Bowling Pumpkins

Today we really enjoyed bowling pumpkins! We found the pumpkins heavy so good exercise for our arms, and it was tricky to roll or bowl it towards our target. We were counting how many skittles we could bowl over and finding the right numeral.

First we lined them up and stacked them - very challenging and good for fine motor skills

We really enjoyed rolling and hitting the skittles. A queue of bowlers quickly built up, giving us chance to practise turn-taking and sharing!

I like the pumpkin!

Working with Nature

Today we were finding leaves and counting them. We decided to decorate our outdoor table with them. We stuck the leaves down with PVA glue and then added some more over the top to make sure they stuck. 

Some of us could count all 15 leaves on the table. 

Wonderful Water

We had so much fun today working outside in the sunshine. We have added more pipes and containers to our water wall and we now have a water butt. We spent our time filling, emptying, pouring and recycling the water.

When the digger came to Whitefield

We are fortunate to have a wonderful gigantic sandpit, where the children love to play and learn.

All that transporting has reduced our sand, so we ordered some more !

We didn't appreciate that a digger and some wonderful work men would come! What a great stimulus for conversation, and discussion. Many questions were asked from "How many times would they fill the wheel barrows?"  to "Why have they got yellow jackets" and "How can I learn to do that?". We were enthralled. We even got our own HiVis out and the wheel barrow. 

All of that talking made us want to write too. This digger driver needs a licence!

Washing pumpkins and The Enormous Turnip!

A few of Tuesday's highlights included...

Washing the pumpkin we painted yesterday. Lots of discussion about changing textures and colours. All that scrubbing was hard work!

Colour mixing with powder paint and water - made more attractive (boy friendly) with the addition of water pistols!

Stripping off leaves from the willow we cut yesterday to make lovely fresh willow sticks to use for weaving and forest craft

The chocolate play dough play is still popular - some of us wanted to move on to making cupcakes!

Nursery enjoyed acting out the enormous turnip and had fun with Dough Disco!

Highlights from our Continuous Provision today

Our continuous provision was focussed today on giving us great reasons to talk, and to exercise our fingers. 

The children really enjoyed the chocolate smelling play dough, and role played making their own sweetie shop.

Most children had a go at painting the giant pumpkin, which caused much chatter. It will move to the water tray to be washed tomorrow!

Polly Pocket proved to be a huge hit - and gave our most skilled fingers a good challenge

We also picked up confetti from sticky paper, mark made on radiator foil, hammered golf tees in pumpkins.and rolled tiny balls of play dough through plastic tubes.

And we finally made our very own Whitefield number line!

Ask your child which areas of learning they enjoyed today.

Foundation Stage Forest School Session

Today we spent lots of time outdoors. We had to wrap up warm because it was very chilly. We were shown how to use the secateurs and loppers to prune our willow and other plants.

We were shown how to use the tools safely

A little bit of guidance and reminders

I am now able to safely use the tools while my teacher is watching. I am confident and safe

We then used the willow cuttings to weave in and out of our fence. Doing this helps us develop gross motor and fine motor skills. We enjoyed this activity and we are going to continue it throughout the week. 

Counting Box

 Our special counting box was a source of fascination today! It is filled with treasures which are irresistible and need to be sorted and counted. We practiced lining things up and touching each one as we said a number name.

Spiky!

Can I count the animals?

A whole pet shop to count

Treasure!

How many can I stack without it falling?

Water Wall

We noticed that lots of the children enjoyed water play last week, so we set up a recycled water wall for them to explore outside. We had to think hard to work out where the water would come out!

World Porridge Day!

Nursery really enjoyed making porridge this morning for #WorldPorridgeDay! We poured, measured, mixed and ate. Delicious. 

Spiky!

We've been exploring some spiky natural things this week - sweet chestnuts, horse chestnuts and pineapples. We looked at them closely, and wanted to draw what we saw! Later in the week we will cut the pineapple and look inside.

Looking carefully - bumpy, spiky, ouchy!

I can look closely and draw wonderful pictures

Apple Crumble

This week Nursery worked together to carefully chop some brambly apples from the teacher's garden. We put them in a dish and sprinkled over sugar. We loved mixing the crumble topping - we used flour, margarine, sugar and oats and pushed it on. We talked about why the teacher had oven gloves and why we washed our hands first.

The crumble smelt lovely when it was cooked!

We all tried it, we especially liked the custard that went with it!

Mixing and taking turns

Where can we put the skin?

Chopping. "It smells like juice"

Learning from each other

Custard is tasty

YUM!