Our new Darwin character for this half-term is Dorothy Dolphin, with our new Darwin Principle representing developing as a person, setting individual goals and reflecting on how we have developed (British Values - Reflection). This week the children have been taking turns to look inside our 'mystery box' where they were able to see someone very special looking back at them (there was a mirror inside!). After talking about how special everyone is in their own way, the children drew their self-portraits and wrote their 'proud to be me' idea . . . What are you proud of about yourself and your achievements?
What about your friends and family? We would love to hear from you - let us know!
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Our 'Big Feeling' for this half-term is happiness - we read the story of 'The Happy Hobgoblin' During their child initiated sessions later in the week, Florence and Imogen painted pictures of things that made them happy: What makes you feel happy? Let us know!
This week we have been reading our next Mick Inkpen book . . . This lovely story is based on Kipper wanting to choose a pet for Pig's birthday present. As well as sharing the children's thoughts and ideas about the story, we also discussed what needs to be done to care for our pets to keep them safe and well, writing a collaborative list together. As a follow-up to the story, the children did some 'shopping' for their own pets! We referred to a price list for a variety of animals ranging from 1p to 5p each prior to the children taking turns to select two pets of their choice, identifying how much each one would cost and then carefully counting out that amount of one pence coins and locating the corresponding price tag before adding the two amounts together to find the total. The children had lots of fun selecting their pets - which would you have chosen?
Do you have a pet at home? What do you do to help look after it? We would love to hear from you - let us know!
This week we have been celebrating Chinese New Year - and this year it is the year of the Ox!
Watch the video clips below to find out more: Chinese New Year is a time when families get together and celebrate. On New Year's Eve people put up decorations made from red and gold paper. Red is thought to bring luck, while gold is believed to bring wealth. It is traditional as part of the celebrations to give lucky red envelopes that contain money and symbolise good wishes and luck for the new year ahead.
After teaching the children a little number rhyme about 'Five Lucky Red Envelopes' we did some follow-up activities using some of the envelopes and gold coins. These included one to one correspondence when counting the coins, showing 'finger numbers' up to five and comparing quantities using the language 'more than' and 'fewer than'.
After acting out a number rhyme based on 'Five Red Dragons' we created our own long 'dragon' and did a 'dragon dance' waving gold, red and black streamers! As part of our celebrations we also tried some Chinese food - rice, noodles and sweet & sour sauce. Which would have been your favourite? Some of the children helped to create Chinese cherry blossom for our tree, selecting from a range of different media. A few also had a go at painting some good luck messages to include on our display. If you have been celebrating Chinese New Year, we hope that you have had a wonderful time! In the story of Kipper's Birthday, Kipper had made a cake - which included lots of currants! We decided to bake some buns for our party and talked about the importance of washing our hands to remove any germs before we started. We then weighed out the ingredients and discussed the changes that were taking place as we mixed them together. We talked about the importance of safety with regard to the hot oven and made predictions about what might happen to our buns after we had put them in to bake. We also made our own banana sandwiches - taking care when using the knife! As the buns were baking, there was a delicious smell throughout the Nursery! Afterwards we talked about the changes that had taken place - and then looked forward to eating them! If you have had a birthday recently, we hope that you were also able to enjoy your special day.
In the story, Kipper's friends took him some presents, each of which was wrapped in a different design of paper. We reflected back on the shapes that we had used for our toy designs and used a selection of these to explore some repeating patterns - using shape and / or colour to create our own design of wrapping paper! Perhaps you could have a go at this activity too!
Which shapes and colours would you include in your design? We discussed the children's own experiences of celebrations and talked about how recently, due to the current situation we have not been able to have friends and family round to the house, but that we can still make a birthday a very special day to remember! We discussed the children's ideas of what you need to have to be able to make a really good party and each child then chose three things that they felt were the most important and made a list of these, drawing a picture to go alongside. Here are just a couple of examples: What would you have included in your list?
We all decided we would like to have our own party to help Kipper celebrate his birthday! One of our children celebrated their fourth birthday last week, so we thought this would be a good choice for our next Mick Inkpen book!
Woody told us "There was three presents and one had a cake in and one had some candles and one had a napkin in. And Kipper eat all of the cake up, and there was some balloons!" We really enjoyed sharing this story - we hope you do too! |
AuthorWelcome to the Nursery Class at Greenfields Archives
November 2023
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