The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood ........

For further Gruffalo fun http://www.gruffalo.com/

This week we have been looking at one of our favourite stories The Gruffalo. The story took us on our own journey through the forest where we looked at woodland textures and colours. This linked us in with the beginning of the autumn season.

We spent time discussing the characters the Gruffalo and mouse, how they behaved and why.

The children decided it is important to be a good friend to everyone. We looked at the different characters in the story and their similarities and differences. 

We are the same because    "We all have socks on"     "We've got hair and eyes"       "We're at school"

We are different because "I've got pretty bobbles you've not got any" "I'm a girl you're not"

We all have pets and they are different. We have dogs, kittens, pheasants, horses, chickens, fish and sheep.

We used pictures showing different body parts of the Gruffalo's body and tried to find them on the Gruffalo hiding in the rice.

    

We created our own Gruffalo using chocolate dough and different loose parts from around the nursery.

We set up small world version of the story to the encourage children to retell the story. The children created the characters they created in the dough area to support their play.

"Look all the Gruffalo's are having a party"

Free flow snacks

At Sparklers we have a free flow snack area, this is so children are not interrupted in their independent learning. Snack time is a time where children can learn about healthy snacks and gives them an opportunity to develop responsibility. The older children help their younger peers with the water dispenser, getting straws from the wrapper and peeling fruits.

The children are given a range of foods to choose from melons, cucumber, peppers, olives and cereals. This week the children have made their own sandwiches.











As well as free flow snacks we have a group snack and chatter time at a time that is convenient for all the children.

How much fun can you have with a balls of wool?

Well, this week has been all about working together. After the kind donations of wool from our friends in the community we have started making our friendship tree.

Our friendship tree is carefully wrapped with beautiful colours and textures. We are all unique yet working together we are a community. One of our children found our branch we have wrapped in our favourite colour in our own unique way.

When you visit us sign our visitors book and feel free to add a colour.

The fun continued with the wool becoming a web and the children singing and becoming the real Incy Wincy Spider wrapping everything from the whole of the roleplay area to adults legs! What fun we all had fun climbing in, out, over and crawling under our huge coloured webs.

Our over under skill helped us weave rainbow mats.

A child's view of our indoor environment

Sparklers aim to provide a stimulating environment where the children can feel a sense of ownership and responsibility of their learning and the environment. 

"It's my picture and me"

 The children are familiar with the term 'plan of action'. For us as a setting this is when staff and children work together listening to the children's perspective when constructing the learning environment. This enables understanding of what is important to the children and how their interests can be involved in the development of the room enabling the best learning outcomes.
 
We changed room over the summer break which has meant a lot of change indoors and out. After a child commented how he really liked seeing a part of the room this instigated the first of this years collaborative view of how the environment works for the children. 2 children were selected to take a staff member on a tour of the nursery with the children taking photographs on the I Pad of things that were important to them.

"It's really messy. I like paint"

"I can read the book and sing and dance and sing"

"I hear'd a plane, motorbike and bells. It's funny sounds"

During their time looking at the setting they started to look at what they thought made their friends happy

"He needs his blanket safe sometimes"

Here are just some of the important areas and resources to the children.

"I want to see whats in here"

"Need more pushchairs for the babies"

"It smells nice all this"

"All the boys do the sticking stories"

"Hurray it's working again"

"Trains and cars lots of them"

"I like making playdough with all the beads and balls and making cakes"

Next week we will look at the outdoors.

Problem solving

This weeks big challenge was all about moving water. Children naturally explore their world through space and shape. They appear to have a natural ability to investigate objects and their environmental surroundings. This week the children worked together sharing ideas, adjusting ideas when problems arose and transferring acquired knowledge with other resources.

 Take a look at the waterways we built to transport water from one water tray to another. Lots of co-operation and critical thinking going on. Active learning in action

"The water's pumping from that one to the other"

The children used different tubes and gutters to find a way to create a waterway that didn't leak.  

As the week went on the two water trays were moved further apart. This meant using construction materials to prop up the tubes and gutters between each container.

Using our knowledge to build channels with the marble run.

Celebration

We are all special and birthdays are our own super special day. Every time there is a birthday at Sparklers we make a cake. This week we had two birthdays ON THE SAME DAY!

So lots of cake making everywhere.

We used rolling pins,knives and pattern rollers. We named the shapes we cut out of dough to put on as decoration.

 When we made our birthday cake for snack time we took turns in choosing the ingredients,weighing, measuring and having a mix.

The best bit .....

Mud cake from the mud kitchen with our herbs for flavour texture and a lovely smell.

"You'll like this mud pie pudding Mrs Ronson it's got leaves on that smell of toothpaste so you won't have dirty teeth."