book and diversity as well as supporting the Fledgling's physical development. During Art the children used their creativity and imagination to combine colours whilst learning about symmetry. They used a paper folding and printing technique to discover how to see what symmetry is and to create their own symmetrical images. The children created wonderful, unique and colourful prints and were astonished by the results!
During our Maths focus activity the children practised their addition skills by counting different coloured Unifix cubes. The Fledglings were very excited about this activity and so we decided to extend our focus on numbers in Free Play by setting up a fishing activity. The children were encouraged to select different addition sums, before working out the answer and using their fishing rods to find the fish with the corresponding number. This activity was great for the children to independently explore addition as well as practicing their number recognition. The table was busy with children challenging themselves to find the answer to the different sums.
During our Team Building focus time the children engaged with an activity called ‘Lego Therapy’. The activity consists of children working in pairs. One child was the supplier and the other child was a builder. The supplier was tasked with building a model using large Lego construction blocks. Once they were finished they had to give instructions to the builder of how to build the exact same model. A book was placed between them so they could not see each other’s work and they could only use their communication skills to support each other. The children really enjoyed this activity and they were very excited when their models matched.
During Science we continued our focus on colours. The children worked as a team to come up with and create a pattern using skittles before pouring water on top. They enjoyed observing how the water washed the colours off the skittles. The children commented that the skittles “leaked colours” and it looked like a “rainbow sunset.” We extended our understanding of patterns and colours in Free Play the next day with shapes. The children used colourful shapes to practise creating their own patterns and to independently consolidate their knowledge of patterns.
In the outdoor learning environment the children enjoyed the warmer weather, choosing to 'sunbathe' in the sun and pretending to cooking delicious birthday cakes in our water kitchen. They also enjoyed creating marks on our chalkboards and washing the marks off using spray bottles.
We had a fun filled week and it was truly colourful with many tactile and exciting activities! It was lovely to see the children challenge themselves independently and to witness the extension of their Physical Development, creativity and Mathematical knowledge.
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