Jumbo Pippettes

The latest addition to our resources was some jumbo eyedroppers, large colourful pipettes that I thought would be great for the children's developing coordination and fine motor skills.

To gain the children's interest I provided some bicarbonate of soda with some drops of food colouring in them along with a pot of vinegar and they could not wait to get started. They were fascinated by the immediate reaction of the powder and began commenting on both the fizzing noise and the colours. 

The use of the muffin tray proved fascinating for the children also as they began to move their coloured liquids from one compartment to the other. 

These pipettes were a huge success with all ages and we shall definitely be looking out for more ways to make use of them soon.

Road Safety Week

This week is national road safety week in England and we have used this as good reason to learn a bit more about road safety. While we are regularly crossing roads and road safety is an integral part of our daily routine but this week we have focussed on why we do things a little more. 

We have been out to our local park with the scooters and looked at the purpose of zebra crossings and how we hold hands near the road. 

We have used our cars at home to enhance awareness of safe places to cross the road as well as having a traffic light theme to some of our craft this week where the children talked about the colours of the lights and what they mean.

Bonfire Night

This week we have been busy learning about bonfire night. We have talked about the shapes, colours and noises of fireworks as well as learning some basic fire safety.

After talking about what we might see at a firework display it was time to get creative. I always look for ideas that enable children to create their own work without me guiding and taking away their creativity and I loved the idea of the cutting the toilet roll to make fireworks for this reason. Some of the children kept their colours completely separate, others piled the paint all over the paper and one child created one large circular firework!

We then set about making our bonfires. We lined some fire colours up on some black paper and the children used their sponges to make a fire pattern all over their paper. We then discussed how the fire needed wood to burn and the children collected some sticks that they then stuck onto their pictures to make the fire base. 

Halloween Sensory Play

We like any excuse for some sensory play here and a Halloween themed tray was a perfect excuse to engage!

This year we used water beads, the beads normally used in flower vases! These are great for sensory and fine motor skills as the children try and pick them up, both with fingers and spoon, and pour them into various cups and pots. I added some other halloween goodies and off they went.

 As ever we saw some great imaginary play with the children making wonderful potions. The aspect they were most fascinated with was pouring the slimy beads from one cup to the other, using their descriptive language to talk about the feel of the beads.

Diwali Candle Holders (Diyas)

This week marks the ancient Hindu festival of light celebrations known as Diwali. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) places considerable emphasis on enhancing children's awareness of other cultures to support their learning and development and at the relatively young age of the children here a good way to do this is through craft activities.

We have used salt dough in the past but never baked it so this was a bit of an experiment! I made two different colours of dough and the children talked about the colours and chose their dough. They played with the dough, rolling it into balls and then flattening it out. We used the candle to make imprints in the dough and then placed it in the oven to bake - this did lead to some confusion as the children thought we were going to then eat the dough!

Once baked the children then set about decorating their candle holders with glitter glue and sequins, enhancing their fine motor skills to create some lovely candle holders. We lit them and talked about the festival of lights.