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!

Even more mark making

We know that all of our children learn from having lots of different experiences and chances to experiment with things.

This week we have watched the children experiment in lots of different ways with mark making. You might look at your child's marks and think they are "just scribbles", but listen to what they say as they draw and we see they are thinking hard as they draw. This is the starting point of writing!

Have a look at just some of the ways we have chosen to mark make this week!

Drawing what I am interested in 

A train track with chalks outside

Wow!

Using special UV pens and torches to explore magic writing

Drawing what I see and am interested in

Using paint to explore texture - "It's stripy"

Using iPad and Bookcreator app to take a picture of my drawing and then to mark make some more

We did so much writing on our new writing trolley outside we pinned it to the fence

These are just a few examples, we also saw recipes in the Muddy kitchen, drawing with fingers in the sand, shape pictures and mark making on the play dough. 

Lots of fun. Next week we will discover our new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle writing!