Songs, safety and snakes. It's been a diverse week. Road Safety Week provided everyone a reminder for being safe when we are out and about. The children have all been practicing good looking and listening at our zebra crossing, before safely walking across. Small world play of trains and cars have continued the learning, as our little Duplo people have shown great care travelling around the city, the children reminding them to look and listen for vehicles before crossing. Elsewhere the builders have been very industrious, the children continuing to show great enjoyment in learning about famous buildings and landmarks round the world, recreating their very own in large blocks, small blocks and artwork.
It's also been World Nursery Rhyme week and we've really enjoyed incorporating the five rhymes into our daily singing sessions. We've also started learning some Christmas songs which is starting to add a festive feel here at Stepping Stones. We're looking forward to continuing this over the coming weeks in readiness for a sing-a-long at the end of term.
The Gruffalo returned this week to squeals of pleasure from the children. The story has been re-enacted in the puppet theatre with great glee. The mouse has been on a hunt for nuts with his friends on the obstacle course and there have been so many picnics with the characters, practicing conversation, turn taking and counting. After listening to the story and watching the characters move on-screen, the children enjoyed a music and movement session with Tracey, pretending to be each of the characters. The snake proved a popular character and his movement and sound incorporated into all sorts of later play, even during Cool Sportz. The Gruffalo and his friends have also provided lots of opportunities for friendship play, practicing kindness and how to be a good friend.
The children have been hosting play picnics with their friends, with support from Jane, learning how to ask their friends "What do you want?", "Do you want tomato?" practicing their concrete counting, "You've got two!", "I have three, 1,2,3 biscuits" and familiarising themselves with basic fractions "Do you want half a banana or a whole one?" "You can share this with me, I can have half and you can have half". The picnics proved very popular and continued through the week with the babies and puppet characters joining in.
Enthusiasm for space continues, following on from discussions with the children and their tenacity for making rockets out of different resources, we watched the launch of NASA's Artemis 1 rocket. We were all fascinated to watch a real rocket launch and Tracey shared her real-life experience of Cape Canaveral with us all, the children inspired afterwards to recreate the launch out of Magna tiles and stickle brix. Lots of discussion about what they had seen and so many questions, "Can I go in space?" "Where is it going?". We look forward to continuing to track Artemis 1 and find out more in the New Year.
Next week we are continuing to focus on road safety, using our learning this week to practice safe crossing in our planned walk within Claverdon. The children showed excellent looking and listening skills this week, so we are sure they will show great skills with us when we are out on our walk. We will also be extending our discussions and activities around celebrations and festivals during the winter months, alongside lots of child-led play inside and out.
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