Tuesday 30 October 2012

Nature on Tuesday


The weather is getting warmer which means we can make the most of the outdoor area and enjoy all of the wonderful learning experiences that we can have outside. We cleared the weeds out of the raised vegetable bed and planted some baby carrots. For the first time in ages we put water in the water trolley, pushed up our sleeves and had a great time.

We set up a 'Pie Shop' on the edge of the sandpit. Sticks were used for stirring, candles and as food! There were measuring spoons, potato mashers and all sorts of pots, pans and plastic crockery. We added egg cartons which didn't last very long as there was a lot of water used in our mud pies.





As beans are the fastest growing seeds that I know of, we planted beans in some disposable cups.
Hopefully next week we will have some lovely bean plants to look at. Jack and the Beanstalk was an obvious book to read and discuss and the children loved it. All children were hoping to grow a beanstalk like Jack.




We also planted some sprouts in a tray and watered everything -Very well!!



As we were talking about the needs of plants we examined some different leaves up close and made leaf prints in some lovely natural playdough.



Getting dirty and exploring things in nature made for a very fun Tuesday indeed.
See you next week.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

Brown Day - Teddy Bear's Picnic

The children brought in their favourite teddy bear and we made very cute bear ears to wear. We painted little brown noses on all the children and ate lots of delicious food and had a beautiful Teddy Bear's Picnic!


Painting and printing with shaving brushes was great fun and created an effective fur pattern for the bears ears.




Coffee scented playdough, brown pop sticks, baskets, rolling pins and pasta teamed with a very cute espresso set made an authentic Italian café.


Tuesday 16 October 2012

BLACK AND WHITE

Mixing black and white paint to make lots of shades of grey provided a lot of interest and painting on newspaper was far more interesting than painting on plain white paper! We used our farm animals, African animals and pet plastic animals as inspiration to paint some master pieces. Lots of great language was used and new words like 'Dalmatians' were learnt. It was a challenge for the children to wear black and white clothing but proved to be very easy for the adults, unlike some of the other colours.

As I had so much fun with the black and white theme I suggested that my daughter use the same theme for her birthday party. It was really effective and I couldn't believe how creative her friends were with their outfits and how beautifully they wrapped their gifts in keeping with the theme.

Black and white party ideas...


Black and white mugs filled with black and white treats as take home gifts.


Black and white treats to eat.


Black and white day at school...


Black playdough with silver glitter and plastic spiders.


Counting googly eyes.


Matching and counting legs for our black cats.



Tuesday 9 October 2012

Yellow

The room had a warm, happy, yellow glow. Children were dressed in all shades of yellow including fluro and gold. We were spoilt with lots of healthy yellow food choices and sampled yellow apples, pears, bananas and cheese. Some of the fun yellow activities included...



Yellow play dough with yellow train tracks and accessories.


Gold coins, yellow containers, pegs and cups to explore at the light table.



Yellow paint, glitter and 'Snow' (shaving cream) for the children to finger paint with.

Tuesday 2 October 2012

Blue sky, blue oceans, blueberries, blue birds...

Blue is such a beautiful relaxing colour and comes in such a wide range of shades from deep dark blue through to aqua and pale baby blue. Blue is an easy colour for everyone to dress in because everyone has a pair of denim jeans and who doesn't love wearing their jeans to school!

Blue day ideas...


  Blue playdough, blue popsticks and blue utensils. 


 Blue dinosaurs hidden in bowls of rice. 



Painting with frozen blue dye.  



Blue pegs to peg on blue containers.