Week 6

We are enjoying the Julia Donaldson story 'Night Monkey, Day monkey' 

We have been looking at numbers, groups of bananas and counting bananas into the monkeys mouths! 

We used tweezers to pick up bananas to feed to the monkeys.  It was quite tricky and it was a bit tempting to cheat but lots of children listened really well to the instructions of the game  and watched before having a go themselves.  This activity is great to help develop our fine motor skills. 

Have you heard of the rhyme '5 little monkeys jumping on the bed'?  It is one of our favourites in nursery and we have been singing it and using the props to act it out.  We used number names, counted, subitised amounts and even changed our voices to pretend to be the doctor saying "no more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

Another rhyme about 5 monkeys that we love is

'5 little monkeys swinging in the tree' .  We have had fun using the monkey, crocodile and tree props.

Everybody wants to play with it but  we are learning to wait for our turn, sometimes we might have to wait a little while until we can have a go. 

We have watched a time lapse video of night to day after reading this story and had a discussion, talking about the different things we can notice. 

We even jumped in muddy puddles!!

We toasted some bread and made monkey toast. We spread biscoff spread on ourselves then added bananas and raisins. They were so yummy!

We had a go at sorting animals in nocturnal or not. We talked about the different animals and when they come out. Some sleep in the day and some sleep at night. We also had a go at cutting the animals out ourselves using our brilliant cutting skills!

We looked at shadows and how they move when the sun moves. We were able to match the animal to the correct shadow and talk about what animals they were and where they lived. It was so much fun. We were unsure of what a mole or an otter were but we learnt something new!

Week 5

The book we are sharing this week is called 'Giraffe's can't dance' by Giles Andreae.   As well as it being a fun story for the children it is also great for helping our children to understand and accept that everyone is different.

We will be talking about things we are good at and what our friends and  family are good at.

There has been lots of ‘mark making’ going on today.  We have been drawing giraffes with long necks, drawing the patch/spot patterns we see on giraffes,  writing lists, messages to our friends and generally exploring making marks as we play. 

Look at the concentration going on here as the children used lengths of string to join the crates together. 

We made box model giraffes and all agreed that we needed some long tubes so that they could have long necks . 

We printed with our hands/arm to make a long neck and head and then painted on the patches and added googly eyes.  We love our Gerald the Giraffes!

We found some snakes in jelly and had to use tweezers to get them out. We rolled a dice and counted that many snakes onto our ten frames. we then had a go at counting how many more we needed to fill the ten frame. The jelly was so slimy and gooey and made a lot of mess but it was so much fun!

We rolled the dice and had to use tweezers to count that many bits of pasta onto the giraffe so it looked like the giraffes pattern. 

Week 4

In the 'Monkey Puzzle' story that we are sharing this week, poor little monkey has lost his mum , luckily  kind butterfly is nearby to help him find her!  We have listened to the story, talked about the pictures and the different animals that butterfly and monkey met on each page. 

We made some great symmetrical butterflies, painting a pattern on one half, folding it over and then seeing the same pattern  printed onto the other wing.

We had a huge butterfly that needed decorating, we used feathers, beads, glass gems, pipe cleaners, bottle tops and other things to make our butterfly look great.

We have been caught in the rain a few times this week.   When a heavy rain shower came, we gathered under the shelter and listened to the rain drops falling on the roof.  We found different containers and collected the rain, it was quite a downpour!

We all know monkeys love bananas, so we had fun playing a game where we collected bananas for them to eat. We rolled a dice, counted a number of bananas into a 10 frame and worked out how many more we needed until it was full. When the 10 frame was full we could then feed them to the monkey.   Some great subitising, counting and problem solving.

Monkey handprint pictures - we did a great job making these lovely monkey pictures, we talked about what monkeys like to do in the jungle and all agreed that they like to swing in the trees.  Our monkeys look to be having lots of fun playing in the jungle.  

There has been lots of chalking going on outside this week.   Some children enjoyed following the chalked out trail -  jumping, hopping, stepping, striding, running and twirling.    A couple of children were very inventive and used chalk to leave behind a trail whilst travelling around the playground.  "Like  a train track" Jakob commented.  And more pretty butterflies of course!

We went on a hunt outside to see if we could be quicker finding Monkey's mum. We loved searching for her in her hiding places and we counted how many we had found! 

Week 3

Animal pattern matching - we looked at colours and patterns on different animals, and talked about which pattern matched with different toy animals.  

Our new jungle jigsaw was popular today, the children can name all the animals and say something about them.  

Elijah - 'The hipppo is in the water'     Caleb - 'The snake goes ssss in the trees'

Our paper plate lions are looking great!  Well done children, you created some fabulous lion faces with lovely manes.

Working on a big scale is always good fun. We used masking tape to join two big pieces of cardboard together and then used it to draw and make marks on.

At carpet time in nursery we all come together to listen to stories, sing songs, join in with nursery rhymes or counting songs and many other things.  We are all trying hard to come and sit together to listen to our teachers.

We had a look at capillary action and make a giant Giraffe. We all had a go at making Giraffe skin by dipping our paintbrushes in water then paint and watching the paint spread through the paper towel. It was so interesting to watch. We then stuck all our pieces of paper together and cut out a giraffe shape to make a giant Giraffe. 

We loved playing with the chalks outside. We made marks all over the playground and even had a go at writing our names. We made different patterns and drew circles and wiggly lines. The children couldn't get enough of the chalks and played with them all day. 

Week 2

We talked about the animals in the book and pretended to be the gangly giraffe, holding his head up and feeling proud.

There are lots of different animals that live in the jungle or rainforest, we had a go writing their names.

Animal movements game

We rolled a dice and looked to see which animal it had landed on and then moved like that animal.  Can you see the elephant swinging it's trunk? Or the running and leaping gazelles? What about the sliding, slithering snake? Or the giraffe with his head in the air?  And look out for the chimpanzees swinging in the trees!

We had a go at rolling a dice counting how many dots were on it. We then had to add that many spots to the leopard. We were able to subtilise some of the numbers and count some of the higher numbers. We had lots of fun giving the leopard his spots back. 

We did some printing using shaving foam and food colouring. We made zebra skin and stripes and tiger stripes. We had lots of fun. We placed the zebra shape face down into the mixture of shaving foam and food colouring and the pattern dried in stripes on the paper.

We looked at some images of different rainforest animals and had a discussion about the rainforest. We chose our favourite animal and had a go at describing them. We then talked about the explorers and how they used their binoculars. 

Week 1 

We love this story, we are great at guessing the animals the little boy finds in the jungle and can make the noises these animals make. 

We have also learnt a song to go with the story and use pretend binoculars to look out for the animals.  We did really well making some binoculars to play with too.  

We can talk about the jungle animals that we saw in the story and have had fun playing with our jungle small world trays both inside and outside. 

We have a selection of booked based on the jungle/rainforest theme which the children are enjoying too.  

We had a practise writing our names on snakes using our name cards. We practised holding our pencils in a tripod grip and making marks on the paper. We used the phonics knowledge that we have learnt so far and were able to form some recognisable letters. 

We then made repeat patterns on snakes using dot stickers. We chose our two favourite colours and put them in a repeat pattern. We loved this activity and were able to recognise what colour came next. We then even had a go at doing three different colours in a pattern. 

We love our new role play area where we helped make a safari jeep so we can go on lots of adventures. We put on our safari hats and used our binoculars to search for lots of different animals. 'I can see a butterfly and a tiger,' said Jessica. 

We painted stripes on tigers using black and orange paint and loved making marks on different animals to show what patterns they have on their backs. We the made a big tiger and it is going to go on our display board. We worked together and took it in turns. 

We got the bubble sticks out for the children and they loved following Mrs Norton around trying to pop them. They had so much fun in the sunshine.

We went on a safari hunt and used binoculars that we had made during the week. We found all sorts of different animals from gorillas to snakes to tigers. It was so much fun. We then came inside and drew what we had found. We also had a go at writing what we had found.