This week in the forest, Early Years enjoyed creating and using maps to navigate our way around the space and to mark where we found different treasures! The children found coins, pottery and interesting rocks and foliage, and made sure that they recorded where they found each precious treasure. The children were really good at sharing their clipboards with a friend, and they worked so well together on their own treasure hunts.
We have been thinking about the different properties of 3D shapes this week, as the children tried to convince Mrs Lawrence that she definitely could not use a cube to play football! When they explained that it was because the sides were not curved so it wouldn’t roll very well, Mrs Lawrence then thought maybe a cylinder would work! The children did a brilliant job using their reasoning skills and explanations to convince their teacher that cylinders were only good at rolling in two directions, and that spheres were much better for the job.
We have engaged in sorting by shape, and by properties that these shapes have in common, such as curved sides or number of corners and edges. Saplings identified the different 2D shapes they could see on the faces, such as triangles on the pyramids and circles on the cylinders. The children took to creating models by balancing different shapes on top of one another, noticing that the shapes with flat faces provided a sturdier foundation.
The children have been up to lots of different activities during their choosing time this week! We have seen high levels of engagement in games of ‘noughts and crosses’, as the children have been challenging each other to try and get three in a row. We have also enjoyed making recycling posters, completing puzzles, playing hockey and cooking up some delicious food in the mud kitchen, amongst so many other things this week.
The children also loved creating their Mother’s Day cards for their mummies at home, and enjoyed thinking about what kind of colours and design they might like. Saplings did an amazing job signing their names in their cards and even having a go at writing initial sounds within words such as ‘mum’. Ash wrote their cards independently, using the sounds that they have been learning in phonics. The children really were so proud of their work and cannot wait to take them home (we think their grown ups will love them too!).