Ladybirds: Trips & Creativity

We have had another busy time since our last news letter. The children have all been out on a Welly Walk, a trip to the Egg Theatre or both.

From our Welly Walk some of the children have used the natural resources they found to make clay imprints which have then been set into plaster. All the children have leant a hand in creating the Christmas trees (we had enough resources to make a mini one as well!) using the kindly donated boxes and are well under way to decorating them using their own ideas inspired by the natural materials as well as: paper chains, glitter and gold paper ornaments of their own design, card board rings that they cut themselves using a saw (under very strict supervision) covered in gold paper or metallic paint and I’m sure a lot more to come before the end of the week.

The trip to the Egg was wonderful for those children that were able to go. It was a very immersive experience in a particularly calm space. The story was of an explorer looking for the Aurora lights. The light show held the children’s attention beautifully and at the end they all got to handle light globes that changed colour.

Other activities have included threading and experiencing stitching with plastic needles into Binca material. Clay play in which the children simply free flow with the clay, shaping or adding things in whatever way they want. This is not fired and is just meant as an experience rather than something that lasts. We have also done a lot of colour mixing with primary colours; starting with red and yellow (orange), blue and red (purple), blue and yellow making the green that they used to paint the tree and finally using all three primaries to make brown that they used to paint the trunk.

Our literature and focus on understanding the world have revolved around a few stories, mainly Oliver Jeffer’s The Way Back Home from which we talked about the idea of the importance of helping one another and Trish Cooke’s So Much which lead us to talk about family life; what families do to celebrate and how they show love for each other.

In maths along with looking at number as we continually do we have been talking about the names and descriptions of 2D shapes and have been using different positional language: “next to “, “on top of”. “underneath” and so on.

Just to clarify further news that may well have already reached you, I will be taking up the permanent position of nursery lead from next term, finishing here as supply at the end of term so there will be no break in the lead role and I will be here full time going forward. I am very excited about the opportunity and am looking forward to planning some great activities in response to the children’s interests.

Thank you again for all your support. Merry Christmas!
Mr Peter