Yesterday afternoon, we talked about how stories have a beginning, middle and end then the children sat together and created their own simple story. The characters in the story were O——, W—— and F——, there was a sheep, a T Rex and a monkey.

With support, the children retold the story and we recorded it on talking tins (voice recording devices) which allow you to playback your own voice. The children then listened to their story – one talking tin had the beginning of the story, the next – the middle part and the third talking tin had the end of the story recorded.

The children were amazing during this adult led activity, they enjoyed sharing their own ideas, listening to their friends ideas and were so creative! There were endless possibilities of how the story could’ve developed which is what made it so much fun!

This afternoon, some of the children made Chinese lanterns as Chinese New Year begins on the 29th of January. They listened with interest when we talked about red decorations and lanterns being put up in peoples home to celebrate.

Earlier in the day we listened to a story read by an older child online called ‘Dim Sum for Everyone’ about a family who go to a dim sum restaurant and eat some of their favourite foods. They chose little dishes from trolleys filled with dumplings, cakes, buns – everyone shared and had a bit of everything (which is tradition).

This week, the children have really enjoyed the story of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. They acted out the story; starting out as a tiny egg, munching leaves – growing bigger and bigger, making a cocoon / chrysalis and changing into a beautiful butterfly. The children sequenced the story, learnt some new songs ‘There’s a tiny caterpillar on a leaf – wiggle wiggle’ and ‘Two little caterpillars sitting on a leaf’ and have been creative making caterpillars and leaves for our display.

Today in Forest School the children made hot chocolate, climbed our ‘climbing tree’ and dug for treasure – which is still work in progress, I believe! 😉

The children loved mud painting at Forest School today, they painted Christmas baubles then added glitter and stars.

We have had an extremely busy week practising for our Christmas performance, crafting and creating. The children are all stars 🌟

This week, the children have enjoyed our maths activities, they liked matching the small world animals to their picture and using the cubes and numicon to make number blocks to 5. During adult led activities we have introduced number 5.

Our fine motor activity was really popular, using a variety of phones the children loved calling their friends / favourite tv characters and role playing together, calling one another! They had fun pressing the small buttons, dialling the numbers on the cards. This was good for number recognition too.

On Friday, the children made pizzas. They weighed the ingredients, measured the oil, milk and water then mixed, kneaded and rolled the dough. The children added toppings to their pizzas and took them to Claire, our amazing cook, who popped them in the oven.