Our week at Preschool 14.05.21

How is it Friday again already Preschool!?

This week you have been super story tellers, actors, stage directors, gardeners and number geniuses – what an amazing week we have had!

In our personal social and emotional development, we continued with our HeartSmart unit: 'I tell the truth'. This week we learned to be thankful to be me. For our activity, I explained to the children that we were going to pretend to be different animals. I then played the music 'Carnival of the Animals' by Camille Saint-Saens and we moved around Preschool as different animals, such as, elephant, monkey, snake. After this, we discussed what we liked about the different animals and if we had enjoyed pretending. Wen finished our session by learning that it is great fun pretending to be something else but the best thing we can be is ourselves. thank you Boris for teaching us 'The best thing I can be is me!'

During our well being time, we took part in Cosmic Kids yoga, practicing our breathing exercises and managing all the different poses.

We have continued to build upon our language to describe the life cycle of a bean as part of our communication and language development. In groups we have been talking the sequence of the life cycle. "First the root forms down" "Next the stem begins to grow and a shoot begins to emerge from the soil" After that, the stem grows taller and leaves begin to grow" "Then the bean plant will flower and wait to be pollinated". (we are looking forward to exploring what this word means next week) "Finally, the pod of beans form".
We have also continued to share our stories 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and 'Jaspers Beanstalk' each day. We are becoming much more confident at joining in with these stories, understanding and answering questions and talking about what is happening, this supports us in developing new vocabulary.

To support our physical development, we have taken part in daily dough disco/squiggle while you wiggle sessions. You can view this weeks focus on Tapestry. We have also focused on using scissors to snip and cut using a variety of materials including, play dough, straws and paper. We have also been very busy developing our independence skills ready for school

During our literacy sessions, we have used our talk for writing actions and our story map to retell our story 'Jaspers Beanstalk' During small group time, we have also used pictures to sequence the story. Can you ask your child to tell you the story of 'Jaspers Beanstalk'? I have put our story map on Tapestry to support with retelling at home. Next week we will think about how we can change our story.
During our writing sessions this week, we have focused on forming the letter 'd' saying the rhyme "Round his bottom, up his tall neck and down to his feet".

To enhance our mathematics development, we have been comparing numbers 1-5. We played a game where we had to try and throw 5 beanbags into a hoop. Then, we discussed the amount of beanbags that landed in the hoop and the amount that landed outside. After that we talked about whether more or less had landed inside our hoop. We quickly noticed that even though some beanbags didn't land in our hoop that the amount of beanbags we had remained the same. Great observation. We then played in teams and compared who had the most/least /same amount of beanbags in their hoop. To extend this further, we worked our brains to think about how many more bean bags had landed inside our hoop compared to others.
We have also been developing our counting skills, counting in order from 1-20 and then counting on from a given number.

Within our understanding of the world development, we planted our seeds outside to give them more space to grow. We talked about how this will help the stem to grow stronger and taller and then the leaves to grow bigger. After watching a time lapse of a bean growing, we learned that it can take 50-65 days for the bean plant to produce flowers and bean pods. We are counting the days down to observe these changes!

We have represented the life cycle of a bean through moving to music as part of our expressive arts and design development. We began curled up as a seed under the soil. Then slowly formed the root down with our legs. After that, we emerged from the soil slowly uncurling our bodies and peeping up. We then gradually and slowly grew taller and taller, using our arms to form the leaves and flowers. Finally, we ended on our tiptoes and our fingers formed the bean pods. we have also continued to learn the rhyme 'I'm a Little Bean'.

During our free play, we have been painting, playing with vehicles, climbed in and out of buckets, used spades to dig, climbed, climbed and climbed, shared stories, used blocks to construct, created marks and developed our love of drawing and writing and taken very good care of our environment.

I think you can agree it has been another fantastic week of fun and learning!

Have a super weekend and I look forward to another week of learning next week
Tara