“It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.” – Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

Saplings:

It’s been another fun-filled week for our Saplings.

To support our theme of healthy eating, we let the children choose if they’d like to top their porridge with strawberries or blueberries. The youngsters helped chop up the fruit too. This inspired a round of our favourite Hungry Caterpillar game, where the children select food to slot into its mouth.

The Saplings also thoroughly enjoyed a mark-making activity with crayons and had so much fun exploring the texture of modelling clay too. They loved rolling out the dough before getting creative with different cutters. Cornelius told a practitioner that the play dough felt squishy in his hands.

While out in the garden, the children weren’t afraid to get grubby as they scooped the pulp out of pumpkins. This action will help with their confidence when using cutlery at mealtimes. The children boosted gross motor skills too on our balancing beams.

Star Of the Week:

Axel – For always being the first to try new things and remaining engaged.

Seedlings and Acorns:

This week, our Seedlings and Acorns have been exploring the season.

We started off with a spot of pumpkin painting, using seasonal shades of red, orange and brown. The children used brushes, cotton wool and sponges to paint with, and got stuck exploring with their hands and fingers.

Later in the week, the youngsters made their own pumpkin collages. The children loved using different pens, pencils and crayons to colour in their pictures.

The Seedlings and Acorns were thrilled to have the chance to make a pumpkin patch using crushed up corn flakes, diggers and spoons. Freddie loved using the tracks of the vehicles to make marks in the cereal. All the children absolutely adored playing with this autumnal scene.

We ended our week with sensory play and baking. For the former, we made our own spooky sensory bags. One was full of oil and spiders, and the other, water and bats. Annabel and Nellie especially enjoyed playing with these – they loved seeing the way the animals moved through the liquid.

We also worked collaboratively to make pumpkin patch gloop. We added the pumpkins we’d painted at the beginning of the week to our sticky orange solution, along with some bowls and spoons for scooping.

Our engaging baking activity saw the children make pumpkin crispy cakes. To do this, we added a few droplets of orange food colouring into white chocolate. Once all assembled, the children were interested to compare their homemade pumpkins to the real ones.

Stars Of the Week:

Acorns: Olivia – For joining in so well with activities and really being on the move.

Seedlings: Annabel – For being really kind to her friends and teachers.

Oaks 2:

Oaks 2 kicked off the week exploring Little Red Riding Hood.

As we spoke to the children about the fairytale, we put a focus on listening with our ears, looking with our eyes and sitting on our bottoms. Choice is part of our curriculum and the children are invited to sit in their own way, whether it’s on a chair, a cushion or a blanket.

We’ve also been inspecting the autumnal changes in our outdoor space and the children have been encouraged to explore this through the flora and fauna and on our own special spider hunt (chanted to the tune of We’re Going on A Bear Hunt). The children giggled their way through the bushes as they looked out for creepy crawlies.

This week we have been exploring the first letter of our names too, which we will continue as part of our self-awareness curriculum. Next week, we’ll be sending home our All About Me flower for our self-art booklet that we will be filling over the coming weeks.

Star Of the Week:

Ela and Daphne – for cheekily pretending to be each other and making us laugh with their amusing stories.

Oaks 1:

Apples have been central to our learning this week, and we’ve put a real focus on counting, sorting, painting and eating. With such an abundance of fruit the children have been diligently gathering them up daily. We played a great game of 5 green apples sitting on the fence, the children’s recall and reverse counting was great.

We also headed out for a long and fascinating nature walk to Chipstead. The children adore wrapping up for an excursion and are always so excited to have the chance to use their senses to explore and discover. Outings like this are brilliant for teaching descriptive language.

We have really enjoyed our forest area this week too, cooking a warming curry over the open fire to celebrate World Food Day. Teaching children the how to enjoy fires and outdoor dining is integral to experience risk taking in a safe environment.

We’ve continued with our jolly phonics this week and the children have made truly excellent progress. Please do encourage your little one to sing along to the songs at home too to reinforce their learning. We’ve spent time reading about the panda who promised and the whale who wanted more. We’re delighted to inform you that the children are now able to answer more complex questions at circle time.

Star Of the Week:

James J – for his interest and involvement at Forest School

Forest School

This week we welcomed our new recruits who had a wonderful time exploring the woods, learning how to keep safe and risk assess all that the forest has to offer, from climbing trees, coming when called using our call sign to building fires, it’s a lot to absorb, but the team coped admirably and with a chill in the air and rain forecast, had all the elements to battle in their first week. Well done team, you were great.

We made our own ‘clay’ mixing natural ingredients of mud and cornflour which Amalie ‘worked’ beautifully together to blend to a perfect consistency; no mean feat given the weather, the children then created some eery faces which now cling to the trees.

Next week we’ll explore a little further.

Yours sincerely

The Team at Broughton