Welcome to our latest Preschool Blog, which focused on a theme chosen by the children themselves, who wanted to learn more about Dragons and Knights! The children have been telling us a lot of stories involving knights so this was the perfect opportunity to explore these ideas further.
Also, as it was Chatterbox Challenge week, we were giving the children lots of opportunities to develop their language skills and learn new vocabulary relating to Knights and Dragons.
At the beginning of the week, we looked at a range of photographs of different castles, discussing similarities and differences. We also learned new vocabulary to help us describe different parts of the castles including turrets, moats and portcullis. As part of the Chatterbox Challenge, we also had a small box of objects that we used as story prompts to help us tell a story and act it out. We have also been telling our own ‘helicopter stories’ which have been wonderful to watch and see the children be inspired by each other’s stories too.
As talk and language were the focus of the week, our investigation table, became a listening and discussion station, with a choice of stories by Julia Donaldson to listen to, sound buttons with words recorded on and a range of dragon related stories and pictures for the children to look at, draw and discuss.
You may have noticed our role play area looking a little different last week too. As we love to follow the interests of the children, we have previously themed our role play, which we found limiting to some children who didn’t want to interact with the roleplay in that specific way.
Our role play area is an extremely important feature of the room for developing language and communication between the children, as they are able to play out scenarios they enjoy, as well as scenarios that they might also be feeling less comfortable with eg, something that may have frightened them or a change in their lives.
As practitioners, we are always reflecting and trying to improve our environment in order to meet the needs of our children. So we have taken a ‘deconstructed’ role play approach, inspired by Alistair Bryce Clegg (a well regarded Early Years Consultant who we think is fabulous!) which included objects that could be used in different ways including different fabrics, cable reels, crates and cardboard boxes. In using this approach in our ‘Imagination Station’(role play) the children have been a lot more engaged, as different objects can be brought together to be whatever they wish including a boat, castle, princesses, butterflies, a bat car and endless more opportunities.
We are also encouraging the children to be more independent in their collaboration by solving problems between themselves and finding resolutions. They are able to access our ‘creation station’ materials in order to create something of their choice.
Last week the children have chosen to create cards, write lists, make crowns, shields and draw tractors. The role of the adult in developing this independent thinking, is to support them in developing their ideas, provide resources they might need to achieve their idea and respond to ‘teachable moments’ that are appropriate to that child in that specific moment. Through this approach the children are at the centre of their learning and when children feel valued, are happy and engaged by something that interests them, they are learning.
At the beginning of last week, we read Julia Donaldson’s ‘Zog’, which is not only a great story about dragons but we used it to practice using our rhyming skills. The children played an interactive game where they had to guess the words that rhymed from the story. We have already learnt many Phase 2 sounds and are now nearing the end of the phase.
During the rest of the term, we will be reinforcing the sounds we have learnt so far, we are pretty fabulous at segmenting (saying each sound eg, c-a-t) the sounds in CVC words but we still need practice blending the sounds together to read the words. Two different skills but combined together they help us to read unknow words and we will also be using these skills to read captions too.
In terms of being ‘school ready’ we feel our children have a great grounding for their future reading skills, as they will be confident when reviewing these sounds again in Reception and moving on to Phase 3.
Continuing our focus on ‘talk’, before reading a story called ‘How to Catch a Dragon’ by Ed Eaves, we discussed how we would actually, catch a dragon. The children were given thinking time first and then asked to share it with their ‘talking buddy’ next to them before sharing their ideas with the group. Then we recorded the children’s ideas in the Big Book, which the children went on to illustrate with pictures too. We had a range of creative ideas including using a rope, a net, catching a small dragon in our hands and flying in an aeroplane above the dragon, then jumping on to it’s back! We then read the story, learning that the boy in the story wanted to draw a dragon. Francesca said she could draw a dragon and would be able to teach everybody to draw one too so we provided the resources for her to be able to do this.
We also read a beautifully illustrated story called ‘Tell Me a Dragon’ by Jackie Morris. The children read the story first and then they were asked to think about if they had a dragon, what would it be like. Some children chose the dragons they had seen in the story to be their dragon and some children created their own, including dragons that were made of hearts, that breathed hearts instead of fire and a dragon made of human bones, which breathed bones too, very creative!
The children then shared their ideas in pairs first, describing their dragon and some choosing to draw their dragon on a large piece of paper provided to help support the visual (learn through pictures) and kinaesthetic (learn through doing) learners.
You may have noticed our ‘Steps to Success’ wall with all the children’s photos on. Under each face are the children’s ‘Next Steps’, there to help practitioners and parents to support the children in their learning and meeting their next steps at nursery and at home. Their ‘Next Steps’ are always linked to an assessment that you will have been sent on Orbit so please feel free to have a look under your child’s picture and see their Next Steps.
Many of the children have shown an interest in transport so this week we will be exploring travelling by different modes of transport. Also this week we will be having a special Muddy afternoon on Thursday, as part of Outdoor Classroom day, let’s hope the sun comes back and the weather is good to us!
Juice Nursery 