“Finally the Rainbow Fish has only one shining scale left. His most prized possessions had been given away, yet he was very happy.” – The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

Seedlings:

The Seedlings happily continued their under the sea topic this week, undertaking activities inspired by the book Tiddler, The Story Telling Fish by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.

After listening to the tale, we decided to make our own fish display. This saw the children explore different textures by placing paper over shells then rubbing crayons on top to create intricate marks. Some of the group extended this activity by dipping sea animals into paint before placing them onto the paper. Willow chose the star and Oliver selected the octopus.

The children had great fun in the garden dropping the sea animals in water, taking turns to see what they could catch. As they played, the Seedlings sang along to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Once I Caught a Fish Alive.

A blue sheet was placed on the floor to represent the sea before a variety of shells were added. The children excitedly gathered round to look at the shells. This was a great activity for discussing size, shape and texture, while also promoting the use of single words.

Star Of the Week:

All of the Seedlings – For showing great enthusiasm for our topic.

Acorns:

We’d like to start by saying a massive well done to Theo and Axel for their successful settling sessions in our room. We are all looking forward to them joining us very soon.

This week, the Acorns have been learning about all things that can be found under the sea.

We chose this theme to extend the children’s ever-growing interest in animals. The Acorns considered which creatures might live in the water including fish, whales and sharks.

The youngsters got stuck into a number of craft activities, ranging from making rainbow fish to creating an under the sea-inspired shoe box. For the former, the children were encouraged – with help from practitioners – to paint different colours onto their hands before pressing them firmly onto paper. The coloured fish left behind were just beautiful.

Later on in the week, the Acorns got to work crafting jellyfish sun-catchers using card, sticky back plastic, tissue paper and ribbons. The children loved securing the tissue paper on the sticky back plastic. A number of a group couldn’t resist sticking their fingers to it too!

The group had so much fun transforming shoe boxes with recycled materials and paint. The children started by painting the inside of the box blue before colouring the outside black to create a 3D effect. We then made little fish out of cardboard and painted them. We hung the fish from ribbon taped to the inside of the box. We hope you enjoyed looking at the children’s artwork displayed on our main window.

Stars Of the Week:

Theo and Axel – For adapting to their new environment so brilliantly.

Oaks 1:

Oaks 1 jetted off to Bermuda this week with Fiona.

The children adored hunting for treasure in pink sand, created to represent the shores of the island in the North Atlantic Ocean. To add to the week’s theme, we decorated our cloakroom with Bermuda flag bunting.

The children let their imaginations run during a junk modelling activity. The class’ creations proved to be the perfect props for a story that the practitioners scribed. Sebbie discussed his alien spaceship flying through the air, while Raife sailed his boat with his family. Ottie made a photo frame for her sibling and Theo put his loved ones inside a television complete with buttons.

Oaks 1 continued to develop their listening and communication skills during circle time and while our book of the week, The Gingerbread Man was read.

Star Of the Week:

Rosie – For her exceptional helping skills when tidying the garden.

Forest School

The children foraged for items suitable for use as a paintbrush; after some unsuccessful attempts with leaves, Christmas tree fronds were pronounced to be the best tool and the children used string to attach them to sticks and set about painting their stone collection with determination. For precise, definite marks they used sticks alone. Our walk took us to the children’s favourite destination, the stream where they delighted in playing pooh sticks and skimming stones. Out journey back to basecamp took a slight detour as the children compared their vocal echoes in the ‘golf’ tunnel making sure they didn’t disturb the golfers on the other side.

Oaks 2:

Oaks 2 had lots of fun enhancing their fine motor skills making jewellery this week.

The children used pasta as beads and wowed us with the way they carefully threaded each piece onto string despite this being very tricky! We encouraged the children to count each piece that was added. The youngsters wore their creations with pride.

We have been so impressed by the children’s abilities when drawing this week too – we’ve seen some phenomenal artwork. While putting pencil to paper, the children worked hard on each tiny detail and really thought about the meanings behind their marks.

Gloop making was certainly one of this week’s highlights. We challenged the class to combine all of the ingredients together – the children were very fascinated with how the substance turned from a solid to a liquid state. Talking about this was a great way to enhance vocabulary and introduced new understanding for the children.

Star Of The Week:

Peggy – For her excellent drawing.

Saplings

This week Saplings have been looking at buses which stemmed from Tamsin’s trip on a “big blue bus” last week.

This inspired the rest of the group to build their own buses most choosing blue just like the Arriva buses.

To extend this we looked at buses from around the world different buses from around the world which in some countries their colour signifying their use.

And of course, we couldn’t forget to add a song to accompany our theme … The Wheels on the Bus.

Star of the Week

Tamsin for giving us such a beautiful and lovely idea.

Yours sincerely

The Broughton Team