Plans for May to June

What are we doing in Dolphins May to June?

From May to June we will be focussing on living things.

 

The children are really interested in living things and this has carried on from our interest in animals and growing, introduction of the caterpillars and the guinea pigs and the development of our garden bed.

 

The activities this month will be based around the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) areas of learning:

KUW-Show curiosity and interest in the features of objects and living things. PSED- Show care and concern for others, for living things and the environment. PSRN- Show an interest in shape and space by playing with shapes or making. CLL Build up vocabulary that reflects the breadth of their experiences. PD Engage in activities requiring hand–eye coordination. Use one-handed tools and equipment. CD Use language and other forms of communication to share the things they create, or to indicate personal satisfaction or frustration.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this will be:

 

·      Christine H will be looking at growing things for eating with the children. She will be bringing in some interesting fruits for the children to explore the properties of, talk about how they are grown and where and taste them. She will also be growing cress with the children to make sandwiches out of.

 

·      Laura J, with the children will continue to track the development of the caterpillars as they make their way from their cocoons to life as a butterfly. She will also be making some butterfly prints with the children

 

·      Cristina will be helping the children to make some books where they are able to sequence lifecycles of frogs, butterflies, hens and people.

·      Laura Z will be researching Guinea Pigs with the children and putting together a large scale book to use in the book corner with images of Guinea pigs and interesting facts about them.

·      Jenny will be continuing the development of the gardening patch with the children from the flower bed to a vegetable garden- planting and growing vegetables that we can eat.

·      Laura W will be organising an excursion for some of the children to an allotment to look at growing plants for food and raising chickens. She will also be setting up a lot of messy play to explore and role play gardening and the sensory experience of gardening.

·      Rachel will be preparing a range of images of gardening to laminate and decorate the outdoor area with and also use as discussion cards with children to support language

 What you could do to support your children at home:

·      Set up a little gardening patch at home. Even if it is just on pots, the pride children get from growing is huge and it really supports the concept of caring for living things.

 

·      Take your child to a garden centre. Look at all the plants and talk about what they are, what they need to help them grow. Look at the seeds, seedling, full trees and talk about the differences.

 

What are we doing in Sea Turtles May to June?

Spring time is carrying on, partly because April to May has been so rainy, much of our plans slowed down and were replaced with puddle play, but also because the children just love exploring spring, colours, flowers, animals, insects and fruit and so we’d like to spend some time exploring these in more depth.

 The activities this month will be based around the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) areas of learning:

KUW- Developing curiosity in the environment.  PSED- developing a strong exploratory impulse, exploring the environment with interest. PSRN- developing interest in classifying and organising items with intent. CLL Using language to accompany feelings, experiences and thoughts. PD being to use tools and materials for a particular purpose. CD-seeking to make sense of what they can see, hear, feel, touch and smell.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:

·      Manjit will be setting up some flowers in bloom collages for the children using tissue, straw and paint. Also some sand collages using coloured sand, glue and tissue.

·      Ella will be setting up some stamping activities using fruit and vegetables to look at the shapes they make.

·      Chloe will be talking about fruits and vegetables in circle times using flash cards and different fruits and vegetables. She will also be setting up some collages using seeds and pips.

·      Sarah G will be setting up some garden play for the children to role play gardening using soil, flowers, seeds, trowels and watering cans. She will also be providing opportunities for children to look at the shapes, colours and smells of a variety of unusual  and usual fruit and then try them.

·      Sara will be using magazine cut outs of a range of fruit and vegetables for the children to look at and talk about and then collage for display.

·      Rachel E will be helping the children to plant bean sprouts and tracking their growth through photographs.

·      Sarah Louise will be focussing on using Handa’s Surprise with the children to talk about fruits, colours and animals.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

• Buy some unusual fruits like lychees, dragon fruit, passion fruit, guava, figs and have a session trying them with your child.

• With colours remember to name the colours of things you are talking about or playing with. E.g. red rose, black cat, green apple. It helps them to start to connect the joining of words together and understand the concepts of colours and differentiation

 

April to May

April to May was a complete washout. Rain every day scuppering our plans for gardening and excursions to the garden centre! The squirrels seem to spend the weekends stealing our planter moss to make their nests somewhere else- hopefully the anti-cat spray will work on them too! (It is non-toxic and safe for children in case you were wondering). So we are a bit behind, but not giving up.

We have been able to establish our little garden in the car park and the children in both Dolphins and Sea Turtles have loved it and visit it daily to check it is okay and talk about how the plants are going to grow and what we will be doing next in our gardening mission.

A lot of gardening has also gone on in doors, particularly in Sea Turtles. They have been planting cress, lentils and tomatoes. Even an apple seed found at snack time has been planted and to everyone’s amazement, it is sprouting! The cress has been used to make some grass for a small world farm and the children enjoyed touching it, smelling it and investigating the stringy properties of it.

Sea Turtles also have a new exploration tank that they have introduced to the room for children to put their natural discoveries into. It has had lady birds, snails, slugs and spiders in it facing big eyes of fascinated children peering through the glass. They have fed them leaves, mud, oranges, grass and all sorts of things the children have found and insist they need!

Sea Turtles also introduced  some silk worms into the room that are pretty uninspiring now, but over the next month will fatten up and start to move through the interesting cocoon stage and emerging as silk worm moths. But for now we just have to feed them and clean them and watch them. 

We have been loving playing with the Guinea Pigs, Kip and Silky. We sit in a circle and let them run between us and some of us even have the confidence to hold them in our knees and stroke them.

 Lots of craft activities have gone on during the month too, with rain cloud collages, stamping, slime play in various consistencies, icing cupcakes, etc. One of the loveliest activities was the collage using paint, glue, pasta, tissue paper, tinsel and cellophane that was arranged as a sensory activity with lots of globing, then left to dry. A celophane cover was put over it and displayed for children to touch and feel the different textures through scrunchy plastic. They go up to it every day and chatter with their friends about it together as the touch and feel and squeeze the various parts of it.

The kite flying was good too. With all the wind we have had we made some kites for the children and teachers to fly. The children are fascinated by them and so we have decided to buy some kites for the nursery to have kite flying days in the car park.
And, we have also been doing some hard dry texture exploration with little trays of sand, rocks, macaroni, straws and glitter- great fun. The little ones absolutely love having the chance to really sit and ponder the textures and shapes of different items. Roaming our toy insects about in lumpy sludge has been a lot of fun too.

In dolphins the biggest buzz was setting out the garden in the car park. They took different groups of children to help clear up, get rubble out of the bed and watch the teachers chip away at that great concrete deposit that got in the way! Then they enjoyed choosing a plant to put in and fill round and they totally loved deciding how Nessie was going to be positioned. Next step, the veg patch….

Dolphins have also had a bit of a messy month. The children have been really keen on the messy sensory play activities and so we have had gloop, slime, mud, Gelli, finger painting, etc. for the children to smooth their fingers around and relax wallowing in soft and lovely relaxing play.

Caterpillars and butterflies have been enjoyed as we set up the butterfly tent and grew tiny caterpillars to great big fat caterpillars, then watched them spin their cocoons. They have just started to make their way out and we now have a tent full of painted lady butterflies that we are feeding oranges to and getting them ready to be released.
To extend our butterfly lifecylce work we have been making caterpillars and butterflies in art and the children have produced some beautiful art in different ways.

We loved flowers this month too. Some of the children have participated by adding tissue and coloured paper to a bigger group project. Some have drawn individual pictures of flowers- and they’re gorgeous- and then the children have carried this on in adding little flowers as decorations to a range of personal pictures and constructions.

We’ve also had a lot of fun playing in the rain. There has been no choice really!  Jenny has had some great times with the children catching rain in cups and measuring how much they have collected with them. Then there was the episode that descended into a water fight as the children started tossing water at Jenny who couldn’t stop laughing to tell them to stop.