Playing | Preschool Childcare.

Today we took our older preschoolers to the RSPB, for some fun in the woods.

2017-03-29 13.58.41

We were amazed at how big this tree was. Whilst we were looking at the tree we could hear a woodpecker hammering away at another tree.

2017-03-29 14.01.27 HDR

We made our way down to the den area.

2017-03-29 13.59.13

We found a great area to do some den building and added to the den already built. The children worked together, talking about what stick or branch would fit into which hole.

2017-03-29 14.01.19-1

This huge fallen tree was great for climbing and balancing on. The children found a hidey hole and a tunnel under the tree and used the area to act out their game and role play. One child got a stick and drew lots of shapes- circles and squares and then tried to write her name in the pathway.

We walked back to the lodge to have some snack and wait for the parents. Whilst we waited the children made up a story. Each of the children joined in and liked adding their piece of the story. Once upon a time, there was a lion in the jungle who met a big black elephant. They found a beach and around the beach was a moat. In the moat there was a shark and a dolphin. In the middle of the moat was a man who decided to go fishing with the lion and the elephant. they did some diving and found some treasure of toys and some chocolate coins. Another shark came along and pulled the plug!!! They lost all the water until it rained so that all the fishes that lived in the sea could live. The end.

Last week has been lots of fun, carrying on with the week before’s interests- lots of water and splashing. We added bubbly water to the tuff spots, pots, teapots, bowls, sponges, syringes and spoons.

All these activities of squeezing the sponge and using the syringes to fill the pots, will help the muscles the children need to write- grow, form and work at becoming stronger. The pouring and measuring of water will enhance the children’s mathematical skills by allowing them to work out how much they need to fill the pot up, how heavy the pots is and that it gets lighter as the water is poured into bowl. They develop and idea of whether the small pot will hold the same as the large pot. They are doing such fantastic learning but as far as they are concerned they are having lots of fun and playing.

We got our beautiful drums out this week, another interest followed. The children had helped themselves to the beaters from the instrument drawer and try out the noises on the tables, chairs and tuff spots in the room. We had 4 drums between 18 children. The drums were spaced between the children, those that did not have a drum, clapped their hands. They all listened well and practised doing loud, slow, fast and quiet by rubbing their hand over the drum. To ensure all the children had a go with the drum, we said ‘stop’ and used the sign for stop, then the children had to pass their drum to the next person.

Our activities this week were:-

2017-03-07 10.52.12

The children tried to build a tower as tall as them using the Duplo. They worked hard together, whilst one held the tower the others would find the bricks they needed. Then they would swap over. It was a real joint effort and only fell apart when the tower got too tall to be added to. That didn’t put them off they tried again, giving the tower a bigger base to see if that would make it more stable.