We have had a rather tuneful week this week in Early Years! Not only have we been working hard to practice our singing for the Poetry by Heart performance, but we have also been sneaking music and song into lots of different areas of our learning!
In dance, we explored moving in different ways with our bodies, interpreting ‘sharp’ dynamics and ‘soft’ dynamics within the music. The children have really started to connect their moves well in dance, building upon their learning week on week. We had ‘soft’ movements with graceful wing flapping, and ‘sharp’ moves with pecks, snaps and turns as the children moved as different animals across the space.
In literacy, continuing on with our learning all about Dominica, a place very special to our author Trish Cooke, we have been exploring Caribbean songs! The children loved the rhythm of ‘Tree fall Down’ and enjoyed coming up with different animals in the tree, making up their own lyrics to the catchy tune.
As always, our maths learning is full of stories and song, and this week Saplings have been exploring the concept of size through stories. Ash have been putting their reasoning skills to the test, trying to guess which objects belonged in which box, based on their sizes. They decided that a loaf of bread could fit in the larger box, but only a crumb of bread could fit in the smaller box (or a loaf of bread for a tiny fairy)! We spoke about how smaller items could fit in the larger boxes, but that larger items couldn’t fit in the smaller boxes.
This week we have been looking out for signs of Autumn and we went on an autumn walk to spot signs of the changing season, we looked for colourful leaves and conkers. The children were excited to find sweet chestnuts! We have also been learning about Harvest Festival and celebrating the wonderful food that grows around us. We went into the pollygrub and spotted that all of the fruit and vegetables had been harvested and there was just the tomato plants left.
We discussed where our food comes from and how farmers help to grow and harvest the crops we enjoy eating.
Building on all our Harvest learning, we had lots of fun using tractors in our small world area, creating our very own scarecrows in the craft area, and enjoying even more singing of our favourite Harvest songs!
What a fun and musical week of learning!
