What have we been doing?We’ve had a busy half term starting with our Autumn Walk. We talked about safety when out and about – Looking both ways when crossing roads, only going into farmer’s fields which were accessible to the public, making sure we shut gates to keep the animals safe. We talked about stranger danger and being cautious of dogs that may not be as friendly as us! We sampled some blackberries but discussed not all berries are safe to eat and it’s best if we don’t pick any without checking with an adult first. We found a perfect ‘fairy toadstool’ but we didn’t touch it because it was red – "red means danger". Some children decided that the bright red berries must be dangerous too and you mustn’t eat them but the birds can. We enjoyed running through the crunchy leaves and exploring the lovely colours of Autumn.
We discussed bonfire night and made firework pictures. We talked about staying safe near bonfires and when using sparklers. The children commented on whether they liked fireworks or not and if they were going to see a display or having fireworks in their garden. November was very much focused on our British values in making poppies for Remembrance Day and talking about the brave soldiers. We made spotty biscuits and Pudsey bear masks for Children in Need and this led to a doctor’s role play and endless amounts of bandages! Planning in the moment brought about a vast array of role play including a Baby Clinic, Hairdressers and Knights and Princesses which led to the ‘Dragon Game’ staff had to pretend to be a dragon attempting to keep on their head a child-sized dragon hat and taking willing princesses out of the ‘castle garden’ to the dragon’s lair. The dragon was always hungry and the princesses ended up in the pot while the smallest but bravest knight tried desperately to save them. The children talked about what else might go in the cooking pot which led to making real ‘dragon soup’ using winter vegetables. Despite a lot of child-initiated role play the children still manage to fit in number work, phonics and scientific experiments – this half term we have been focusing on adding and subtracting single digit numbers, listening to initial sounds and blending sounds to write lists and simple sentences phonetically and read CVC words. We discovered that magnets attract metals (even through the table which brought about a considerable amount of amazement!) but that magnets push other magnets away. An early frost brought icicles -We talked about the how they are formed and the melting process and how this could be done more effectively using warm water and grit (the children had previously noted we had put grit on the decking and asked why) this evidences the great way children think critically and link their ideas. We made a ‘frozen ocean’ by freezing a bowl of water with sea creatures and using various tools to break the ice. The children explored ways of breaking the ice to free the creatures and they talked about which tools were the most effective, discovering that stones worked best. |
