February has been a busy month with the children exploring the inside and outdoor environments, learning about the changing seasons, and extending their activities through their own individual interests.
We have been focusing on the story ‘The Very Helpful Hedgehog’ during our forest school sessions. The children have enjoyed making their own versions of hedgehogs using playdough, mud and crayons. They even created their own features for them and discussed what they were.
Some of our children have been learning about transport and they had shown lots of interest in Police cars. Our preschool children were lucky enough to have a visit arranged to the local Police Station. They also had a visit from a Police Lady called Kat, who bought her Police car along too. The children were excited to have a look inside and listen to the sirens.
In February the children have also enjoyed activities for Valentine’s Day and Pancake Day.
Physical Development
Show a preference for a dominant hand
Personal, Social and Emotional
Develop their sense of responsibilities and membership of a community
Literacy
Enjoys sharing books with an adult
Baby Unit
Our babies have been looking at transport and focusing on the topic the wheels on the bus. Different modes of transport have been explored and marks were made in flour and paint. They have been looking at colours and the colours of traffic lights, mixing them together, making marks in the sensory bags and creating zebra crossings.
With lots of interest in mark making this month, the children have shown strong full hand grasp when holding the crayons and paint pens when decorating buses. Our practitioners then linked our core story ‘That’s not my bus’ creating a tuff tray to explore with natural resources. The babies also painted a big red box creating a bus, then had lots of fun climbing in out of it pretending they were on the bus and saying ‘beep beep’.
Other sensory activities that have taken place have been gloop, cereal play and jelly. Different vehicles have been explored each week such a diggers, tractors, cars and using the large tyres outside to roll. They have also enjoyed forest school activities collecting mud and sticks and then taking part in mud painting.
Communication and Language
Copy gestures and words
Personal, Social and Emotional
Develop friendships with other children
Expressive Arts and Design
Start to make marks intentionally
Physical Development
Reach out for objects as co-ordination develops
Toddler Unit
Our Toddlers have shown an interest in planes, while exploring different modes of transport this month. They showed great imagination while in the role play area, giving each other bus tickets before they climbed into the bus, extending on play by making links to previous experiences pretending to go to the farm, the zoo and nanny’s house. The Toddlers used different transport wheels to create marks in paint and showed great hand eye co-ordination.
The children have explored different colours they might see in the different vehicles and emergency services. They even made their own versions of transport and traffic lights. While out and about on walks they have looked at the environment and explored the world around them looking out for road signs and vehicles.
Some of the children took part in making a large aeroplane from upcycled materials and they have taken the aeroplane outside to fly. They discussed different ways to travel and they were interested in trains and this was extended through using loose parts outside for the children to make their own train and they also had coloured flags to make the train stop and go signs at the platform.
Communication and Language
Copy your gestures and words
Physical Development
Explore different materials and tools
Literacy
Enjoys sharing books with an adult
Pre-School Unit
While learning about transport this month our preschool children showed some fantastic mark making skills creating their own buses, police cars and exploring transport in the small world areas. The preschool children showed positive communication skills in circle times talking about how they get to nursery and what transport they see on the roads.
One of the children’s favourite books this month has been ‘Colour Monster’. While looking at this book discussions were had about mental health and what makes us happy and sad. The children expressed themselves through group times and encouraged throughout the day to communicate this.
The preschool children have also been busy looking at literacy and our focus letters this month, learning how to distinguish capital and lower-case letters. Some children have begun to write their names and have used a variety of different mark making resources to practice copying letters and putting them in sequences to make small words such as cat and mat.
Communication and Language
Use a wider range of vocabulary
Literacy
Have favourite books and seek them out, to share with an adult, with another child, or to look at alone.
Literacy
Write some or all of their name
Physical Development
Develop manipulation and control
Expressive Arts and Design
Join the different materials together and explore different textures