Last week we spent another wonderful week exploring mini beasts, and enjoying ready about ‘The Bog Baby’.
In the tuff tray the children have been using blue playdough, pipe cleaners, feathers, pom poms and googly eyes to create their own Bog Baby, whilst in the water tray they have been exploring the glittery water, shells, pebbles, beads, pots and sieves to emulate pond dipping for the Bog Baby.
Our role play area became a laboratory, with the children pretending to be minibeast scientists using microscopes, as well as butterflies, with the addition of beautiful butterfly wings. They also pretended to be butterflies in PE too, using their arms to fly, which is all very good in helping to develop their shoulder strength.
We also had the added bonus of our butterflies hatching from their cocoons in to our net enclosure. The children were very pleased to see them emerging after waiting for what feels forever…when you are 3 or 4 years old!
At the beginning of the week, we read a story called ‘How Many Legs?’ The children were encouraged to count the different amount of legs the different animals have. On the investigation table, this was supported further as they were given the opportunity to match the animals to the correct numeral. They were also able to match Numicon and sound buttons, which also helped to encourage their listening skills.
As previously stated, in Literacy we read ‘The Bog Baby’ by Jeanne Willis. Having read the story, the children discussed how they would go about catching a Bog Baby and recorded it in the ‘Big Book’. We then used this to help us look for Bog Babies during our Muddy Morning outing, where the children were also able to use their ICT skills to create their own Bog Baby, using a paint programme on the computer.
In Phonics we learnt the new sound ‘ll’. The children were able to segment and blend the new ‘ll’ words, using pictures including a doll, well, bell, windmill and troll. As the children are loving being story tellers, we then asked if they could make up a story using all the ‘ll’ pictures.
They told the story of a doll who lived in a windmill who set off to get some water from the well. Then she came upon a troll who was living at the bottom of the well and didn’t want to share the water. Suddenly a bell rang and frightened the troll who covered his ears and the doll ran back to the windmill with her bucket of water. The children then decided they wanted to act the story out too, so we did.
We have also been combining our phonics skills with ICT, with the children using a BeeBot to recognise letter shapes and to sound out our ‘ll’ words. They were able to programme the Beebot to tell it whether they wanted in to move forward, backwards, turn left or right. The children enjoyed this so much that they wanted to play with it independently too.
We have all been very inspired by our ‘helicopter stories’ and the children have been very keen to tell their own stories, which they have done by recording the story in pictures in blank booklets. Some of the children have even begun to write some words to their stories too! Just the desired effect we were hoping for, lots of budding authors!
As story tellers, it is important that the children are able to verbalise their thoughts and ideas first, beginning to use story telling language such as, ‘Once upon a time….’. In time the children, as some are already starting too, will then begin to write words using their phonics knowledge to tell their story too.
On our Muddy Morning we went in search of Bog Babies. We thought Stamford Park would be the perfect place for Bog Babies to live as there are bluebells and blossom, just like the story. So we took our buckets, net and magnifying glasses to the boggiest place in the park. As we all know, Bog Babies are shy so we had to be very quiet. A few children thought they heard sounds of a Bog Baby and we definitely saw a flutter of Blue in the reeds but unfortunately we didn’t find any this time. But if you do spot any on your travels in the future, please let us know!
Hopefully you will have all received our School Readiness tips for parents. As September is on the horizon and we want our children to feel confident in their new schools, you may wish to read more to be able to support this transition for the children (and yourselves) as best you can. http://www.earlyyearscareers.com/eyc/latest-news/what-is-school-readiness/
This week, apart from all our usual activities, we are taking part in the ‘I Can’ Chatterbox challenge, which is an event that focuses specifically on language and communication development. The children have enjoyed various activities, including a great game of ‘What time is it Mr Wolf’ and we look forward to sharing more on what we have been getting up to during the challenge in our next Blog….
Juice Nursery 