Week beginning 19th September 2022
All about me week
This week we have been exploring All about me. We have spent time thinking about what we like, who makes up our family and what makes us unique. We have had lots of fun and exciting activities to explore along the way.
Our faces
We spent time using mirrors to look at our faces and draw what we saw, we also had fun collaging our faces and those of our family using lots of different natural resources. Some of the lovely artwork produced seemed to be in the style of maybe Picasso. We were very impressed with the children’s artistic flair.
We also used play dough to make some more faces. Again the children all had their own ideas and we soon had a selection of aliens and monsters with multiple eyes and funny mouths.
Making people with shapes
This week we incorporated shape play into our All about me theme, the children had to copy the cards to create different people, animals and robots. There was lots of lovely shape language going on and children started making their own creations too which was lovely to see.
Is there a doctor in the playhouse?
We looked at different occupations, from builders to hairdresser and chefs to doctors, the children love to dress up and imagine and play all the different roles. I think the favourites this week were definitely the playhouse Doctors surgery and also the playhouse Cafe. All of the staff and children and of course the dolls had a thorough check up and were plied with huge quantities of tea and lovely food.
Can you build a house?
We were thinking about all of the different homes we live in, from bungalows to barges and big houses and small houses. We also thought about the homes that animals and other people might live in and then set about making some homes of our own. It’s always lovely to watch the children carefully select the correct bricks and pieces they need for their construction, solving problems and coming up with different approaches when things don’t go as planned. Here are just a few examples of the wonderful houses the children built.
I like to play with…
An important part of children’s development is to be able to make choices and develop their own interests. Making our own choices and decisions is what makes us all unique so we encouraged not only choice making but also practised our scissor skills with this age-old activity. The children cut up pictures of toys that they liked and stuck them to their paper. Parents of a certain age may well remember the excitement of flicking through the Christmas catalogues and clipping pictures whilst making their letters to Father Christmas.
And finally Our STEM activity this week
This week the children were tasked with building bridges with cups and lolly sticks and then testing their design by balancing colourful rainbow bears onto it. This activity requires lots of patience, perseverance and good motor skills. The children were so focused when constructing and many returned to this activity throughout the day trying to build a bigger and better bridge that was stable enough to accommodate the most bears.
Week beginning 26th September 2022 Messy play week
This week at Community playgroup we enjoyed lots of Messy play.
Messy play is a very important part of all early years settings from the mud kitchen to the gloopiest of gloop messy play helps with so many areas of young children’s development from fine and gross motor skills right through to encouraging speech and descriptive language.
At playgroup we think it’s very important to reuse and recycle as much as possible to limit the amount of things that end up in landfill, so when we were approached by Tesco and asked if we could make use of shop soiled food that was unfit for sale and eating we jumped at the chance to stop it ending up in the bin. In these very hard economic times it’s hard to justify using food as a play item, however as this stuff was headed for the bin, we felt there was real justification for using it in the setting.
And here’s what we got up to this week
Oats and diggers
The children loved scooping and pouring the oats into the construction vehicles, it was lovely to watch and listen to them as they narrated their play, from vehicles that got stuck in piles of oats to some very innovative road making and pot hole filling!! It’s amazing just how much children take in whether it through personal observations or when listening to parents and family members but many of the children are very aware of both the construction of the cycle way and the problem of potholes around the village and were incorporating it into their play. Who knows maybe porridge is the answer?!
Muddy farmyard mess
The children had lots of fun in the muddy farmyard set up, stomping the animals around in the muddy farm before having a warm soapy bubble bath to clean up. I’m not sure exactly how many baths the poor animals had but I can tell you they were all squeaky clean when it was time to tidy away for the day.
Busy kitchen creations
Our children love nothing more than transporting small items from around the playhouse to use in play cooking, from counting bear soup to numicon pasta we’ve had it all, so today we decided to use some of the donated pasta, oats and beans as an addition to the kitchen to see what the children got up to…… one thing is for sure it was very apt for messy week as you wouldn’t believe where we ended up finding the oats and beans for days afterwards. The children had a blast and it proved to be extremely popular as we predicted.
Magical potions and cupcakes
We had great fun making potions, from magical ones that help you fly or turn into a unicorn to potions to keep the bad guys away our creative children had a great time concocting lots of colourful and shiny potions.
Some of the children made foamy coloured potions that they thought looked like cupcake batter so they asked for cupcake cases and proceeded to scoop the mixture into the cases before topping them with sparkly sequins and glitter. It’s great when children develop and extend the play using their own ideas and reminds us just how adaptable messy play can be.
Cloud dough
We enjoyed making cloud dough this week, mixing flour and baby oil to produce a wonderfully scented loose dough that can be used in a variety of ways. Some of the children used it to make sandcastles using our mini buckets and spades, some used it for mark making whilst others just enjoyed the sensory aspect and spent time smelling it and sprinkling it around the tray. Each child seemed to have a different approach including actually just sitting in it and feeling the soft dough.
Foaming fun
We had two different types of foam trays this week, firstly one was a mixture of play foam with sand which created a very sticky boggy area that our poor mini-beasts got stuck in. The children had to quickly rescue the insects before they got stuck forever in the gloopy mess. The second tray was a colour mixing tray, where drops of coloured paint were dripped around the foam and then the children used cotton swabs to swirl and mix the paint to create lots of different new colours. Again it was so interesting to watch the children approach this activity in their own individual ways, some just dived right in and used their hands, other used the swabs to gently mix the colours and other were not interested in touching the gloopy mess at all!
And finally, some cooking
Our children love to take part in cooking activities at playgroup creating snacks and treats to take home to share with their families. What better recipe to make on messy week than Rocky Road with lots of silky chocolate and lovely biscuity rubble and other tasty treats! The children weighed and measured out the ingredients, having great fun bashing the biscuits and stirring in all the delicious ingredients. And of course, the best bit was licking the spoons after we had finished
