Autumn Term Week 5
Our theme this week has been exploring Autumn and learning about where our food comes from and cooking and baking and creating and tasting! Outside we have been working on our physical development with good balance needed for the obstacle courses we have been building and enjoying our Monday football with Alfie.
Forest School has been bathed in Autumn sunshine and the children wrap up warm in our waterproofs and spend the morning in the garden, lighting the fire, having snack and learning how to use tools safely this week, sawing wooden discs and using the hand drill.
We took two groups up to St Andrews Church to meet the new Family worker Darren and to see Ed, our vicar and they looked after us very well indeed – even providing the very special treat of party rings for snack time! We always head off quickly after the snack before the sugar rush hits! The children behaved beautifully and walked very carefully up to the Church, listened to instructions and explored the church. We talked about where our food comes from and at the end of our trip we had a look at the food bank. We collect food from Tesco and Aldi and make up bags for families in our setting to collect. We have also been incredibly lucky to be awarded a grant from Aldi to buy food to create our own foodbank to top up the donations we collect with fresh items and more store cupboard items too.
Our circle times have had an Autumn focus and the Star group are creating their own Autumn display. The children have been painting with leaves they have collected, made hand print leaves, decorated autumn leaves and have been out in the garden collecting more leaves. The group have also explored pumpkins, made trees for Autumn and talked about leaves falling down, hibernating animals, made hedgehogs and enjoyed tree printing – what a fun filled week of learning!
The Sun and Moon groups have also talked about Autumn as a season, they have made sun catchers which are now on the windows in each room looking lovely, been out of pre-school on a mini autumn walk to collect leaves and talk about the colours and learnt a new song about Autumn. They have made clay hedgehogs, adding spines and snouts and working the clay into a ball which is good for hand strength. The groups have played a Scarecrow game with Michelle (A bit like What’s the time Mr Wolf) and made scarecrow shape pictures, talked about harvest and where our food comes from and played pass the pumpkin!
During free flow we have used salt dough to make cafe style items for our roleplay next week, made smoothies, pretend cakes, played with oranges/lemons/limes as a sensory tray and got messy with gloop and foam and custard powder!
Next week we will be enjoying more exercise outside, maths with an autumn theme, dough disco on the sun table in the morning and learning about healthy habits and some cafe role play too with some lovely wooden new toys from Aldi!