Dolphin’s reflection on the month of November
November saw our home corner transform into a supermarket with children loving the change and spending lots of time role playing shopping, stocking and exchanging. Playing the customer and playing the shop keeper, as well as babies and dogs! Filling baskets and exchanging money and also lots of discussions have taken place about the different jobs in a supermarket- cashier, baker, deli assistant, stocking shelves, etc. The shopping game has also been really enjoyed by the children too. It is like the memory game, but includes a shopping list.
Some of the older children have been able to talk concepts such as running out of food at home and ordering more from Tesco or ‘going shopping’ to replace food used.
The general scene in the main play room has been children wandering round with handbags and shopping baskets as they moved between all the other activities with their shopping, taking breaks to do a puzzle or play on the computer with their shopping at their side and then cruising back to the supermarket when they have finished what else they are doing.
Painting in the garden has also been a feature of the month with children painting the area and even the teachers! One of the teachers dressed up in a disposable boiler suit and allowed the children to do a splatter painting of her. Very messy, but very fun.
It is hard to keep Christmas at bay at the end of November, so the children started a winter display that involved lots of planned and spontaneous artwork. As well as the white winter scene, most of the children contributed a collective papier-mâché Santa making process that resulted in our own model Santa.
We have also made some decorations for the room out of CDs and shapes we made from painted and glittered baked play dough mixture.
Even though pink day is technically in October, we did it in November due to a busier October and had just as much fun! Children and staff who remembered came dressed in pink to raise money for cancer research.
Our tea making has been a well enjoyed event as always. This month we have made sausage rolls (from scratch!), vegetable pizzas, apple and raisin loaf, we prepared beans on toast, a loaf of bread and bread rolls.