Celebrating All the Areas of the Early Years Curriculum …

 

Personal Social and Emotional Development

 

Our main theme this term –‘All about me’, helped the new and returning children develop friendships and understand about sharing and taking turns.

 

 

Communication and Language- Story telling of ‘The Enormous Turnip’

 

One of our core books this half term was ‘The Enormous Turnip’.The book was read during story sessions and then extended to a magnetic story board where the children became familiar with the new vocabulary and the sequencing of the narrative.

 

Physical Development

 

Gross motor and fine motors skills in action here! We all enjoyed going for a local nature walk. The children were challenged by walking and picking up natural objects like fallen leaves, stick and conkers.

 

Cooking and Food preparation going on here involves using the grater. Some of us learned how to make courgette bread. This provided challenges with using equipment that the children were not familiar with or had not used independently before.

 

Literacy

 

The ‘Core Books’ captured the children’s interest and after listening to adult reading the books, our children wanted to read the books themselves! We have enjoyed: The Owl Babies, The Enormous Turnip, The Gruffalo and So Much this half term. At our morning gathering our children find their photos and their name cards. This has made the children aware of their names and that print carries meaning. We will be doing lots more mark making and will be starting to learn to write our names very soon.

 

We have been developing our awarness of the weather by putting on our waterproofs and getting wet. The recent downpours were great fun and helped our understanding of our need to keep dry and put on our coats. Remember, ‘there is no such thing as Bad Weather …. Its about the Right Clothes!’ Exploring the texture of the new top soil was messy,muddy but fun. We then went on to do plant some daffodil bulbs! We have still got some flowers outside in the garden ! The giant tomato is still growing!!!

 

Expressive Arts and Design

 

We love to make and create! Here you can see us making observational drawings of pumpkins, painting pictures of ourselves and making play dough models of the ‘Owl Babies’. These activities stretched the creative ability of all our children.

 

Mathematics

 

We have been organising and building with the large blocks enhancing our ability to categorise objects according to shape and size. We have also been playing in the ‘Outdoor Garden Market’, it was a great opportunity to reflect the children’s real life experience of shopping. They were able to sort and count the real vegetables and at the end of the week the children were able to take the vegetables home to make a delicious vegetable soup!