Week Commencing 5th October 2026

The Nest

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom we’ve been to the moon!

This week in the Nest we have based our activities around World Space Week and exposed our children to a variety of different textures and set-ups reflecting this theme that our children could explore further.

Physical Development:

We introduced a tray of coloured rice and pasta stars with metal utensils for the children to interact with alongside their peers. The children were very curious and quickly came over to explore, picking up handfuls of rice and letting them fall from height, watching as they fell and listening to the sound it made as it landed on the tinfoil at the bottom of the tray. The children then trialled moving their hands through the rice, watching as the rice then moved around the tray. “Swish, swish, swish” the adults spoke, which captured the children’s attention with them looking, smiling, babbling and making “Oooh” sounds in response. Some of the children experimented with placing the rice in her mouth to explore further (mouthing). This activity provided high levels of focus and attention as the children experimented moving with the rice in a range of different ways.

We have also explored gloop (cornflour and water) with coloured pasta stars, which the children were keen to get involved in and quickly put their hands into the tray to feel the texture. This unusual texture sparked lots of curiosity as the children touched the texture then looked to their hands, demonstrating their interest through facial expression. The children were fascinated as I held the gloop from height, stopping their own actions, to observe as the gloop fell from height and landed back into the tray. The children showed high levels of focus as they experimented with using their index fingers and whole hand to move and feel the gloop. The children were very engaged for the duration of this activity, alongside their peer as they shared this experience together.

The children enjoyed exploring some chia seed slime (chia seeds and water). The children were a little reluctant to begin exploring this unusual textures, but with some encouragement and modelling from familiar adults they all joined in and explored! We demonstrated some movements of filling and pouring with the metal appliances and made patterns in the slime with the paint brushes.

Communication and Language:

We have also explored a silver foil blanket within the Nest this week which has provided big smiles, laughter and gorgeous interactions between the staff and children with lots of anticipation and communication! The children have particularly enjoyed being underneath the silver blanket as staff “hide” them and sang “Where are the children? Where are the children? Peek-a-.. Boo!” The children anticipated “boo” with some children making an attempt to speak “boo” while other children babbled excitedly and used movement to show their excitement and anticipation. The children were also fascinated by the sound the foil blanket created as it crinkled as they touched it, crunched it and moved it between their hands. The children were very interested in watching each other feel the blanket, smiling at each other and focusing on their movements with the blanket.

To extend the children’s curiosity in creating different sounds through actions, following their interest of the silver foil blanket sound, and the sound created by the rice hitting the tinfoil and the tray, we decided to further experiment to create different sounds and did so by painting on tinfoil, observing the unusual sound this made! The children were very keen to get involved in this activity and cooperated well with having their aprons put on, before then taking hold of a paintbrush in their hands in a palmar grasp and began feeling the painty bristles between their fingers and then on the foil, watching their movements intently. Some of the children were incredibly focused as they used the paintbrush to make marks on the foil, watching as they did so and observing the sound it created. The children then got a little more exploratory and began dipping their hands into the paint to feel it further with his fingers, which they then took to his mouth to taste. This proved to be a disliked taste with the children showing they didn’t like this and pulled a disgusted face! Some children chose to further explore rubbing the paint on the table to feel the different texture as it smeared.

Fitting with our Space theme has allowed us to share familiar nursery rhymes with the children such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” which they continue to enjoy as well as introducing “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, we’re going to the Moon” which may be a new nursery rhyme for some of our children, it has been lovely to see the excitement and anticipation on the children’s faces as we counted down and got ready to “blast off!”

Parent Partnerships

We wanted to share the song of “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, we’re going to the Moon” if you would like to share this song at home with your child.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/numberblocks-zoom-zoom-zoom

Wishing you a lovely weekend!