In the Lions room this week we have had a brilliant week full of amazing learning! Our children have been surprising us all week, with the amazing things they come out with! On Monday we have a brilliant time exploring the popcorn sensory tray. The children loved scooping the popcorn and filling the bags and bowls. “My Daddy gives me popcorn on boys night!” one child shared with us! Two children took themselves off into the role play to find aprons and then came back shouting “POPCORN, come and get your popcorn!” Pretending that they worked at the cinema! We later found a bowl of popcorn in the role play microwave! It was great to see the children extending their play in this way.
We also made ourselves out of playdough and loose parts, we really enjoyed exploring how the loose parts fitted onto the playdough. “I’ve made a stegosaurus and these are his spikes!” one child had used the dolly pegs to make spikes!
Tuesday was everybody’s birthday with our cake themed playdough tuff tray. We had lots of candles including a number 3 and a number 4 candle which the children really enjoyed. “This one is my number!” and “On my birthday I will be this one!” were two very popular phrases! We sang happy birthday lots throughout this activity and the children took turns pretending to blow out the candles!
We also did some painting with vegetables! “When I use the cucumber, it does circles!” one child noticed! One child even used the tip of the carrot to write her name!
The Dinosaur egg tuff tray was a very popular activity on Wednesday. We had to try and free the Dinosaurs from the frozen eggs! We used spray bottles and paintbrushes to try and get them out! This was very hard work and it was lovely to see the children working hard together to free the dinosaurs! “I’ll do this side and we can free him to his mummy!”
One child said!
In the afternoon we explored various fruits on the lightbox! One of the fruits we explored was a pomegranate, the children were very unsure what this was to begin with. “I think its an apple”, “I think it’s a vegetable for soup” and “Is it a mango?” were some of the brilliant suggests the children made. When we cut into the pomegranate the children were very surprised! “WOW! There are lots of little ones inside!” We used spoons to scoop the seeds out. The children then discovered that these could be popped! We then had great fun popping the seeds and looking at the marks they made!
On Thursday we made sandwiches for our snack. We grated the cheese, spread the butter and chopped the cucumber and tomatoes! The children made their own choices about what they had in their sandwich, and we ate them for snack. These proved very popular and were all eaten very quickly!
Later on, we explored shapes using Lego! We were very impressed with how many children knowing the names of the shapes! The children put the Lego along the masking tape shape. One child had a great idea, “Let’s get Thomas there are bricks on the track!” He then used a Thomas train to push the bricks off of the ‘track’ and continued using the shapes as a track for his train!
Finally, today we started the morning doing some bubble painting where we blew bubbles in powder paint and laid the paper on top to see what marks it made. The children loved doing this “it looks like bubble wrap” they said!
The rest of the day took an unexpected turn and we did lots of thing ‘hungry caterpillar themed!” Whilst reading the story Monkey Puzzle the children began talking about how caterpillars turn into butterflies! One child suggested we read The Hungry Caterpillar, so we found The Hungry Caterpillar story sack and looked at the story using props to help us see what happens! The children then began acting out how the caterpillar starts of as a tiny egg and eventually turns in to a butterfly! We finished the day off by listening to The Hungry Caterpillar on audio CD and then doing some balloon painting to create our own caterpillars.