Spring Term Week 2

We have had a wonderful week full of activities and fun

Exercise – balloon catching, football, making coloured bubbles in puddles, sporty mini sessions, bean bag games, rocket ballons and stampy rockets flying high into the sky. In circle times we have also been working on movement with dough gym to build strength in our hands and arms, and playing games where the children use straws, lie on the floor and blow feathers to make them move, crawling along to follow the feather – all fantastic exercise for our bodies!

Maths – number work on Andrea’s giant phone (see facebook for the photo!), lots of pattern work in circle times – animal pattern matching, repeating pattern work making bracelets and brick patterns, using our bodies to make patterns and copying them,  shape resources out on the tables every morning to familiarise ourselves with the names and characteristics of the shapes – we went on a shape hunt in reception and along our path finding lots of shapes in our environment.

We have following the children’s lead – exploring ice outside, spending time in our growing garden and our sensory garden where we spotted a caterpillar.

Our garden centre has been busy with children enjoying the shop style role play, buying and selling the pots and flowers are gardening gloves and we will be building on this next week with planting more bulbs together and tidying up the growing garden.

We had role play inside as well, our real home corner with real plates and cups and mugs which helps to build arm strength. The children have loved using the laminated photos of meals and this has been a great conversation starter for us, helping us continue to chat about healthy foods and treats. We have completed our fruit tally for the week – which is up on the board outside reception and next week we will be counting dairy items in our lunches.

We would love donations of compost and bulbs, string, shaving foam (not gel) and watering cans please to support our planning.

Next week we will be continuing with our maths work, one of the lovely parts of our job is to develop a love for Maths and to make sure that children have no negative feelings about any area of learning. Our teaching is hidden in all sorts of games and activities, all designed to inspire the children and promote progress. A course that I did recently highlighted that Maths is essential, we use Maths all the time in our lives and children learn the concepts in so many ways – learning about patterns and shapes, how to recognise faces and buildings using those shapes and patterns, understanding size – shoe size, size of a spoon – small for yoghurt, bigger for serving food for example, sizes of pieces of fruit – blueberries are smaller that oranges and shape – oranges are spheres and so are footballs.

Next week we are going to be learning about animals – making factsheets and drawing pictures and using non fiction books, we will also be keeping warm outside with obstacle courses and riding the bikes. More gardening and exploring technology inside as well.