Week beginning 1st May 2023
Exploring King Charles’ Coronation
This week at playgroup we have been focusing on the coronation of our new king with lots of fun activities, its always lovely to hear how different families celebrate special occasions in their lives and also learn about others traditions and celebrations. We hope you enjoy looking at what we got up to.
Forest school nature crowns
This week during our forest school session we looked for lots of natural treasures so that we could make and decorate some crowns, the children searched for items that interested them including some sticks, dandelion clocks, fallen blossom, red leaves and some lovely little blue flowers. Once we had finished searching for treasures we went back into our garden to begin creating our very own nature crowns, and I think they were truly regal and befitting for any king or queen
King Charles Sun Catchers, Crown wands and Kings guard.
We spent time creating lots of things to decorate the playhouse and our homes during the Coronation, first we made some King Charles sun catchers to decorate our windows, the children selected different bits of tissue paper to fill the silhouette, each child had a different approach from grabbing handfuls to carefully placing individual pieces, but the end result was absolutely beautiful once the sunlight streamed through.
We made some crown wands to wave during our celebration party, lots of our children are very into wands so this was a very popular activity. It not only captured their imagination but also helped develop their fine motor skills as they carefully wrapped and covered the wand handle with wool and coloured their crown pictures. I think you will agree the children created some rather wonderful wands.
During the coronation the king will be guarded by many Kings guard so we also had a go at making some of our own kings guard, who stood splendidly to attention during our party!
Sensory Union Jack and Afternoon Tea
We combined two of our favourite things by creating a sensory Union Jack and afternoon tea tray, the children love these sensory trays and at the moment scooping and pouring using our little teacups seems to be very popular, it was amazing how such a simple set up provided so much interest and learning among the children, they carefully gathered the rice scooped, poured and generally enjoyed the sensory experience. It was lovely to hear the communication that was going on from sharing ideas to compromising and cooperating so everyone could share the enjoyment
London, Bunting and decorating Crown Biscuits
We spent time looking at some London landmarks and had a go making our very own Big Ben towers, we also thought about castles and palaces that kings and queens might live in.
We made lots of different bunting to decorate the playroom for our party including some that has portraits of King Charles…….many children decided to channel Andy Warhol and produced some amazingly colourful bunting to hang!
We also made some jewel encrusted biscuits using icing and sweet treats, again very popular and the children then took them home to share with their families
Our very own Coronation garden and party
We decided to mark the Coronation by creating our very own Coronation garden, our new king has a strong passion for the environment, nature and is said to love gardening and flowers. We thought it would be lovely to make a bee and insect friendly garden that we can hopefully enjoy throughout the summer term, the children spent time preparing the soil before sprinkling the seeds, covering them over and giving them a good water, each child marked their seeds with their own Union Jack hand print.
We finished our week of celebration with a special party full of dancing, balloons, bubbles and special treats.
Life cycles, Growth and Change
Week beginning 8th May 2023
This week at Community Playgroup we have been exploring life cycles, growth and change. The children often notice and comment on changes in their immediate environment and explore how they change themselves.
Frogs and frogspawn
We started the week looking at frogs with some very slimy pretend frogspawn made from chia seeds, as usual the children enjoyed exploring the chia seeds and used the set up in a variety of ways, they matched the life cycle toys to the photos and talked about the changes they noticed. Once again it was lovely to watch the children make up story lines and demonstrate their knowledge. At one point a child arrived at the tray with a toy bee and another child commented “bees don’t go in here this is for frogs, bees live in beehives” We used our new found knowledge to help us make some life cycle plates, we added the pictures whilst turning the plates following the cycle, this is a great way to demonstrate the circle of life to the children
Bees and beehives
The children perfected their fine motor skills by helping the bees to fill their honeycomb with special honey, recently the children have been really interested in the mini beasts around the garden, so not only was this fun it also helped us to learn about the life cycle of the bee and also about the different bees and what they do, some produce honey whilst others help to pollinate plants and trees. Bees are so important to the environment and it was lovely to hear comments like “sometimes bees get tired and we need to help them and give them food, we need to help the bees”
Beans and Beanstalks
One of our favourite stories at the moment is Jack and the beanstalk so we looked at how beans grow, not only planting real beans but also using a super fine motor skills to thread some pretend bean stalks, it was really tricky work and took lots of patience and perseverance, but the beanstalks were amazing. As usual we encourage our children to follow their interests so not only did we have fantastic beanstalks we had some pretty fantastic bracelets too.
Caterpillars, butterflies and other mini beasts
We made some very hungry caterpillars and some beautiful collage butterflies, and of course read the hungry caterpillar story! It doesn’t matter how many times we read the story the children are always excited to join in at the end with choruses of “he was a beautiful butterfly!” We also investigated mini beast and thought about where we thought they might live. And as always there were lots of mark making opportunities.
Cress heads
We were very kindly donated lots cress seeds so we had a go at creating some cress heads, the children decorated their paper cups with faces before filling them with cotton wool, then adding cress seeds and carefully dropping in water using pipettes….. watch this space for the fabulous cress heads once they start to grow!
And Finally!!!
…….And of course it just wouldn’t be playgroup if we didn’t all have fun in the garden come rain or shine….. we especially enjoyed jumping in muddy puddles after all the heavy rain.
Week Beginning 15th May 2023
Frozen eggs, Play dough Ducks and 5 little ducks
Frozen eggs
when we arrived at playgroup on Monday we found that Elsa had frozen playgroup’s toy ducks into ice eggs so we all set to work armed with pipettes, warm water and wooden hammers to try and rescue them. It was very hard work and took a lot of patience and perseverance, and was a good workout for our gross and fine motor muscles, but we eventually managed to rescue them.
Play dough Ducks and other creations
We also had a go at making some ducks using play dough, turtle beans and feathers, it was amazing to see the children’s ideas and their creativity as they set about making their creation. Some children made very recognisable ducklings, others more abstract and some just followed their own ideas and interests and created rocks and other creatures. As always children are free to follow their own lines of interest and all creations are celebrated
Five Little Ducks
A firm favourite at playgroup is the 5 little ducks song so we couldn’t let this week pass without some activities centred around this, it’s an excellent song to help with counting, number recognition and Subitising (subitising is the ability to recognise how many by sight without counting each thing individually) we had several invitations which children were free to explore
Duck masks and Duck footprints!!!!
We also made some very popular duck masks, our children this year love dressing up and role play and they all had lots of fun pretending to be ducks, again the children’s individuality shone through and we had lots of different types of ducks. We also had a go at trying to make duck footprints which was lots of messy fun!!!
lots more fun exploring Ducks
There was also lots of other duck related activities going on throughout the week from painting eggs, finding and matching the egg shapes in the sand and threading to colouring, collage and dot to dots pictures…….. What another busy week!!!
We hope you’ve enjoyed seeing what we’ve been up to this week, why not pop back next week for more duckling updates and lots more fun, learning and exploration
Week beginning 22nd May 2023 Free choice week
As it’s the last week of this half term we decided that it might be fun to let the children decide what they wanted to spend their time doing, of course we still had our Ducklings Charlie, Rosie, Crystal and rainbow to look after and enjoy, but we wanted to see what the children would choose.
They are all unique in their approaches and interests, some enjoy just being outside and digging in the mud, others like to go on a bug hunt ot two and of course some just have favourite toys or role play settings that they enjoy. We also enjoyed our start sporty session with Miss Pass who did a mini sports day with us…… we especially liked the sack race!!!
Here are some photos of things we chose to do together.
