2-3: The Discovery Hub and 3-4: The Investigation Hub 

This week has been very exciting with the duck eggs delivery on Monday. The children have been so engaged with the experience and it has been lovely for Staff to watch.

Communication and Language

During the week, we have introduced new vocabulary with the children’s experience of the ducks such as “ducklings”, “hatching”, “incubator” and “brooder box”. It has been wonderful to hear how the children have been talking about the ducks and using some of the new vocabulary at home. Across the week, our Investigators have been exploring mathematical opportunities including counting the number of eggs and ducklings, changing the totals as more ducks hatched, along with counting the ducks over the colour of their feathers. On Monday, the children and Staff created some predictions as to which egg would hatch first and how many eggs would hatch.

Outdoor Learning

The children have continued to explore the lovely weather in the outdoors. There has been a large interest with using the blocks to create towers. The children have been showing good team work as they work together to add blocks and problem solve around how to make the structure “steady”. After the towers had fallen down, the children discussed how they could change the method of building the towers to make it not “wobbly”. Following plans, the children created a very “tall” tower and they asked staff to help them reach the top to add the last few blocks.

This week, we have continued adapting our areas in the garden and the children have loved helping Staff. They showed great pride in their achievements from the previous week helping to cut and tidy the trees and leaves, commenting “I helped with the leaves”, “Look we cut that tree!” and “This tree is good”. We have worked to create a water area in the garden, using pipes to pour water into. The children again worked together to hold and tie the pipes in place. We discussed which pipes may fit together and children used language such as “This is too big” and “Oh no, it doesn’t fit…it is too small”. We had some good problem solvers to suggest using other pipes and explored turning the pipes to make sure they would join together. The children were eager to test out the pipes, using the jugs to scoop the water and explore pouring the water into the pipes. As they observed the water flow down the pipes and guttering, they repositioned the buckets to catch the water and explored adding more pipe to create longer pieces.

Creative and Critical thinking

This week, we have added some masking tape into the model area. The children have experimented using the masking tape to wrap around their resources as well as trying to rip the tape to join resources together. The children persisted with using the tape, testing out lengths of tape need to make the resources secure.

Play and Exploring

Following the interest in the ducklings, some of the Investigators have explored representing the experience through mark making. Showing concentration as they created their marks to represent the ducks and they have begun to carefully select the colours to represent each duck. The Discoverers and Investigators have helped to prepare the Brooder Box to move the ducklings into as a new home. They have helped to spread the bedding in the Box and helped to fill up the water container. Over the week, the children continue to ask many questions to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the ducklings such as “What do they eat?”, “What is that? (heater)”, “Are they sleepy?” and “Can that one move in here?”.

Staff updates

On Monday, staff attended training lead by the area SENcO around attachment and inclusive practice within early years.

Parents as Partners

This week our song of the week has been Old McDonald with the visit from the ducklings.