2-3: The Discovery Hub

This week has been a very exciting week as the duck eggs have arrived at nursery 🐣 🥚 . Throughout the week the children have all had the amazing opportunity to visit the ducklings within small groups. Throughout the activity the children were able to carefully stroke the chicks while observing them running around and feeding. This encouraged the children to describe how they felt “soft” while being very gentle around the chicks.

Characteristics of effective learning – Finding out and exploring

Last week on their bug hunt, the children showed interest in natural objects that they found in our outdoor area, including leaves and rocks. This week the children searched the garden for more of these items, which they then explored. They noticed some of the round rocks could be carefully rolled down the grass hill, that some were “bumpy” and that some of them felt very “heavy”.

We gathered some rocks to add to a rock collection in our classroom. The children were curious to explore these through touching and observing them. Some children experimented with carefully stacking them and counting to see how many they managed to add to a tower before it collapsed! They demonstrated excellent perseverance and tried different approaches to achieve this task. To extend this beautiful learning the children used water and brushes to mark-make on the rocks while we discussed how they looked different when wet, this encouraged lots of lovely language and communication skills.

Some great investigating, alongside development of our understanding of the natural world around us – well done everyone!

Outdoor Learning

As the children continue to enjoy exploring mark making activities, opportunities such as water, mud and chalk painting have been explored this week within the outdoor environment. Other opportunities such as creating little obstacle courses have also been very popular in the garden area with many children enjoying using the slides, tires and climbing equipment to experiment with different ways of moving. Throughout these activity the children are learning lots of different physical skills such as fine motor when painting, coordination when running and balancing skills when climbing.

As the weather has continued to be sunny across the week, we have discussed with the children how we need to keep safe in the sun by sitting in the shade, wearing our hats, putting on our sun cream and drinking lots of water. The children are becoming more independent as they pour some water to have a drink in the garden and we enjoyed some juicy oranges to cool us down. This shows great independence skills, a skill which has also been encouraged at snack time as the children pour their own drinks and make choices between a selection of snack items.

Communication and Language

As we observe and discuss the new little chicks 🐣 the children have enjoyed learning new vocabulary such as “ducklings”, “hatching” and “Incubator”. When discussing our lovely experiences the children were able to recall the events and describe what the chicks looked like using beautiful describing words such as “soft, little and yellow”. To help support further learning and communication skills resources such as soft duck toys have also been added to the learning environment to support Imaginative play experiences and provide the children with the opportunity to recreate their special experiences while using new vocabulary. When observing the children it is wonderful to hear how the children have been talking about the ducks with each other and sharing in the excitement with their families and special people at home.

Parents as Partners

We are also kindly asking parents to upload pictures via observation on the Famly app of themselves and special people as we are currently creating little picture books 📕 As a teaching strategy this helps to promote communication and language skills across the class while also acting as a soothing resource for new children.

Thank you everyone 😄.

This week our song of the week has been 5️⃣ little ducks 🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥

Sign of the week: Chicken 🐓

The happiness and laughter seen in the children’s beautiful faces tell an inspiring story full of curiosity, kindness, friendships and learning.