October reflection

Starfish
In October, the staff made a texture pictures wall for the children to explore. The children have spent lots of time looking at it and trying to feel the textures and in contrast to all of other sensory textures, these have all the same textures even though they look different. The children have been fascinated by this.

Autumn leaves have been a big feature of the month. They have littered the playground and every day they have been swept up, the next day has seen even more on the ground. So they have stuck them onto art work, crunched them, kicked them, thrown them, squeezed them and just really enjoyed them.

We have also done a lot of Halloween artwork; making spiders, pumpkins, ghosts, bats, witches, wizards hats and on the 29th, we had a little Halloween party where the children all wore the wizard hats they had made. We also really enjoyed the battery operated witch that sung ‘I put a spell on you...’ as she whizzed and spun about the room.

Basically, a whole lot of glitter escaped from the jars this months and it was a bit of a Halloween art bonanza! But also a lot of time outside still too as the weather has held out for us and we have been able to keep up our outside playtime and learning (the names for and where to put) our hats, jackets, Wellies, scarves and gloves.

Seahorses
We changed our fairy net to a camo scramble net this month over the sensory cube to create a new space for babies to crawl into to have a quiet space and explore sensory items or toys of their choice. The babies have particularly enjoyed playing with the material treasure, hats, bags and purses and draping them on their bodies as dress ups.

We have also had plenty of music going on as the children bang, rattle and shake instruments for the team to sing to. We have also added puppets to the singing sessions, so the children and teachers make the puppets move and join in with the music. And, we have borrowed two big drums that the children have been able to bang together for collaborative noise while the bubble blower blows bubbles- it’s been a multi-sensory joy!

We focussed on Autumn quite a bit and shared with children pictures of trees with leaves falling, conkers, park spaces, etc , then passed and tossed leaves around in our playground. We have pointed out our great big tree above us that sheltered us all summer and watched it lose its leaves and get thinner and thinner.

Dolphins
Dolphins went a bit Halloween crazy too this month as our harvesting and Autumn observations got littered with influences from around us of Halloween. Most of the children adored the crazy singing witch and took every opportunity to collect her from the office and let her loose on the lino floor to spin, cackle and sing. She didn’t actually make it to the Halloween party as her batteries ran out and she couldn’t quite make it to the finish line.

However, Halloween party we did, with lots of jelly and crisps, dancing, games and music with our decorations of ghosts, bats, pumpkins, cats, etc all of which we made and displayed.

The children have done quite a bit of garden tidying too as each day we have swept leaves (only to have them replaced the next), we have laid our sunflowers to rest, strawberries and tomatoes and farewelled them for next year.

Gathering up all the leaves has been fun and we have stuck them on all sorts of boxes, paper, etc to make little collages. We have also collected different conkers, leaves, acorns, etc and made little autumn scapes too.

Junk modelling has been a big part of the Dolphins and it has even continued on throughout the sessions as children independently collage and join boxes and decorations to make robots, trucks, scarecrows, etc.

And the other big craze in Dolphins is Birthdays. A lot of children have had them and so now they are all talking about what month their birthday is in and how old they will be next. Anything creates an opportunity for this discussion and a reason to sing the song!