We have had a busy week in Anemones full of exploration, creativity and sensory play and a special visitor!

On Wednesday, we had an exciting visit from John from Oxford Song! The children had a fantastic time exploring music and different instruments throughout the morning, engaging in lots of fun activities.

In maths this week, the children focused on developing their understanding of numbers 1-5. They practiced fast recognition of up to 5 objects through subitising, which helped them identify quantities without counting individually. The children linked numerals to amounts, matching the correct number of objects to the corresponding numeral up to 5. We explored this through bean bag games, and the bucket subitising game!

In phonics, our focus this term is rhythm and rhyme. They worked on developing their phonological awareness, participating in activities that emphasized rhyming words and sounds. The children are working on learning lots of rhyming words!

At the malleable table, children explored brown playdough and created small zoos for animals. The tinker tray, filled with lollipop sticks, pebbles, sticks, bottle tops, and wooden objects, provided additional opportunities for imaginative play. The children used their senses in hands-on exploration of these natural materials.

In the tuff tray, the children engaged in small-world play with a zoo setup, complete with different sections for the animals. They discussed the characteristics of zoo animals and described where they lived. Using natural materials like bottle tops, sticks and leaves, fake grass, and crushed wheat biscuits, the children enhanced their sensory exploration.

The creative activities throughout the week included making paper plate snakes, creating zoo animal footprints, elephant collaged using different materials in a tinker tray and practised our cutting skills using long strips of paper. These activities encouraged the use of one-handed tools like scissors and allowed the children to explore different materials, fostering their creativity.

The water tray provided an opportunity for exploration with floating coloured balls and water equipment. The children talked about the different forces they could feel as they interacted with the water. The addition of coloured balls sparked curiosity, allowing the children to explore colour and its movement in the water.

In our NELI session this week, we discussed the book “Toby and the tricky things”. We learnt new special words: big, small, tricky, and pour! We embedded our learning through activities such as measuring ourselves against each other to determine who is the biggest and pouring water in cups around our circle!

Overall, it was a week full of sensory exploration, creativity, and learning through play, with a strong emphasis on developing fine motor skills, phonological awareness, and early numeracy concepts.

Next Week:

We're excited for World Book Day on Thursday, March 6th! Children are invited to come dressed as their favourite character from a book. We'll be celebrating by reading and discussing lots of wonderful books throughout the day.

We hope you have a restful weekend!

Anemones team