Early Years Learning

This week has been an amazingly productive busy week for the children and staff. There has been so much learning taking place its hard to write about it all! As Christmas is fast on its way, we have provided provocations for the children in order to see what direction they would take their learning allowing us time to see where we can take it further and extend it for them. We put out a large box of decorations and baubles for the children to look at,experiment with and be creative. We placed a provocation of a silhouette of a Christmas tree in the home area to see what they would do with this. Some children took loose parts, some children used the decorations we left out but pretty soon we had a beautiful,ever changing Christmas tree in the home area. Other children decided to decorate our permanent tree in the room by hanging tinsel and baubles from it. This has grown over the last week and we now have a beautifully decorated branch in the nursery all the children’s own ideas and work. Working together,problem solving,communication,sharing and creativity all from one box of decorations.

  

 

 

Other learning taking place has been about patterns and shapes. The children made a giant spiders web from string and masking tape on the floor. Again superb communication and a huge amount of problem solving going on. Measurement and symmetry was the adult lead and the children were able to follow this using their own ideas and problem solving skills.

 

 

Numeracy,problem solving and communication learning seem to have been a big part of this week. Something that has flowed naturally from the children with the adults guiding .

Once we had the chart on the floor the children used it but found balancing was a bit tricky!Using masking tape and completely taking their learning off in another direction the children were able to continue on by creating their own balance line. This took place on the floor of the nursery where they worked out how long they wanted the line, where it would go and how wobbly because “It would be hard to balance on”

The children have enjoyed Talk Time . This is a great time for the children to develop language,communication listening skills,sharing and turn taking.The children gain so much from this time and are always very excited to have “Their turn”

Lots of creativity elsewhere in the nursery, some delicious smells from the kitchen as the children made their Christmas cakes. These will be served to parents on the day of the nativity performance.

 

 

 

We also had a Talking Tub session with the children. Introducing a box with various items associated with Christmas gave the children the opportunity for chat and discussion about the items they chose to look at, their ideas about what they knew about Christmas and how we can take them forward. We then used the floor book to record our chat,ideas and lines of development for the children.

 

 

 

 

Other learning – Den building! Lots of activity in the garden building dens,thinking about designs and problem solving going on.Having to negotiate large items,using knots and tying them together and being able to create the image they have planned for all takes a tremendous amount of learning skills. Using Physical skills both large gross movement and fine motor skills.

 

 

 

 

I think we’ve all had a pretty amazing week learning together!